Signal Flow Diagrams

Generate professional signal flow schematics from your room equipment using AI-assisted layout and connection mapping. Export to PDF or DXF format.

Schematics Canvas

Overview

The Schematics feature creates visual signal flow diagrams showing:

• Equipment devices with port labels
• Signal connections between devices
• Audio/video/control signal paths
• Location/zone boundaries for grouping devices
• Multi-page support for complex systems
• Export to PDF with professional title blocks, or DXF for CAD software

Project-Level Canvas

Signal flow diagrams are created at the project level, combining equipment from every room into a single unified diagram. Opening Schematics from a project's Engineering menu goes straight to the canvas - there's no separate setup step before you can start placing devices.

Prerequisites

For best results, ensure your products have:

• Connection Metadata - Port and protocol information
• Accurate descriptions - Helps AI categorize equipment
• Available credits - Credits used for AI actions

Workflow: Adding Room Equipment to the Canvas

The ROOMS panel on the right lists every room with equipment on the estimate. Expand a room to see its items.

The panel stays live: add a line item on the Details page, approve a change order, or have a teammate exclude an item from another window, and the ROOMS panel reflects the change on its own within about a second — no refresh needed.

Add All Equipment

Right-click a room's title in the ROOMS panel and select Add All Equipment. A modal opens and AI triage runs immediately over the room's equipment (skipping items already excluded or already placed):

• Each item is categorized as Input, Processing, or Output
• Items that don't belong on a signal flow diagram - mounting hardware, cables, labor - are suggested for the Excluded group

Nothing is placed yet. Review the three category buckets and the Excluded group, move items between categories, or toggle exclusion, until the breakdown looks right. Only when you click Add All to Canvas does the system place the included items on the canvas - items already on the canvas are left alone.

When the drawing has more than one page, an Add to page picker in the modal footer shows and sets which canvas page the devices land on - it stays in sync with the toolbar's Target Page selector, so changing one changes the other.

Working with Individual Items

Right-click any equipment row in the ROOMS panel for:

• Exclude / Include - Keep an item out of the diagram, or bring it back. Excluded items are skipped by Add All Equipment and shown dimmed in the list
• Metadata status - See at a glance whether the item's product has connection metadata (ports) configured
• Build Metadata with AI - Generate connection metadata for the item without leaving the canvas
• Build as Kit with AI - For multi-part gear like a wireless microphone system, have AI detect the sub-devices (receiver plus each transmitter) instead of treating it as a single device

You can also drag any individual item from the ROOMS panel onto the canvas to place it on its own.

Unlinked Devices

Devices placed by other means - manually added, or dragged in before a room was assigned - can end up with no room attribution. The UNLINKED group at the bottom of the ROOMS panel lists every one of them, grouped by product so duplicates stay together (kit parts group separately). Click a row to highlight its blocks on the canvas.

Right-click a row and choose Link to room to attribute it to any room on the project - it moves out of Unlinked immediately and that room's placed count updates. Picked the wrong room? A one-click Undo chip appears in the Unlinked header to reverse the last link. To reverse an attribution later, right-click the room's over-count row - or a room item that already has canvas devices - and choose Unlink; the blocks return to Unlinked, the room's placed count drops, and the same Undo chip reverses the unlink.

Equipment Analysis

The canvas uses AI for two different jobs - don't confuse them:

• Add All Equipment triages a whole room at once: it categorizes each device as Input, Processing, or Output and recommends excluding non-signal items (mounting brackets, cables, labor, licenses). It only makes recommendations - you can change any category or Include/Exclude any item before it reaches the canvas.
• Build Metadata with AI works on one product at a time: it generates that product's connection metadata - its input and output ports - so its device block on the canvas shows real, wireable connectors instead of a generic block. It doesn't categorize devices or suggest exclusions.

Device Management

You can manually add and configure devices on the canvas:

Adding Custom Devices

Click Add Device in the toolbar to create a new device block:

• Enter the device name, manufacturer, and part number
• The Make field suggests existing manufacturers as you type to avoid duplicates — you can still enter a new one
• Select the device category (Input, Processing, or Output)
• The device is placed in the first available position

Adding Devices from Products

Click Add from Product to load a device with pre-configured ports:

• Search for products that have connection metadata configured
• Products with metadata are shown first in search results
• For kit products (bundles with multiple devices), select individual components or add all at once
• The device is created with all ports already configured

Managing Ports

Right-click any device to access port management options:

