Most products installed at the work site require connectivity in one form or another. So, you will also have to calculate the cabling requirements in your quotes. While you can use traditional approaches, such as tape measures and distance meters, they can be pretty cumbersome. Also, you will need to be at the site for the measurements. Approximating cabling requirements when quoting remotely may lead to wastage or a shortage of material.
D-Tools introduces ‘Wirepath,’ a Visual Quoting tool to estimate the cabling and wiring needs for your projects more accurately. With Wirepath, you can draw freehand lines on a 2D floor plan and create an overlay of all the wire runs required at the work site. The wire runs are then allotted the appropriate cables or wires from the catalog, and your quotes have all cabling requirements factored in without ever having to visit the work site.
Wirepath enriches the Visual Quoting experience on Cloud by providing the means to visualize how products will be connected at the work site.
While Wirepath is primarily a cable length calculator, you can use it for any length-based measurements, such as conduits, cable trays, raceways, and pipes run for gas or water.
Wirepath Concepts
Wirepath is built around three primary concepts:
Scale to set a reference length and use it to calculate the length of all wire paths automatically.
Rise and Fall to account for the change in the elevation of the wire path.
Runs to calculate cable length for cable paths. This saves you time by not having to draw all cable paths on the floor plan.
Check out this article for more details about the concepts around which Wirepath is built.
Wire paths in quote
Wire paths are drawn on top of the floor plan. So, you must first add or select a plan view in the quote and add the floor plan.
If you are new to the Visual Quoting experience, check out this article on getting started with Visual Quoting for more details.
#1 Set a scale
All wire paths use a 'Scale’ as the reference for cable length calculations. Scale is set in the “Wirepath" view for Visual quoting.
As good practice, use a well-known standard, such as a door width of 24 inches or 36 inches, to set the scale.
Check out this article for more details.
#2 Add wire paths
Once you set the scale, you can add the wire paths on the floor plan.
After you add a wire path, you can click the wire path and click "Show Details." This will open the side panel to add one or more cables that will be run for the wire path. This is very much like adding items in the quotes.
Check out this article for more details.
Wirepath is built to estimate cable length for a wide range of cabling scenarios.
Check out this article for common scenarios and use cases for using Wirepath.
#3 Add wire paths to the proposal
To add the wire paths to the proposal, add the relevant plan view to the "Files, Plan Views, Whiteboards" section in the proposal.
Check out this article for more details.