Design
The cabinet, filled from the project.
The cabinet, filled from the project and ready to build. Auto-fill lays the rack out from the gear you designed; you reorder it, check the rear and read the power, heat and weight.
auto-fill
From the project, top to bottom.
Open Rack and press Auto-fill from project. The tool lays out a clean rack from the top: patch panels, one per 24 switch ports; the network switch; the control processors; the router at half width; the rest of your gear; then the amplifiers at the bottom with a 1U blank before each row, PDUs sized to the mains-powered gear, and a 4U blank. The cabinet is resized to fit.
Prefer to build by hand? Drop devices in any order from the palette (your project’s amplifiers and gear, or generic units from a DSP to a UPS, a shelf or a vent panel) and press Organise rack to apply the same rules.
Drag to reorder, set each unit’s height in U, toggle half-rack width, and set the cabinet in U with its width and depth in centimetres, 60 × 60 by default. PoE devices such as the Netvio AV over IP cards are powered by the switch, so they do not count toward the PDUs.
how it works
Locations first, then the cabinet.
Organise zones and the rackTask guide 12 · 3 min
Review equipment locations
Open Zones and distinguish room equipment from shared rack equipment. Check each device group and its assigned location before arranging the cabinet.
Arrange the rack
Open Rack and review the elevation. Auto-fill from project populates it from the current equipment. Inspect the resulting arrangement and cabinet dimensions before using it for installation.
Check the front and rear
Review occupied units, cabinet width and depth. Use Rear · PDU to inspect patching and power, then return to Front. Check physical dimensions, available ports and power capacity against the equipment specifications.
Keep in mind
Rack, Zones and Wiring use the same project equipment across disciplines.
Lesson 03 · 9:38Zones, rack, wiring, reports and handover
The whole lessonrear and PDU
The back of the rack, cabled.
Switch to Rear and PDU: each powered unit’s cable runs through a cable manager to a PDU socket, six outlets per PDU. A cable and port schedule lists every unit’s U position, signal connections, PDU outlet and watts.
Every unit draws a realistic faceplate on its own: branded for LEA, Mag Audio, Nice, Netvio, ELAN and Pulse-Eight, and type-aware for everything else. Click a unit to use your own front-panel photo instead.
power budget
Power, current, heat and weight.
Set the mains voltage, 230 or 120 V, and the designer sizes the install: the total power draw, the current with 25% headroom, the recommended breaker, the number of PDUs, the heat in BTU/hr and the weight. Each unit’s power and weight can be edited.
While you design in any module, the tool counts every networked device that needs a switch port (access points, cameras, door stations, touch panels, Dante adaptors, players, controllers and AV over IP video) against the ports your switches provide, and warns when a new device would run out. Adding a switch drops its patch panels in too.
export
Out of the designer, into the installer pack.
Export the rack as a PDF (front, rear, cable schedule and power budget), as a DXF at real scale that opens in SketchUp, AutoCAD, BricsCAD and LibreCAD, or as a PNG. The rack also prints in the main report with its cable and power schedule, and the whole design saves with the project.
in figures
The rack, in figures.
The demo figures are the Harbour House rack the screenshots show.
- rack and gear items in the catalogue
- 55
- cabinet in the demo
- 36 U
- rack weight (demo)
- 76.8 kg
- outlets per PDU
- 6
| Mains | 230 V or 120 V |
|---|---|
| Current | With 25% headroom, and the recommended breaker |
| PDUs | Six outlets each, sized to the mains-powered gear |
| Heat | BTU/hr |
| Weight | Total, from each unit’s editable figure |
| Cabinet | Height in U (1U is 44.45 mm), width and depth in cm |
| Export | PDF, DXF at real scale, or PNG |
questions
Questions, answered plainly.
Can I build the rack by hand?
Yes. Drop devices in any order, then press Organise rack to apply the same layout rules as Auto-fill. Clear rack empties the cabinet and resets its size; your amplifiers and gear stay in the project.
Does the rack follow changes to the design?
Press Auto-fill from project again and it builds the rack from the current equipment. Equipment you add in Zones design keeps its quantity in the rack’s From this project palette, so one click drops it all in, and the video and control designers put their head-end gear in the rack themselves.
Ready when the client is.
Draw it, check it, show it, price it and hand it over, from one project.
15-day trial for approved companies. No card, nothing to cancel.