Skip to main content

I've created a Lucidchart file containing diagrams of my technology setups. One page view--which is what I think that Lucidchart calls what in the web browser world would be called a 'tab'--is for a diagram of an equipment rack (one of those racks that are often used to house multiple blade servers but in my case I'd use it to house my home theater equipment). I found a 'shape' of a server rack where each insert in that rack is 1U. In the world of technology racks 1U = 1.75" height. This means that equipment that is designed to be installed in a rack and advertises itself as '1U' is no more than 1.75" tall and therefore will fit into a 1U (1.75" tall) slot. Equipment that advertises itself as 2U requires 2 of those slots meaning that it is no more than 3.5" tall.


In this diagram I want to draw lines between pieces of equipment in order to show wired connections in order to help me understand how everything will connect to everything else in order to make cable management easier.


To the left side of that rack diagram I've placed a measurement object--oriented vertically--that should show that rack's real world height. I've also placed a measurement object--oriented horizontally--above the rack and it should show the rack's real world width. For some reason these measurement objects are not showing the rack's height and width accurately. Some real equipment racks are 19" wide and others are 23" wide and I'm unsure whether the rack object is supposed to represent a 19" wide rack or a 23" wide one. Regardless the measurement object above it is reporting the rack to be ~ 4 feet wide and that is obviously inaccurate. How can I fix this inaccuracy?


I tried changing the page view's scale to 1:1 and making the rack object bigger by entering a real world rack's horizontal and vertical dimensions but Lucidchart does not allow me to make the object bigger horizontally and when I try to make it bigger vertically its legs get longer but the size of each 1U unit remains too small (a fraction of a 1U unit's real world 1.75" height instead of 1.75" high) and the number of inaccurately-sized units increases.


Getting more broad for a second I'm frustrated that it is difficult to make Lucidchart work with the REAL WORLD size of objects instead of the size of the objects that represent them. For example I *should* be able to tell Lucidchart that the equipment rack is for example 6' tall and 19" wide and that the size of the paper that I'd print the diagram on is 8.5" by 11" and Lucidchart should automatically scale the rack object to make it fit on that paper. Instead in 'object properties' the length and width of the *drawing* of the rack are given not the length and width of the actual rack.


I don't understand why we need to mess around with the size of the *representative* object in the diagram instead of simply entering the length and width of the real object and then entering the scale or having Lucidchart calculate it automatically.

Hi Drew thank you for posting in the community and for taking the time to write such valuable feedback. Apologies for the frustration you've experienced while creating your equipment rack diagram. I'd be glad to help! 


Regarding your specific questions: would you please respond with a screenshot of your server rack objects alongside your measurement object so that I can better understand the inaccuracy you're describing? Could you also please let me know how you're creating your measurement object in the first place? Are you setting it using the ruler tool according to the length of the page and then establishing your scale separately? Finally you mentioned difficulty with resizing the server rack objects. Can you please clarify what you mean when you say you tried "making the rack object bigger by entering a real world rack's horizontal and vertical dimensions"? Are you manually resizing the rack or typing in a measurement in the Shape Options menu? Understanding what object you're specifically using here would be helpful!


 


Regarding your more general feedback - thanks for providing such great detail here! Unfortunately this sort of functionality - automatically scaling your objects or performing calculations to determine scale or real-life object size - isn't currently supported in Lucidchart. However I certainly understand how that would be beneficial to your use case. If you're willing to share our development team would highly value your feedback via this feature request form. Ideas submitted here are considered when prioritizing improvements to Lucidchart. Thanks for your request and apologies for the inconvenience. Let me know if you have additional questions about this!


Reply