The ability to assign the type of drop to each tap port has been instituted in version 11.00 of The Lode Data Design Assistant. This new feature was created to meet customer requirements for using Tap Ports to designate Drop Types as an alternative to the MDU Window. With this comes a way to designate count types and drops without using the MDU window. The new count option is independent of the existing MDU Window. The two do not interact.

For a full review and usage of the new Drop Count Types feature please see our documentaiton article: Tap Port Drop Types

In version 10.50 of The Design Assistant we’ve added a TSG column to the Design, Active Entry, Entry modes. This will allow the user to specify the TSG to be used for each tap on a given line/node of the program. Thus eliminating the need to lock down taps at each node.

The TSG dropdown will be used to determine what tap selection group will be used when no value is defined in the TSG column.

Creating a Tap Selection Group

To create a Tap Selection Group open the tap specs from the Spec Edit menu. You can create a group by leaving a blank line between the tap groups. In our step by step example below we will use our Lode.tap sample specs. For the sake of simplicity we will copy our existing values to a new group (2) below the originals.

Select Spec Edit -> Taps

Let’s add a new group by leaving a blank line on row 9. We’ll start with our next TSG on row 10.

Create a new TSG

Create a new TSG by inputting Tap IDs and part numbers after a blank row.

Notice that I’ve given that Tap ID a unique value to easily identify the TSG and tap value from the Design Mode. I’ve copied and pasted the value from TSG 1 for simplicity, but I’ve also added OLD to the part number.

The Tap Selection Group column on the right will not update with the new TSG 2 until we have saved or hit Load.

Now that we have 2 tap selection groups we can add our loss values. We will use our 2 port taps as an example.

Create loss values

Move to the 2 Port Taps tab.

Here we will input our loss values, insertion losses, self-term, etc. Again, for simplicity we just copied our values from TSG 1.

Use TSG in Design

Now that we have 2 Tap Selection Groups we can specify which group to use in The Design Assistant.

Here is our original network:

We’ve added a TSG column to the Design Mode indicated by the red arrow .

We can manually enter which TSG a tap should use by placing a value in the TSG column. If the TSG has a value of 0 (blank) then the program will use the TSG assigned from the TSG drop down (red checkmark ✓).

We’ve used TSG 2 on lines 8 & 9. When using 6 - WillWk the program will automatically use the TSG 2 values for calculations. Looking at the tap column we can see the tap value is 226/ so we can quickly see the tap value is TSG 2 with a value of 26.

On line 10 we’ve specified a TSG of 1. It won’t make a difference in this scenario since our TSG dropdown menu is set to group 1. If we were to change the TSG dropdown menu to a different group line 10 would still use a TSG 1. It’s a good idea to set the values to avoid accidently changing the TSG.

All other lines in this network are set to 0 (blank). This means the TSG dropdown is the determining setting for tap groups. Changing the TSG dropdown to group 3 for example will use TSG 3 at all lines with a 0 (blank) value in the TSG column.

Summary

Using the new features of Tap Selection Groups will allow our users to specify a TSG line by line in the Design Assistant, thus; eliminating the need to lock each node down.

It is good practice to either use TSG 1 as the default group so that you can leave the TSG blank(0) or to manually key in the TSG for each line.

Please contact Lode Data Support if you have any questions on using Tap Selection Groups.

Setup

• Open Tap Spec file (Spec Edit –> Taps)
• Find the last TAP ID on the Tap IDs/Part Numbers tab
• Leave a blank line after the last used TAP ID
• Immediately after the blank line enter a new TAP ID
• Continue entering all TAP IDs and other specs for the new tap selection group
• Save the Tap Spec file
• Hit LOAD

The next time you open the Tap Spec file the new tap selection group will be displayed.

Usage

To use the Tap Selection Group (TSG), select the group from the dropdown menu at the top of the window. Will Work (6) will now select taps from the selected group.

!!LOCK ANY EXISTING TAPS YOU DO NOT WANT TO CHANGE!!

Use “Show Tips” (View –> Show Tips) to view Part Numbers on Design screen to identify which group existing taps belong to.

First move all the specs to one folder location.

Next change the default project load setting to load specs automatically from last save

Next create a Design Assistant Project (DAP) file that points to the directory where your specs are saved.

Open a network that matches the current DAP loaded. Next open a network that was last saved with a different set of specs.