Modular Equipment

One of the questions that we get routinely is how to deal with modular equipment.

WireCAD tries to remain as loosely coupled as possible. We feel that this allows the most flexibility. Modular equipment is not created as a child of some parent equipment but rather the reference is held by location. In this manner equipment can easily be re-assigned location without the need for reparenting.

Consider a video distribution amplifier. We might wish to display in any number of ways. Let’s say for example that we want to have a functional block that shows the ports of the VDA. We can do this be creating an equipment definition for the individual VDA.

We might wish to show all VDAs that live in a frame as a single functional block. We would do this by creating an equipment definition that contains all the I/O for all VDAs in the frame as well as frame-specific ports.

Example

Let's assume for purposes of this discussion that we want to display individual VDA functional blocks each with their own SysName and a SysName for the frame that houses all of the VDAs.

PROS

1. The Bill of Materials will accurately reflect items to be purchased (assuming that the unit(s) are sold in modular form).
2. We get individual control of the name and position of each "module".

CONS

1. We must maintain an equipoment definition for each "module".
2. We must provide a name and location for each "module".
3. We must provide an additional name and location for the "frame".