March 15, 2017 update notes for Visio by DPTPB stencil collection.

Shape placement and spacing within the original DPTPB rear view rack shapes has been a manual process.  Also initial placement of rear view racks within margin box was a manual process. Both fairly easy to do, but still required some effort. I’ve addressed these issues with new dynamic rear view rack shapes with connection points and automatic placing of the rear view rack shape.

New Rack Rear Dynamic Shapes

• 1 X Rack and 2 x Rack variants
  • 2xRack variant used with templates
• Rear view rack with connection points
  • 0,5 inch (or one grid row at 400%) pitch between connection points
  • connection points are designed to be used with fixed scale (1:16) drawings, might not work so well is drawing at some other scale
• Easier to place new style switch/node/etc shapes
  • New style shapes are first used with switch shapes
    • these shapes have also connection points
  • Can pull switch shape to drawing at 100% zoom level
    • Align it roughly inside a rear view rack shape
    • once it is close to rack connection points, the connection point turns into green square
    • move up or down for correct vertical alignment and release mouse button to drop the shape in place
  • No need to zoom in and zoom out while placing new style rear view shapes
  • Placing/spacing old style shapes is still manual process
    • No connection points
  • You can still adjust the height of the rack
    • 20% – 100% height
    • Select rack shape and adjust “Rack Height” property in “Shape Data” window
    • Connection points for full height are kept
      • Not really a problem since connection points are not visible in finished drawings
  • Automatic Placing & Spacing of Rear View Rack shape inside the Margin Shape
    • Copied some code from margin shape that automatically sizes and places the shape
    • Original margin shape made by http://www.vsdfx.com/
    • Just drop the new dynamic rack shape into page and it will be automatically placed inside the margin shape
• New rack shapes used in templates

Picture: New Dynamic Rear Rack shapes in Visio “Shapes” window

New Metro Rack shapes

• New shapes both front and rear view
  • Rear view metro rack shapes are using new dynamic shapes
• 1 Rack / site  & 2 Rack / site front view shapes
• Front view “site divider” bar is now same height as the rack shapes
  • Easier to use shape in Powerpoint or other format
• Rear view “site divider” bar is tied to rear view rack shape height
  • Same height as left rear view rack shape

Removed Shapes

• Old non-dynamic versions of rear view racks
• Rear view racks with cable decoder box
  • Too many variations with different decoder boxes
  • Templates have cable decoder boxes
  • If you need different decoder box, replace the existing one with more suitable one