Documentation

Cable Colors

Every wire on a schematic is drawn in the color of its cable category, on screen and in PDFs, so a reader tells video from audio from control at a glance.

What the Colors Mean

A wire takes the color of its cable type's category. An HDMI or DisplayPort cable draws as Baseband Video, a Cat6 cable as Network/Ethernet, an XLR cable as Mic Level. A wire whose cable type is missing or not recognized draws in the Network/Ethernet color. There are eleven categories:

  • Digital Audio — Dante, AES67, AES/EBU
  • Mic Level — microphone to DSP
  • Line Level — DSP to amplifier, amplifier to codec
  • Speaker Level — amplifier to loudspeaker
  • Baseband Video — HDMI, DisplayPort, SDI, VGA
  • Network/Ethernet — AV-over-IP, control LAN, PoE
  • USB — USB-A/B/C, camera USB
  • Control — RS-232, RS-422/485, GPIO, IR
  • RF/Coax — wireless mic antennas, CATV
  • Fiber — singlemode, multimode, optical HDMI/USB
  • Power — AC feeds, DC power runs

A color is used in this order: the project's own override, then your company's color, then the built-in default. The built-in colors read on both the dark canvas and white paper. A selected wire or a traced signal path still glows around its color, and the flow animation is unchanged.

Company Colors

  1. Open Global Config, under Admin in the navigation menu.
  2. Find the Schematic cable colors card. It lists the eleven categories with the color each one draws in.
  3. Pick a color, or type one as # and six hex digits, such as #2563eb. It saves as soon as you change it.
  4. Click Reset on a row to go back to the built-in default. The link shows only on a category your company has changed.

Company colors apply to every schematic in the company, except where a project overrides them. PDFs, share links and Drawing Sets use them right away; a schematic already open in an editor shows them the next time it is opened. Read-only users see the colors but cannot change them.

Project Overrides

  1. On a project's schematic, click Cable colors in the toolbar. The CABLE COLORS panel opens on the right.
  2. Pick a new color for a category. Every wire of that category on the drawing redraws at once, and the row is marked Overridden.
  3. Click Use company color on an overridden row to drop the override.
  4. Click Save. Overrides, Print in black and Print legend on sheets are saved with the schematic, along with the rest of the drawing.

Anyone else with the schematic open sees your color changes at once. If they had unsaved color changes of their own, those are replaced and a message tells them so.

Read-only users see the colors in effect and the two print settings, but cannot change them.

Print in Black

The Print in black box at the foot of the Cable colors panel prints every wire black in PDFs, for a set that goes to a monochrome printer. It is off by default. The canvas keeps its colors either way.

Print in black covers the schematic's PDF export, its share link, and its pages in a published Drawing Set.

A Legend on Each Sheet

Tick Print legend on sheets, below Print in black, to print a small CABLE TYPE LEGEND box in the bottom-left corner of every schematic PDF sheet. Each sheet lists only the cable categories of the wires on that sheet, each beside a line in its color. It is off by default and shows only in PDFs: the schematic's PDF export, its share link and its pages in a published Drawing Set. The canvas does not show it.

A sheet with no wires gets no legend, and with Print in black on no sheet prints one.

The Notes and Legends Legend

A published Drawing Set lists the project's cable colors under CABLE TYPE LEGEND on its Notes and Legends page. It names only the categories of wires that print in color on the set's included schematic sheets, each beside a line in its color, overrides included. With Print in black on, the legend is left off. This legend is separate from the per-sheet legend above and is printed either way.

Port tags keep their color

The short stub from a port to a flag or jump tag is not a cable, so it has no cable type and keeps its own color. Only wires between ports take a category color.

With the Schematics Copilot and Claude Desktop

The schematics copilot and Claude Desktop can read a project's colors with get_cable_colors and change its overrides or Print in black with set_cable_colors. Both tools also read and set Print legend on sheets. A change from Claude Desktop is saved at once and shows in any editor that has the schematic open. A change from the copilot applies to the schematic you have open; click Save to keep it, as with the panel. Claude Desktop reads and changes company colors through get_global_config and update_global_config, in their cable_colors field.