Cable Routing¶

Cable routing connects NetBox's native dcim.Cable objects to the physical pathways they traverse. This is the core integration point between NetBox's device/cable inventory and Pathways' physical infrastructure documentation.

Cable Segments¶

A Cable Segment represents one section of a cable's physical route through a single pathway. A cable's complete route is an ordered sequence of segments.

Aerial Overlashing¶

In aerial plant, a fiber cable is sometimes mechanically lashed onto another cable rather than carrying its own support strand. Over time, an aerial span can accumulate a stack of cables all wrapped together by the same lash wire -- one cable installed, then a second lashed onto it, then a third onto that, and so on. From a load-and-handling perspective, all cables in that wrap share the same lashing.

The plugin captures this with Lashed With: a symmetric ManyToManyField between CableSegment instances. Adding a peer to one segment automatically adds this segment to the peer's lashed_with set -- there is no "host" or "guest" distinction. Each segment in the bundle is equally lashed with every other.

Lashing is per-segment, not per-cable, because a cable can be partly overlashed (aerial segments) and partly not (underground segments along the same route).

Note: lashed_with is pairwise symmetric, not transitive. If A is lashed with B and B is lashed with C, that does not automatically mean A is lashed with C -- the user must add each pair explicitly. The form's multi-select makes this fast: when adding a new cable segment to an existing bundle of N peers, select all N at once. A future enhancement could introduce a LashingBundle model to capture group identity directly; for now, the bundle is implicit in the graph.

To find every cable a given segment is lashed with: segment.lashed_cables (a @property returning a Cable queryset of every peer segment's cable).

If a peer cable is not modeled in NetBox (foreign plant, e.g. another carrier's cable), leave that peer out and record the relationship in the segment's comments.

Example Route¶

A cable running from Building A to Building B might have this route:

Conduit Banks¶

Conduit banks organize the conduit openings on a structure. This is essential for field documentation — crews need to know exactly which opening to use.

Bank Configuration¶

Bank Positions¶

Conduits assigned to a bank get a Bank Position using a grid notation:

• Row letter + column number: A1, A2, B1, B2, etc.
• Row A is the top row, column 1 is the leftmost
• Each position in a bank is unique

Encasement Types¶

Conduit Junctions¶

A conduit junction models a Y-tee where a branch conduit connects to a trunk conduit at a point along its span. Conduit endpoints can reference junctions instead of structures, enabling mid-span branching.

Key attributes:

• Trunk Conduit — The main conduit
• Branch Conduit — The branching conduit
• Towards Structure — Which end of the trunk the junction faces
• Position on Trunk — Normalized value (0.0 = start, 1.0 = end)

Creating Cable Segments¶

1. Navigate to Plugins > Pathways > Cable Segments
2. Click Add
3. Select the Cable and Pathway
4. Set the Sequence number (determines route order)
5. Optionally set enter/exit points and slack details
6. Save and add more segments for the full route

Pull Sheets¶

Once cable segments are configured, the system can generate pull sheets — field documents showing the complete cable route. See Pull Sheets for details.