Cable Length Estimator

Imagine you need to build an intranet in your office. You will definitely have to find out what kind of cable and of what length you will need for this. Because if the cable is too short you will then have to buy additional equipment to substitute the lacking part, and you also don't need any extra cable not to waste money.

One way is grabbling with a tapeline along the office measuring all the intervals, inhaling dust and sneezing, moving the tables with equipment, and distracting your colleagues from work.

Variant two, the one we would like to offer, is to use the wizard Cable Length Estimator, which will automatically figure out the cable length that you need for building up an intranet of the required configuration. All that you need is the floor plan of your office in any graphic format. You can scan the existing office plan or draw a new one using ConceptDraw NetDiagrammer or any other graphic editor.

So how do we work with this wizard?

Select the item Cable Length Estimator from the ConceptDraw NetDiagrammer Control Panel

or from the Computers and Network section in the Template Gallery.

In the menu File\Document Properties… on the tab Settings specify the required measurement units and the scale in the section Scale.

Then you need to add the image of your plan as one of the document layers. If you already know the size of any premise or just a wall, stretch the plan image in accordance with the document's scale grid.

Important ! Shift to another layer to arrange the intranet objects on the plan.

For instance, if the scale you have chosen is in meters as 1:1, then the size of one document cell will equal 1 meter. If you know that the length of the frontal wall of your study is 7 meters, then stretch or reduce the plan image so that the wall's length on the plan makes 7 cells.

Note: scale out the image proportionally, and not only horizontally or vertically, so that all the sizes coincide.

Use objects from the library Network Cabling. First, set the server on the plan. Then, choosing the required cable type from the library draw the necessary intranet configuration.

Note: You must connect each new cable to the last added cable to see the right calculated data in the table.

You can specify the number of cables in the set branch. To do it just make a double-click on the number of cables, that displayed near the last cable in a branche, or press F2 when the cable is selected end enter the required number.

You can also specify the horizontally set cable using the corresponding library document. Each new branche will automatically get a number after re-calculating, that will be displayed as a number in the circle.

Make a double-click on the Calculate button to see all the data displayed in the document left part. You can choose the data format you prefer - feet, decimal inches or meters.

If you make a double-click on table's cell with node number that you need you will see the corresponding cable branche highlighted.