11.7 Schedules: cables and equipment

Two tables, both derived from the project every time they are drawn — no cache, no stale badge, always current.

The cable schedule (+ Cables) is what to order and where each run goes: Name, Type, From, To, Length, Slack. It sorts by type and then by the number in the name, so HDMI 10 lands after HDMI 9 rather than beside HDMI 1. A run with an unplaced end reads unplaced, never 0.00 m: the FOH rack nobody has modelled has no length to measure, and a zero is what has somebody order no cable.

The equipment list (+ Equipment) is what is in the rig: Qty, Kind, Model, Details, Location. It groups identical machines, and location is part of the key — two of the same switcher in one rack are a row of qty 2, the same switcher in two racks is two rows. The list is for building a rack as well as for buying the kit, and collapsing those would answer “how many” while losing “where”. Model is the model’s name, never the instance’s: nobody orders a “Projector 07”.

Either can be grouped — by cable type, by device kind — into bands carrying a count and a total, and filtered to one rack or one diagram section, section membership being geometric and derived exactly as it is in the diagram (§8.3). A filtered block captions itself with what narrowed it.

A schedule is auto-height: it ignores the height you drag and grows to its rows, stopping at the bottom of the page. It offers only the width grips, and its inspector Height reads auto.

A page carrying a rack elevation, an equipment list and a paginated cable schedule — Figure 11.7 Both schedules on one sheet, zoomed in: the equipment list banded by kind above, the cable schedule banded by type below, each band carrying its count and total. This schedule sits low enough that its 27 runs no longer fit under it, so it spends its last line on *Page 1 of 2* and the inspector offers the Page control — *27 rows · too long for this block — 2 pages*. Put a second block on the next sheet, step it to page 2, and the list continues.

A long table paginates

A layout page is one PDF page, so a table cannot flow onto a second sheet by itself. Instead the rows are cut into pages of the same size and the inspector’s Page control picks which one this block prints: put another schedule block on the next sheet, step it to page 2, and the list continues. Each page spends its last line on a dim Page 2 of 3 — which is what makes the pages equal and what tells you there is more to place — and a page that opens inside a grouped band repeats it as HDMI (cont.). The amber warning survives for the case that really is a fault: a block so near the foot of the page that nothing fits under its header at all.

What you see is what prints, in the strong sense: the sheet and the PDF are drawn from one layout pass in millimetres, so 1 of 4 on the panel and Page 1 of 4 on the paper cannot disagree.