• Add Port - Add a new input or output port with a specific port type (HDMI, USB-C, Dante, etc.)
• Edit Ports - View, reorder, and remove ports. Drag ports between the Input and Output columns to reclassify them
• Edit Inner Labels - Add custom labels displayed inside the device block (e.g., "MIC 1", "PGM OUT")
• Auto-fill with AI - Uses AI to automatically populate ports based on product specifications (requires Make and Model)

Auto-fill with AI

Right-click a device and select Auto-fill with AI to generate connection metadata directly on the canvas:

• AI searches manufacturer documentation for port specifications
• A loading indicator appears on the device block while processing
• Ports are automatically added based on the product's actual connectors
• Enable Kit / Bundle mode for products with multiple physical devices — the original block is replaced with individual sub-device blocks
• Works with any device that has Make and Model fields populated

Creating Wire Connections

Connect device ports to create signal flow paths:

Single Wire

1. Click on a source port (output)
2. Optionally click on the canvas to add waypoints for routing
3. Click on a destination port (input) to complete the connection

Keyboard shortcuts:

• Backspace - Remove the last waypoint while drawing
• Escape - Cancel the current wire

Batch Wiring (Multiple Connections)

Select multiple ports and connect them all at once:

1. Select ports using either method:
   • Shift+click individual ports to add/remove from selection
   • Drag a marquee rectangle around ports (without covering device centers)
2. Selected ports are highlighted in yellow
3. Click a destination port on another device
4. Wires are created from each selected port to sequential destination ports

Notes:

• Only ports of the same type can be selected (all inputs or all outputs)
• Destination must be the opposite type (outputs connect to inputs)
• If the destination has fewer ports than selected, extra wires are skipped
• Press Escape to clear the port selection

Linking to Products

Right-click a device and select Link to Product to save its port configuration back to the product database:

• Search for an existing product in your database
• Save the device's ports as the product's connection metadata
• Linked configurations are available when using "Add from Product" in the future

Save Mode Options:

• Replace all metadata - Overwrites all existing port configuration including sub-devices
• Add as new sub-device - Adds this device as a new component to a kit/bundle product
• Update existing sub-device - Appears when a matching sub-device is found by name; updates that specific sub-device's ports without affecting others

Creating a Product from the Canvas

You can build a device on the canvas and save it as a new product without leaving the schematic. This is useful when a product doesn't exist in your database yet.

1. Add a device to the canvas (manually or via AI auto-fill) and configure its ports
2. Right-click the device and select Link to Product
3. Search for the product — if no match is found, click Create New Product
4. The form pre-fills from the device's manufacturer, part number, name, and category
5. Review the fields, make any adjustments, and click Create & Link

The product is created in your database and the device's ports are automatically saved as the product's connection metadata. The new product is immediately available on the Products page and for future "Add from Product" use.

Location Zones

Use zones to visually group devices by location:

• Click Add Zone to create a dashed boundary rectangle
• Drag zones to position them on the canvas
• Resize zones by dragging the edges
• Double-click to edit the zone label
• Zones help organize devices by room areas (e.g., "Conference Room", "Control Closet")

Output Formats

Export your schematics in multiple formats:

PDF Export

• Professional D-size (36" x 24") pages
• Multi-page support for complex systems
• Optional title block with company branding, attribution, and revision tracking
• Cable numbers displayed at wire endpoints (when enabled)
• Location zones rendered with dashed boundaries

Reach the Schematic Programmatically

Until now, the saved schematic only existed inside the editor — to use it anywhere else you had to open the project, export to PDF, download, and attach. Schematics are now retrievable from three places, the same way invoices and estimates already are:

In-app AVIP Assistant. On any project, say "Get the schematic for this project" or "Send the drawing to my client." AVIP Assistant retrieves it and replies with a viewer link you can paste anywhere.

External MCP clients. Claude Desktop, Cursor, your voice agent — anything that connects to the AVstackr MCP server — gets a get_schematic tool. Pass it a project id and it returns the same viewer link. See the MCP Server docs for connection setup.

REST API. Integrations and internal tools you build on top of AVStackr can fetch a schematic with one HTTP call — drop it into a generated proposal, attach to a hand-off email, or feed into a downstream workflow. See the Schematics API for the call shape.

All three surfaces return the same viewer link, valid for 30 days. The rendered schematic matches your editor's Export to PDF exactly — every title-block setting, every device, every connection. Re-fetch any time the project changes.

