Wire location "candlesticks" w/ example - D-Tools Forum

11-21-2008, 05:06 PM

Greetings all,
I have attached an example of a drawing type that I created in the past with a previous employer. Now, I am on my own with a new shop and instead of implementing existing standards, I am generating them. So, I like the drawing I created and the installers found it spot-on for their use.

My question is, where did the candlestick wiring icon come from? I haven't seen it as I peruse SI5. Then, what tool did I use to create the lines? I avoided crossing lines but if I did, they would "jump" nicely.

I know that the icons were for wiring and the wiring was from packages, so the stencil represented a package, which I dropped first. Then, when the drop locations were called out on the drawing and "approved" I went back to the package in the Data Matrix and dropped the attached wire to create this drawing. I woud then use a tool (I have a suspicion, but I am seeking confirmation) to make the purty connections.

The data attached to each wire represents a naming convention and I also need to do that setup. Thanks to Kevin Mikelonis for his insights last weeks at DTU regarding this and thank you to the folks at Paragon Technology Group who obviously implemented their own organized methodology. I benefit from having witnessed that in-house but was not part of the process in identifying the structure and design of their conventions.

Lot's of work ahead. I appreciate your help in my layering up to success project!

Regards,
Graham

**Kevin Mikelonis** · 11-21-2008, 11:35 PM

Hi Graham,

This is a nice set of documents posted up here, thanks for sharing these ideas.

Very little of what I see in this plan comes from the stock elements of D-Tools.

I do like the wiring annotations you call 'candlesticks' that appear on the plan, if these are coming from actual wire items in the database, there was a significant amount of work put into the creation of custom shapes in the wire and cable stencil in order to be pulling in what appears to be model or perhaps type information as well as head end assignments.

What is interesting is that there is no Component ID often used for wire numbering shown with these candlestick shapes.

The block shapes that represent the wire drop locations appear to be enhanced D-Tools shapes built from the default shape in most all stencils. The Component ID in these seems to be pulling in type or custom property information to generate the 'DRP' in the Component ID.

I would be interested in knowing which of these shapes are actually tied to data and what the product database behind these shapes looks like.

To be honest, I do not see a lot here that is leveraging D-Tools connections of shapes to data and do see more what seems to be visio only based tools, which is OK.

The tool used to create the lines between the drop shpaes and the wire annotations is the line connector tool. The line connector tools creates the jumps you refer to only when connected at both ends to shapes with connection points on the (the blue 'X' s). So those need to be turned on, along with the glue feature under Tools> Snap and Glue in Visio.

Without anchoring the line connector tool to connection points on shapes, it does not do much more than the standard line tool.