Connections
Two modules joined by a wire are joined by something physical — a connector you can unplug, a fusion splice, a soldered joint. Quickdraw draws it.
What you see
By default every wire carries one connector at mid-run: a small square divided by a vertical line, drawn over the wire so it interrupts it rather than sitting on top.
That default is deliberate. A join always exists physically, so silence would be the wrong answer — but it does mean a diagram drawn in an older version gains a mark on every wire the first time you open it in a newer one. Nothing in your file changed; the default did.
The three kinds
| Mark | Kind | Means |
|---|---|---|
| Divided square | Connector | A separable join — FC/APC, SMA, BNC, a bulkhead, a mated pair |
| Filled diamond | Fusion splice | Permanent, fibre |
| Filled dot | Soldered joint | Permanent, electrical |
One icon covers every kind of connector because the detail text is what says which one it is. That keeps the drawing readable at figure size, where a family of near-identical glyphs would not be.
Adding and changing one
Right-click a wire where you want the join and choose Add connection here, then the kind. It is placed where you clicked and stays there when the wire re-routes — its position is stored as a fraction along the route, not as a coordinate on the page.
A wire can carry up to four. Clear connections on the same menu removes them.
Select the wire and the properties panel gives you, per connection, its kind, its detail text and its loss — each with a reset back to the default.
Detail text
A connection with no detail of its own shows the wire’s own connector link parameter.
Set the wire’s connector to FC/APC once and both the drawing and the exported
patch list say FC/APC, because they are reading the same
field. They cannot drift apart.
Insertion loss
Every kind carries a realistic default — roughly 0.3 dB for a connector, 0.02 dB for a fusion splice, nothing for a soldered joint. Three levels, each overriding the one below:
- the connection’s own loss, if you typed one,
- this document’s default for that kind,
- the built-in default.
So a number you measured survives a change to the document’s defaults, and a default you never typed is still a real number rather than a zero. A join you have not characterised still costs what a join of that kind costs.
Hiding them for a figure
Deselect everything, and in the properties panel turn off Show connections.
This is a document setting, not a view preference, and that distinction is the point: it reaches the export. A conceptual block diagram for a talk and a build sheet for the bench are then the same file, exported twice. Hiding is a drawing decision and nothing more — the connections stay in the file, the patch list still lists them, and their loss stays real. A figure that does not show its joins still has them.