DXF Export

• Compatible with AutoCAD, Visio, and other CAD software
• Editable for further customization
• Professional presentation quality

Cable Schedule Excel Export

Download an Excel workbook that lists every wire and every numbered flag pair on the schematic, for cable scheduling, procurement and printing cable labels:

1. Open the schematic and click Export on the schematic toolbar.
2. Find the Cable Schedule card and click Download Excel.

The file is named after the project's job number followed by _CableSchedule.xlsx, or Schematic_CableSchedule.xlsx when the project has no job number. Characters that are not allowed in file names are removed from the job number.

On the free plan, each download uses one of your company's free exports, as a PDF download does. The number beside Download Excel shows how many are left, and when none are left an Upgrade required dialog opens instead of the download.

If the schematic has no wires, the page says "No connections to export. Create wire connections first.", nothing is downloaded and no free export is used. If the schematic cannot be read, a message that starts "Cable schedule export failed" appears above the cards and nothing is downloaded; on the free plan the attempt still uses a free export, because the export is counted before the schematic is read.

The workbook has three sheets:

• Cable Schedule — one row for each wire on the schematic, numbered or not, and one row for each flag pair. A flag pair is two flags that carry one cable from one sheet to another and share one cable number; a numbered flag without a partner gets no row, and neither do two linked flags that have no cable number. The columns are Page, Cable Number, Category, Part Number, Length (ft), From Device, From Room, From Location, From Port, To Device, To Room, To Location and To Port. Page is the sheet that the From device sits on. For a wire, From is the device the wire starts from and To is the device it goes to, and the two port columns name the type of each port, such as RCA. For a flag pair, From and To are the devices the two flags sit on, and the two port columns show each flag's label.
• Labels — two rows for each numbered cable, one for each end, in the same order as the Cable Schedule sheet: first the From end, then the To end. The columns are Cable Number, This Device, This Room, This Location, This Port, Far Device, Far Room, Far Location and Far Port. This is the end the label is fixed to, and Far is the other end of the same cable.
• Schema — how the cable numbers are built: the project name, the job number, when the file was made (in UTC), your company's pattern written as text, one line that explains each part of the pattern in order, the Sequence digits, and a table of the eleven cable categories with each one's code, start number, default part and how many numbered cables of that category the schematic has. The default part is the part number of the category's Default product, described on the Cable Numbers page, or its make and model when the product has no part number; it is empty when the category has no default product. A flag pair counts as one cable.

The rows are sorted by category, in the order the Cable Numbers page lists the eleven categories, then by each cable's running number within its category, then by page. A cable whose stored letter is not a registry letter, which happens only on older labels, comes after them and shows that letter as its category. Wires without a cable number come last.

On every sheet, the top row stays in view while you scroll and prints at the top of every printed page. Cable numbers, codes and part numbers are stored as text, so Excel keeps a leading zero, as in 0100.

The Labels sheet holds what the AVIXA cable labelling standard, ANSI/AVIXA F501.01, puts on the label at each end of a cable: the cable number as the label's main line and, as an optional second line, the two ends the cable joins. The standard also asks that the project's documents say how its cable numbers are built, which the Schema sheet records.

Where part, length and room come from

The Part Number and Length (ft) columns are read from the cables entered on the project in Project Details, and the room columns from the rooms the devices were placed from. These terms are used below:

• A cable type is an entry in your company's cable catalog, such as Cat6 Plenum, kept in Manage Cable Types as described below.
• An equipment line is a product row of a room in Project Details. Its Cables cell holds cable rows. Each cable row names a cable type and a number of runs and, when the cable is priced by foot, the length of each run in feet.
• A device's room is the room it was placed from in the ROOMS panel, or the room you linked it to with Link to room. A device in the UNLINKED group has no room.
• A device is on an equipment line when the device's room is the line's room and the device is the line's product or has the line's make and model.
• A wire's category is the category of its cable number, such as Network. A wire without a cable number uses the category it was drawn with, which its color shows. A flag pair uses the category of its cable number.
• A cable run is a cable row, on the equipment line of either of a wire's two devices, whose cable type has the wire's category. For a flag pair, the two devices are the ones its two flags sit on.

Each column is filled as follows:

• Part Number is the part number of the product set on the cable run's cable type, or the product's make and model when it has no part number. When the wire has no cable run, or the run's cable type has no product, the cell shows the category's Default product the same way. The default product is set on the Cable numbers panel, described on the Cable Numbers page. When neither is set, the cell is empty. Like cable numbers, part numbers are stored as text.
• Length (ft) is the length of each run on the cable run. A cable row priced by run, such as a pre-terminated cable, has no length, so the cell is empty. The cell is also empty when the wire has no cable run, because a default product gives a part number and no length.
• From Room and To Room on the Cable Schedule sheet, and This Room and Far Room on the Labels sheet, show the room of each device. The cell of a device with no room is empty.

