Drawing Modules
Each drawing type is a module of its own, so an application carries only the drawings its users need. A project can hold any number of drawings of every type the application has, and every drawing shares the same tools.
What every drawing type gives you
- A product browser of the catalog, grouped and filtered the way you configure it, with a preview of each symbol; and a products list of what is already in the project but not yet on this drawing.
- A drawing area with drag and drop, copy and paste, align, distribute, rotate, a grid with snapping, zoom and pan, and undo and redo of every change.
- Shapes, text and images — rectangles, rounded rectangles, ellipses, lines, polylines, polygons and paths, with fill, stroke and text.
- A properties panel for whatever is selected: position, rotation, appearance and every editable product setting.
- Real-time collaboration — other users editing the same project see your changes as you make them.
- A read-only viewer for presenting or embedding a drawing, and drawings placed in reports for PDF output.
- Keyboard shortcuts for every command, following Stardraw Design 7’s where the command exists there, and rebindable by an administrator.
Pictorial Schematic
A pictorial schematic shows a system as pictures of its products joined by connection lines: the meeting room, the studio, the control room as a customer would recognize it. Each product carries a pictorial symbol (any browser image, SVG for best results) with connect anchors where lines attach, and connections follow the product when it moves. It is the drawing type to choose when the point is to show what connects to what, rather than what anything measures.
Block Schematic
A block schematic is the signal-flow view. There is no symbol artwork to maintain: every product is drawn as a box generated from its ports — inputs on the left, outputs on the right, grouped and ordered as you set on the product, and collapsible to just the ports in use.
- Cables are drawn port to port and checked as you drag: the wrong direction, an incompatible signal or a connector that does not mate shows immediately and is listed on a Problems tab.
- Cables route around the blocks with bridges at crossings; a cable can continue on another drawing through a paired off-page reference.
- Multicore cables are drawn one core at a time as a bundle; a cable that is not in the catalog is defined on the spot.
Block schematics need products with ports, which come with this module or with the Cables Module; the Cables Module adds the project’s cable list, IDs and labels, conduits and the schedules.
Panel Layout
A panel layout is the face-on view of a rack or wall panel, built from each product’s real front artwork with an optional rear view that the whole drawing can switch to. Products carry a size in the drawing’s units and a clearance, so a layout reserves what the equipment really occupies; anchors mark where cables attach, and labels show any product setting beside the symbol.
Rack Layout
A rack layout is a scale elevation of equipment mounted in rack enclosures, and it checks the engineering as you build it. It requires the Physical Data Module, because everything it checks comes from there.
- Racks are products with rails; equipment snaps to rack units on the front or rear rails, into vertical zero-U bays, on shelves or freestanding, with front and rear views and a 3D isometric view of the cabinet.
- Weight and center of gravity per rack, heat per rack unit, and a power tree from the distribution units through dual feeds to every load, with derating — each problem named on the drawing.
- Cable lengths estimated within a rack and between racks, rounded to your stock lengths.
- Auto-arrange places heavy equipment low and hot equipment high, keeps what you have fixed, and fills gaps with blanking panels.
- A rack schedule per project, ready for the Reports Module, and the same operations for the AI assistant.
Plan
A plan is a floor plan drawn to scale: products placed where they will be installed, with shapes and text for rooms, zones and notes, in the same drawing interface as everything else.