Wiring diagram

The wiring diagram is a PDF drawing of your system in the style an AV integrator hands over: every device as a block with its ports, every cable numbered at both ends, a legend and a device index. It is drawn from the devices on Patch > Devices and the cables on Patch > Signal Map, so it is always as current as they are.

Export a wiring diagram

1. Go to Patch > Patches and click Wiring diagram. The Export wiring diagram window opens with a preview of the first sheet.
2. Under Paper, pick Letter, Tabloid, A4 or A3, then the Orientation.
3. Under Fit, pick how the drawing is split into sheets: One room per sheet, Whole system or Fixed scale, tiled (explained below).
4. Pick the Ink: Colour or Black & white.
5. Tick what the drawing should include (see "Choose what the drawing shows").
6. Page through the preview with the arrows. The line under it names the sheet, for example "Sheet 1 of 14 · Booth · tile A1 · 86 %".
7. Click Export PDF. The button shows how many sheets the file will have.

The Wiring diagram button is greyed out until there is at least one cable.

How the drawing is split into sheets

On Patch > Patches > Wiring diagram, Fit decides the sheets:

• One room per sheet (the usual choice). Each room gets its own drawing; a device's room is its Physical location on Patch > Devices. Text never prints smaller than 6 pt, so a room too big for one sheet is cut into tiles (A1, A2…) on several sheets, and a yellow note says so: "Booth does not fit one sheet at the 6 pt minimum — it is tiled across 3 sheets." Cuts fall between blocks, never through one.
• Allow 5.5 pt text on Letter is used only where it turns a two-sheet room into one.
• Whole system draws every room on one drawing, each room a captioned area, with the cables between rooms running along the gaps. On Letter it usually needs several sheets; Tabloid or A3 holds much more.
• Fixed scale, tiled draws the whole system at the Scale you pick (75 %, 100 %, 125 % or 150 %) and cuts it into tiles with cut marks, so a printed set can be taped together.

The small grid in each sheet's title block shows which piece of the drawing that sheet is.

Read a sheet

• Blocks. Each device is a block: its name in the grey title bar, then make and model, then its IP address. Inputs are on the left, outputs on the right, network and power along the bottom. A grey stub is a port with nothing plugged in.
• Strips. A small device with at most two patched ports and no IP address (a mic, a DI, a speaker, a fixture, a TV) is one line: name, make and model, and its port beside the stub.
• Cable numbers. Every cable carries its number in a pill at both ends (AUD-001, SDI-003…), the same label as the Cable column on Patch > Patches.
• Title block. Along the bottom: your church's name, the sheet name (room, tile and scale), the sheet number, the date and the revision. The revision is the date of the last change to your devices and cables plus a short fingerprint of the drawing, so two exports with the same revision are the same drawing.

Follow a cable to another sheet

On a wiring diagram sheet:

• Off-sheet tags. A wire that continues on another sheet ends in a rounded tag: TO SHEET n when it leaves, FROM SHEET n when it arrives. The tag names the far device and the cable numbers that go there.
• Trunks. With Bundle parallel runs ticked, three or more cables of one kind between the same two devices are drawn as one heavy line with a count badge, for example "13 × Analog audio · AUD-001…013", the way a snake runs. Each strand keeps its own stub and number at both ends.
• Reference stubs. With Power and network as reference stubs ticked, power and plain network cables are not drawn as wires. Each end is a short stub that reads the cable number and the far device and port, like "PWR-006 from Stage Rack Power · Outlet 1". Gear with only those cables, such as a UPS or a power strip, sits together in a captioned POWER & NETWORK band.

Legend and device index

The last sheets of every wiring diagram are the Legend and the Device index.

• The legend shows the line style of every kind of cable and what each symbol means.
• The device index lists every device with its make and model, room, rack, IP address, how many of its ports are in use, and the sheet it is drawn on.

Print in black and white

1. Go to Patch > Patches and click Wiring diagram.
2. Under Ink, pick Black & white.

Every kind of cable already has its own line weight and dash pattern (analog audio thin solid, digital audio dash-dot, video heavy solid, network dashed, power dotted), so the drawing reads just as well on a black-and-white printer or a photocopy.

Choose what the drawing shows

In the Export wiring diagram window, under the include list:

• Church logo in the title block uses the logo from Settings > Brand Kit.
• Cable numbers at both ends prints each cable's number in a pill at each end.
• Bundle parallel runs draws trunks, and stacks one-port devices that feed the same block into a column.
• Power and network as reference stubs prints those cables as stubs; untick it to draw them as wires.
• Unlabeled cables and Power cables include those cables.
• IP addresses prints each device's address on its block.
• Unused ports (dimmed) shows empty ports in grey; untick it to show a count on each block instead.
• Devices with no connections adds devices that have no cable yet. It is off unless you tick it.

Share the drawing with someone outside the church

1. Go to Patch > Patches and click Share….
2. Create a link (see Patches for the options).

The link opens a read-only System schematic page: the same drawing with zoom and pan, a Room picker (All rooms or one room) and the Cable schedule. It always shows the system as it is now, not a saved copy, and it stops working when the link expires or is revoked.

Troubleshooting

The Wiring diagram button is greyed out

There are no cables yet. Draw some on Patch > Signal Map, add them in the New row on Patch > Patches, or use Import there.

A room takes several sheets

That keeps the text readable. Pick Tabloid or A3, try the other Orientation, or on Letter tick Allow 5.5 pt text on Letter. A taped-together set lines up on the cut marks.

A device is missing from the drawing

A device with no cable is left out unless Devices with no connections is ticked. If the line under the preview says some cables were "not drawn (endpoint missing)", one end of those cables points at a device or port that no longer exists; fix them on Patch > Signal Map.

The export failed

If the window says "The PDF could not be written. Try again.", click Export PDF again. If it says the layout engine could not lay the system out, untick some options or refresh the page and try again.

Good to know

• The order of devices inside a room follows where they sit on the Signal Map, so the drawing reads like your map.
• A device's rack, when it has one, is its Device group on Patch > Devices; it is printed on the block and in the device index.
• The drawing is made from the same data in the web app and in Tech Manager.