Question about ASSEMBLYCODEs

[Anonymous]

Maybe I'm thinking of this in the wrong way, but here it goes:

We have a communication device that essentially has 16 ports on it. The ports have cards that are interchangeable (Fiber/RS232/RS485). We are able to swap the cards out to suit our needs. Currently the communication device (OrionLX) is a parent, and has an associated Catalog value, and each port is also its own parent with a Catalog value depending on which type of port it is. 

What I want to do is something like have each port symbol be a child to the OrionLX, with a TERM of "PORT1", "PORT2", etc, so that when my point-to-point annotations are generated, the list of something connected to the OrionLX would be similar to "DevicePort=OrionLX:PORT1".

I thought this could be solved with the ASSEMBLYCODE and have the ports have the Orion's assembly code as their assembly lists, but when I edited the catalog, the port Par Numbers were no longer available in my catalog lookup when I placed a new part.

I feel like I'm thinking of this in the wrong way, especially since I need to be able to customize the number of each type of port in a particular Orion based upon the setup at any given substation.

[Anonymous]

You could try making the parent block the OrionLX, use assembly codes to it to get all the cards that are on it assigned.

Then make the child blocks but they don't have catalog data, you may have different children blocks for each type of card.

The OrionLX is the parent and will hold all the catalog data. Your children (cards) would then be able to report on their wire connections.

You might also be able to utilize the Parametric PLC tool to create a card based system. We use it to create routers with each lan port having a specific address.

[Anonymous]

That is kind of the way I originally thought of going, and we currently do have different blocks for each type of card. However, each type of card has a different part number, and the number of each type can vary from Orion to Orion (14 RS232 ports on one and 12 on another). If it was always the same number, it would be pretty easy to just code in a set number of each card into subassemblies of the Orion.

It seems like we may just have to have each card as a parent and come up with a standard naming convention for them so that our operations people know what the point-to-point annotations refer to.

[Anonymous]

One can assign multiple assembly codes to one parent part number.

Use the ; to separate the codes.

Inventive assembly codes can help selection in the catalog:

1-12p485;2-14p232;5-16p488 for 1 12 port 485 card, 2 14 port 232 cards, and 5 16 port 488 cards.

Another might be 1-6p485;6-16p488 and so on and so on...

Creating a lot of catalog entries for all the combinations would be the drawback to this approach.