Cable Routing

For the most part, cables are routed using the same rules and algorithms as pipelines: routing plane turns, 1.5 diameter bends, and minimizing a combination of length and elbow count to name a few. Graphically, cables are displayed the same way routed pipelines are drawn, including elbows, but are drawn on user-specified layers in CAD.

The primary difference between cable routing and pipe routing is spacing. The spacing between cables is driven by the cable-spacing table (sample entries of the cable-spacing table can be found in Appendix A - Default Data Tables) while the space between cables and pipelines is driven by the Cable to Pipe Spacing project setup attribute (see Boundary).

Once the AutoRouter has finished routing pipelines, cables are routed by priority and then by cost factor. If, after that filtering, there are multiple cables eligible for routing, they are routed in alphabetical order.

Vicinity Routing

You can write vicinity routing rules specifically for cables by specifying electrical_cable as the pipeline.class. As an example:

WHEN pipeline.class is "electrical_cable"
	GO north inches-or-mm(100.0 2500.0)
	AND GO up TO perpendicular-to-pipeway-level