About Custom Cable Decorations

You can create custom cable decorations in the Catalog Explorer dialog box. A custom cable decoration must have 2 or 3 construction lines representing conductors. Although cable decorations are created and stored in the Catalog Explorer, you can not instance them from the Catalog Explorer. You can only place a cable decoration when you define a cable or place an instance of the cable on a sheet. Custom cable decorations are fully supported catalog items without a diagram type, and they can be submitted to the central catalog.

Cable decorations do not break when you break a cable. You can create custom decorations to represent a break in the cable and place them manually. Use cross-reference labels to indicate the location of the remaining cable.

You can create custom decoration geometry from scratch, by using another custom decoration as a template, or by importing graphics in supported formats, DXF for example. You have the option to blank the fiber graphics where the decoration is placed.

Custom cable decorations are scalable by default, but parts of the decoration can be set as fixed or overall. A fixed decoration maintains its size irrespective of the separation between cores. An overall decoration scales to maintain presence across all cores and is used to indicate an overbraid cable. A preview of a scalable cable decoration shows the conductors with varying separation to demonstrate scaling. You can create part of the decoration as fixed and part as scalable.

You can add a label to the decoration to report cable properties. The placement of the label determines how it moves when the decoration expands. Sometimes when you place a decoration the label interferes with the cable. When this happens you can move the label and the new position is stored with the decoration or you can delete the label. When you move the decoration, the label moves relative to the new position. To replace a deleted label, select the decoration on the sheet and use the

Add Label command.