11.8 Rack, diagram and blend-array blocks

A rack block (+ Rack ▾) prints a front elevation: the U column with U1 at the bottom, a block per mounted device labelled with its slot span, what is standing on a shelf, and the rack’s name and 7/12 used over it. It is drawn as vectors on screen and on paper — a rack is straight lines and short labels, and an image of one is fuzzy at exactly the size a rack is read at — at the proportions a rack really has, so a 12U cabinet comes out about square and a 42U one nearly four times taller than wide. Resizing the frame never distorts it; the elevation is fitted inside whatever aspect you drag.

A diagram block (+ Diagram) prints the signal diagram — the whole drawing, or one named section. Because section membership is geometric, a section block re-crops itself as devices are dragged into and out of the frame: the crop is the query. This one is a photograph rather than vectors, because the picture is the diagram’s own layout and a second implementation of it would be a second diagram free to disagree with the one you arranged. It is photographed from its own offscreen copy in a paper palette, so a report exports with the Diagram tab shut and never carries your pan, zoom or selection onto the page. Like a 3D view it shows a cached picture with a stale badge, and the PDF re-renders regardless.

The signal diagram printed on a sheet in a paper palette, beside a text block — Figure 11.8 A diagram block beside a text block. This is the same drawing as the Diagram tab — the same nodes, the same routed edges, the same Control Room section frame — repainted in the paper palette rather than the app’s, which is why it reads as ink on white and not as a screenshot of a dark application.

A blend-array block (+ Blend array ▾) reports one array as two stacked tables. Members lists its projectors in lattice order — so a wall array reads left to right on the page because that is how it stands in the room — each with its cell (C2 · R1 in a grid, #3 round a ring), throw, image size, px/m and incidence; a machine hitting nothing says no target rather than reporting a throw of 0.00 m. Overlaps gives the seam between each adjacent pair: the metres and per cent of the planar approximation, beside the true keystone figure (§5.5). Either half can be switched off in the inspector, and the survivor takes the caption.

These numbers are the simulation’s

A throw distance and an overlap are measured against whatever surface the beams actually land on, so a blend-array block reports what the rig is doing rather than what it was set up to do — and the difference between those two is the reason to put one on a page. Like a schedule it is live, with nothing to go stale.