Rack plans

A rack plan lays out equipment cabinets the way an installer will actually build them: every device in its rack-unit (U) slot, front to back, top to bottom. Avitly stops you from placing two things in the same space and can find the next open slot for you.

Before you start

Products drag in fastest when they already have a rack height (in U) and slot width set in your catalog. If a product does not have a rack height yet, Avitly asks you to set one the first time you drag it into a rack.

Add a rack

1. Open a project's rack plans and choose Add rack.
2. Name it, set its height in U (1 to 300, 42U by default), and pick its width, 19 inch or 10 inch.
3. If your organisation has saved rack templates, Add rack becomes a split button: pick a template to start from a pre-built cabinet instead of an empty one.

Place equipment

1. Drag a product from the catalog panel onto an open row in the rack.
2. Set its slot width: full, half, third, or quarter. A half-width item shares its row with one other half-width item, a quarter-width item with up to three others, and so on.
3. Drag an item to move it, or duplicate and paste an item to place a copy, which Avitly drops into the first open slot it finds scanning down from the top of the rack.

Collision detection

Avitly blocks a placement that would overlap an existing item, with one exception: two single-U items of the same slot width can share a row, side by side, up to that width's capacity (2 for half, 3 for third, 4 for quarter). Anything else that overlaps, a full-width item over another item, two items of different heights, or two of different slot widths, is refused with a message that the item does not fit there.

Save and reuse

Save any rack as a template from its context menu. A template captures the cabinet's height, width, and every item in it, and shows up under Templates for any project to drop into a new plan. See Rack & wiring templates for the full workflow.

Tips

• Rack height is capped at 300U and floored at 1U; anything you type outside that range is clamped automatically.
• A rack's depth (in mm) is tracked alongside its height and width, so cabinet depth checks are available even though the elevation view itself is a front-on drawing.
• Renaming or resizing a rack does not move the equipment already in it; only adding or moving an item re-checks for collisions.

See also Floor plans and Rack & wiring templates.