New in H2R Gear v2.12

Cables that find their own way

Cables are the part of a plan that gets messy fastest. Add a few more items, move a rack across the canvas, and suddenly you are dragging pins around to keep everything readable.

Version 2.12 introduces a rewritten cable engine that does that work for you. It is in beta, so it is opt-in per plan: open Options → Cables and turn on Try new cable routing.

Your existing plans are untouched. Switch it on to try it, switch it back off if you prefer the old behaviour, and nothing is lost either way.

Routes that avoid your gear

The biggest change: cables now bend around the items on your plan instead of running straight through them.

A cable from one side of the plan to the other will find its way past the racks, screens and monitors in between, so the drawing matches how the run would actually be pulled.

Cables keep out of each other’s way

When several cables share the same corridor, they are nudged into their own lanes rather than stacking on top of one another.

Busy sections of a plan stay legible, and you can follow any single cable from end to end. Where routes do have to cross, the cable bumps introduced in v2.10 still show you which one passes over.

Adjust any cable by hand

Automatic routing gets you most of the way, but you know your plan best.

Select a cable and drag the handle on any straight run to shift it, the same gesture you will know from draw.io or Visio. The original route stays on screen while you drag, so you can see exactly what you are changing. Your adjustments are saved with the plan, so they are still there next time you open it.

Cable shortcuts

Select a cable and press a key:

• Delete the selected cable - D
• Add or remove a cable label - L
• Hide or show the cable route - H (Left-to-Right plans)

All of these are listed in the keyboard shortcuts panel alongside the existing hotkeys.

Cable legend in exports

The cable legend is now a proper export option. Use the Show cable legend toggle in the export dialog to decide whether it appears.

Previously the legend was forced into every export regardless of your setting, which was not what anyone asked for.

Fixes and polish

A solid list of fixes ships with this release:

• Copy and paste now brings the cables with it, so pasting a group of items also duplicates the cables connecting them.
• Pasted items are selected automatically, ready to drag straight into place.
• Snapping snaps to the grid. Dragging an item lands it on the grid itself, rather than offset from wherever the item happened to start.
• Dragging tracks the cursor properly, so items and cable handles stay under the pointer.
• No more phantom clicks: clicks occasionally registered at impossible positions on the canvas.
• Automatic routes give items a slightly wider berth.
• Hidden cable labels sit on the correct side of the item they belong to.
• The options panel is roomier, so longer settings descriptions no longer stretch it across the canvas.

Try it out

Open a plan, head to Options → Cables, and turn on Try new cable routing. Move a rack across the canvas and watch the routes redraw themselves around it.

It is a beta, so if something looks wrong we want to hear about it. For more on working with cables, see the cables documentation.

For the full list of changes, head to the changelog.