How to Configure the General Routing Settings

Lineweight for viewed conductors

You can change the lineweight to choose a thickness for your conductors that best suits your model and display. A larger number results in a thicker line.

This option only applies when you choose to draw the conductors with polylines, not solids.

Conductor label spacing multiplier

You can change the multiplier for the spacing between conductor labels if you wish to separate the labels more or less. The actual spacing between two labels depends on whether the label is placed parallel or perpendicular to the conductor. Paneldes chooses between parallel and perpendicular labels based on the length of the line to which the labels are attached.

Use Solids for Conductor Viewing

You can choose to use either solids or polylines when viewing cable routes in Paneldes. Solids can be directly exported to solids based software such as Inventor and Solidworks for clash checks etc.

You can also choose to UNION the conductors solids by ticking UNION Solids during conductor viewing. This option is OFF by default as it may affect the rendering/performance if your model contains a lot of long conductors.

Paneldes routing analyses your model and calculates a suitable position for each cable in the tray taking various different aspects into consideration (e.g. cable factor, size, fill factor etc.). When you are routing only a small batch of cables this analysis must still fit the chosen cables with all of the other cables in the project.

If you un-tick this option then the cable position will only take account of the cables selected in the batch but this will take considerably less time to calculate.

Tick this option for accuracy. Un-tick this option for performance.

Raceway graphics

Hides all layers with a TYPE beginning with CONST (as defined in Layer.DBF).

These layers contain graphical representations of raceway segments (both parametric construction and realistic ladder blocks).

Raceway route lines

Hides all layers with a TYPE beginning with ROUTE (as defined in Layer.DBF), apart from ROUTEDISPLAY.

These layers contain raceway segment route lines (that is, the centered 3DPOLY that is the primary entity of a raceway segment).

Label blocks

Hides all layers with a TYPE beginning with BLOCK (as defined in Layer.DBF).

These layers contain label blocks for raceway segments with parametric construction, as well as label blocks for panels, devices, etc.

Other layers

Hides other layers that don't fall into the above categories, for example, layers for devices and panels, as well as any non-Paneldes layers.

Draw raceway segments for viewed routes

Inserts a copy of the parametric construction or realistic 3D block for each raceway segment that carries one or more of the viewed conductors.

This allows visualisation of the raceway segments that make up the route(s), without the visual clutter of having all raceway segments visible.

Note: enabling this setting always causes Raceway graphics layers to be hidden.

Additional connected segments to draw for context

When Draw raceway segments for viewed routes is enabled, allows Paneldes to draw segments that do not carry any of the viewed conductors, but branch out from those that do.

The value corresponds to how long each of these connected branches can be. 0 will prohibit any additional segments/branches from being drawn, 1 will allow branches up to one segment in length, 2 will allow branches up to two segments in length, and so on.

Branches fork when T and X fittings are encountered, and also at points where the Conductor Router logic and parameters determine that segments are connected (which for example can be between physically separate segments, based on the End-to-End connection setting).

Note: The number of additional segments to draw can grow exponentially as this value increases, due to the branching nature of raceway networks. Values higher than 1 are unlikely to be useful for visualisation, compared to not hiding Raceway graphics layers in the first place.