When a wire has two or more cable runs, such as a Cat6 Plenum row and a Cat6 Riser row that both have the Network category, the schedule does not choose between them, and the wire's Part Number and Length (ft) cells are empty. Two identical cable rows on one equipment line count as one cable run. A device with no room is on no equipment line, so a wire finds no cable run at that device's end.

A cable type with no category is never a cable run. To set a cable type's category and product:

1. Open Global Config, under Admin in the navigation menu, and click Manage Cable Types in the Cable Configuration section.
2. Click Edit (the pencil) on the cable type's row.
3. In the Category list, choose the cable's category, such as Network for a Cat6 cable. Not set leaves the cable type without a category.
4. In the Product cell, type a make, model or part number, press Enter or click the search button, and click the product in the list. To change a product that is set, click the search button next to it first. Click ✕ next to the product to clear it.
5. Click Save (the check mark) on the row.

A line above the table counts the active cable types that have no category.

Location Tracking

The location columns, From Location and To Location on the Cable Schedule sheet and This Location and Far Location on the Labels sheet, show which zone each device is in. A zone is a labelled rectangle drawn on the canvas to mark an area, such as a room, as described under Location Zones above:

• Create Location Zones on the canvas to define areas (e.g., "Conference Room", "Control Closet")
• Position devices so their center point is within the zone boundary
• The zone label appears in the Location column for that device
• Devices not within any zone will have an empty Location field

Category in the Schedule

The Category column of the Cable Schedule sheet only shows a value when you've assigned a cable number:

1. Right-click on a wire connection
2. Select Assign Cable Type from the context menu
3. Choose a cable category:
   • A - Digital Audio (Dante, AES67)
   • M - Mic Level
   • L - Line Level
   • S - Speaker Level
   • V - Baseband Video (HDMI, DisplayPort, SDI)
   • N - Network/Ethernet
   • U - USB
   • C - Control (RS-232, GPIO)
   • R - RF/Coax
   • F - Fiber
   • P - Power
4. A cable number (e.g., A100, V101 under the default scheme; see Cable Numbers) is assigned and displayed on the wire
5. The category's name appears in the Category column of the Cable Schedule sheet. It comes from the category you chose, not from the cable number's first character, so a custom code such as HDMI, or a pattern that starts with the sheet or the room, still shows the right category

Batch Cable Type Assignment

Assign cable types to multiple wires at once:

1. Select multiple wires using Shift+click or marquee selection (click and drag over empty canvas)
2. Right-click any selected wire — the context menu shows how many wires are selected
3. Select Assign Cable Type and choose a category
4. All selected wires receive sequential cable numbers (e.g., A100, A101, A102 under the default scheme)

To remove cable numbers in batch, select the wires and choose Remove Cable Numbers from the context menu.

Signal Path Tracing

Visualize the complete signal chain through your system by highlighting connected wires in cyan:

From a Wire

1. Right-click any wire connection
2. Select Show Signal Path
3. The full signal chain is highlighted — tracing forward through destination devices and backward through source devices
4. Right-click the wire again and select Hide Signal Path to clear, or click on empty canvas

From a Port Tag

1. Right-click a port tag
2. Select Show Signal Path
3. The signal path traces through the device's internal routes to find connected wires on the other side, then follows the full chain

Pinning a Signal Path

By default, signal path highlights clear when you click on empty canvas or press Escape. To keep the highlight visible while you work:

1. Show a signal path from a wire or tag
2. Right-click the wire or tag again and select Pin Signal Path
3. The highlight stays visible regardless of clicks or keyboard shortcuts
4. Select Unpin Signal Path to restore normal clearing behavior

Internal Signal Routes

Signal path tracing follows internal routes configured within devices. To configure how inputs map to outputs inside a device:

1. Right-click a device and select Edit Signal Routes
2. A draggable panel opens showing an input/output matrix
3. Check boxes to indicate which input ports route to which output ports
4. Changes apply immediately — if a signal path is pinned, the highlight updates in real time as you toggle routes

Multi-Page Support

For complex systems with many devices:

• Use the Page controls in the toolbar to add or remove pages
• Each page is a D-size sheet (36" x 24")
• Drag devices to position them on different pages
• Wire connections between pages are not supported - keep connected devices on the same page
• PDF export generates one PDF page per canvas page