Using Visual Aids for

Node Positioning

You can activate visual aids to provide you with additional feedback about the cursor position on a bundle when you are manipulating nodes.

Use the aids when you are:

• Adding, moving or duplicating reference node object.

• Adding a new bundle structure node to an existing bundle.

• Adding grip points in a formboard diagram. See Examples.

Prerequisites

• You must enable visual aids for node positioning by clicking the icon in the status bar.

Procedure

1. Choose to add, move or duplicate a reference node object add a grip point, or connect a bundle to an existing bundle.
   Figure 274: Tooltip and node highlighting shows additional information about the position on the bundle

2. Move the cursor and hover over the bundle.The following information about the position is displayed in the tooltip. Offset from Origin — If you are moving a node to a different position on the bundle, this shows the distance from the node’s original location to the current position of the cursor. If the node is being moved to a different bundle, Offset from Origin is not shown.

Offset from Start — Shows the distance from the start of the bundle to the current position of the cursor. The start node is highlighted in orange.

Offset from End — Shows the distance from the current position of the cursor to the end of the bundle. The end node is highlighted in green.

Anchor to — Shows the anchor node for the object being placed. The anchor node is highlighted with a red square.

Standard dimension n — If you are moving a node which has dimensions associated with it, this shows what the new value of those dimensions will be.

Internode dimension 1 — Shows the distance from the previous valid adjacent node to the current position of the cursor. The node is highlighted in blue.

Internode dimension 2 — Shows the distance from current cursor position to the next valid adjacent node. The node is highlighted in pink.

Note Nodes where internode dimensions are disabled in the style set are ignored. The node will not be highlighted, and will not be considered for the calculation of distance to be displayed in the tooltip.

3. (Optional) Change the anchor node for the object being placed.The current anchor node is highlighted by a red square. You can change the anchor node by pressing T to toggle through the available nodes. Through nodes where there is no activity are skipped.

                When manually placing fixtures on a full scale diagram, pressing T will only
                    toggle between the start and end joints of the segment beneath the cursor.
                    Any reference nodes present on the segment will be skipped, together with
                    any structure or reference nodes elsewhere on the bundle.
   
                With the system preference "Allow only structure nodes as anchor nodes in
                    visual aids edits" selected, only structure nodes are available for
                    selection. See "System Preferences
   

for Capital Harness Designer" in the Capital Project Manager User Guide.

4. (Optional) View information for variant length bundles.If you are placing the object on a bundle which has variant lengths defined, you can step through the tooltip information for each variant by pressing V. The final set of tooltip information in the sequence presents values for all variants in a single tooltip. While displaying information for a variant, you can change the anchor node by pressing T.

5. Click to place your object.Note When Node Positioning Visual Aids are enabled, the Node Position Utility Dialog Box does not appear automatically when placing or moving a node. You can still access the Node Position Utility by pressing Space Bar and enter Node Position Utility (with a mid-bundle node selected) or right-clicking a mid-bundle node on the diagram and select Node Position Utility.

Examples

Grip Points on Formboard Diagrams

A subset of the positional information displays when you are adding grip points in a Formboard diagram. This is applicable if the bundle:

• Is not a flex bundle.

• Does not have its graphical length overridden.

Parent Topic:

Layout

Capital Harness Designer User Guide, 2512

Unpublished work. © 2025 Siemens