Assigning cabinets

The patching itself: you pick a port and point at cabinets in the order the cable will run. This is the manual way — the fast automatic one is covered in the next article.

Assigning cabinets to a port

  1. Pick the active port by clicking its connector in the card block. The active port is highlighted.
  2. Click the cabinets on the canvas in the order the cable will run.
  3. Switch to the next port and repeat for the remaining cabinets.

Two ways work, and they do not get in each other's way:

  • Clicking a cabinet assigns it to the active port. Keep clicking cabinet after cabinet: each click adds one.
  • Dragging — after the first click you can simply move the cursor without holding a button. A cabinet is appended not when you touch its edge, but when the cursor enters the circle at its center: otherwise the chain would grow from brushing past a neighbour by accident.

The drag ends on a click off the canvas, Esc, or switching or clearing the active port. Clicking another cabinet does not end it — it assigns the next cabinet.

Starting marquee auto-patching or "Reverse" also interrupts the drag — the two never run at once.

  • Arrow keys ← ↑ → ↓ append the nearest cabinet in that direction.
  • There is no drag gesture on a touch screen — that gesture pans the canvas, so each tap simply assigns the next cabinet.
patching: the active port is highlighted and route chains run across the cabinets
Screenshot: patching: the active port is highlighted and route chains run across the cabinets

The click order is the cable order. Click the way the loom will actually run on site: this is the plan the cabinets will be wired by.

A cabinet already taken by another port cannot be stolen. Clicking it switches the selection to the card and port that own it and expands that block — handy for making sense of someone else's scheme, but surprising if you did not expect it.

Context menu

Right-click on a patched cabinet:

  • Remove this connection — take one cabinet out of the chain;
  • Clear port — drop the whole chain of that port;
  • Reverse patching — turn the chain around;
  • Clear Patch — delete every card in the project at once, with a confirmation.

In Power mode the menu is different — its items are about power lines, not card ports. See Power patching.