Displaying labels on the sketch

You can display submodel labels in any mode.

Procedure

1. Select one or more components (or use Ctrl + A to select all components on the sketch).

2. Press the mouse right-button and select Labels.

3. Select Show component labels and Show line labels.

4. To have a better display, you can rotate labels with the right-click menu.

5. See the results shown in the figure below.

Note

You can also use Ctrl + L and Ctrl +Shift + L on the keyboard to display or hide labels for the selected submodel(s).

At this stage, the submodel names will mean very little to you. But as you become more experienced, the information can be important.

The number appended after the icon name is called the instance number. This simply serves to distinguish different occurrences of the same icon.

DIRECT submodel

DIRECT submodel

DIRECT submodel is short for direct connection. This is a very general submodel which actually does nothing at all. It is only used for design convenience: it has no parameters and no variables. It is as if the two entities it joins were connected directly together. The DIRECT submodel is always used when a line connects two components of the Mechanical and Signal, Control libraries.

Figure 4: DIRECT submodel

With other categories such as Hydraulic or Pneumatic, some other line submodels (different from DIRECT ) can be used. These pipe submodels are more complex since they have parameters and variables. Their goal is to calculate flow rate from pressure and /or pressure from flow rate depending on which components they are connected to. See the following example:

Figure 5: Example of a line submodel

Procedure

1. Select the submenus Hide component labels and Hide line labels to hide the labels.

2. Finally look at the figure below.

The top and bottom sub-systems are functionally identical but the upper one has far fewer lines. Generally speaking only use lines when they are really necessary. This leads to a much neater sketch and there is less scope for bad connections. There are two situations were lines are necessary:

A line submodel is needed as in the figure above.

It is physically impossible to connect all the ports you want to connect without leaving a gap. You bridge this gap with a line and then use DIRECT submodel. Figure 6: Avoid unnecessary use of lines