Gear Config

The Gear Config Pane will display the selected gear’s port details and has a button to view all details at the top right.

Port Groups

GearConnect will automatically create port group labels based on all the port data, as defined in Gear Port Options. These port groups are then used to organize the ports in the Gear Config Pane and the full details table.

Ports are grouped by combining their properties:

• Category
• Connector
• Fiber type
• Direction
• Signal type
• Signal flow
• Speed
• Is expansion port
  • Expansion card model*
  • Expansion card index*

Note

* Only applicable to ports that have an expansion card.

These attributes are merged to create group names using this structure:

<Category> (<Connector><Signal Type><Direction>) – <Speed>

Additionally, when Group Expansion Ports is enabled, expansion ports will further be grouped using:

<Expansion Card Model> (<Expansion Card Index>)

Any ports that do not have a value for a specific attribute will simply be omitted from the group name.

If the connector is the same as the signal type (for example HDMI) then the connector will be omitted from the group name.

For example:

• Network (etherCON) – 1 Gbps
• Video (Mini BNC SDI Out)

If you change any of the port options using something like Full Edit Mode (Pro feature), then the ports will be re-generated based on their new configuration. Because of this, you will see ports move around and change groups.

Expansion Cards

For Detail Mode gear that has expansion cards, and the gear item has Group Expansion Ports enabled, the ports will be sorted into Expansion Card tables at the bottom of the Gear Config Pane. This will group the ports by their expansion card, and then by their port group as described above.

For example, if you have an expansion card that has 4 HDMI ports and 4 DisplayPort ports, you will see two tables at the bottom of the Gear Config Pane. The orange title for both will be the expansion card model and index ( e.g. “Expansion Card (1)”). The blue title will be the port group name (e.g. “Video (HDMI Out)”) like normal.

The second table will have the same orange title (“Expansion Card (1)”) but the blue title will be different (“Video (DisplayPort Out)”). This indicates that both of these tables are part of the same expansion card but have different port groups.

If Group Expansion Ports is disabled or the gear item does not have expansion cards, instead the ports will be grouped together, ignoring the expansion card details. In the above example, the 4 HDMI and 4 DisplayPort ports would join any other ports on the gear item or other expansion cards in one HDMI out and one DisplayPort out table.

Compact Mode

When the port groups are shown in the Gear Config Pane, they are in compact mode. This just shows:

• Sort Order
• Connected Gear

You can edit the sort order by clicking on the number. This will sort the port within the port group so that all ports of the same type are together in the drawing. This is also why you will see each port group usually defaults to starting from 1 each time.

View All Details

By clicking on the View All Details button at the top right of the pane, a dialog will open showing all of the port details for the selected gear item, with further information about each port.

Information shown by default:

• Sort Order
• Visibility
• Label
• IP Address (network ports only, applicable to all gear except for Switches)
• Subnet (network ports only, applicable to all gear except for Switches)
• Connected Gear

Sort order and connected gear are the same as in when the tables are in compact mode.

Visibility is a toggle to show or hide the port in the drawing. This is useful for when you are done adding connections to a gear item and no longer need to see the rest of the ports.

Tip

You can’t hide a port if it has a connection to another port on it. You can use this to your advantage by using the select all checkbox on the left, and clicking Hide selected ports in the toolbar. Only the ports that are not connected will be hidden. This is a great way to quickly clean up your drawing.

Toolbar

There is a toolbar at the top of the dialog with the following options:

• Show selected ports: Will show all the ports that are currently selected in the table.
• Hide selected ports: Will hide all the ports that are currently selected in the table.
• Full Edit Mode: Will enable Full Edit Mode (Pro feature) to allow full editing abilities of all port options.

Full Edit Mode (Pro feature)

You can toggle Full Edit Mode by clicking on the Full Edit Mode button in the toolbar. This will allow you to edit all the port options for the selected gear item. When this mode is disabled, you will only see options that have configuration options, as defined in the library item, using Multi-Mode. You can learn more about Multi-Mode at Library Port Options and you can learn more about the various port options at Gear Port Options.

If you edit any of the port options with an active connection, you will be prompted to remove the connection before you can save the changes. This is to ensure that you don’t accidentally change the port configuration to a connection that would not validate correctly.