The I/O Studio is where you can edit the inputs and outputs for multiple products at a time in your catalog or within a project. Inputs and outputs added to a product will be displayed in the Schematic shapes and blocks in our Visio and AutoCAD interfaces.

To open the I/O Studio interface for multiple products, select the products in the Product Explorer and click the I/Os button on the ribbon.

When multiple products are opened in the I/O Studio, they will be listed on the left side and will display on their own tabs on the right side of the interface when double-clicked.

If you are within the Project Editor interface, the component IDs for the products will be displayed next to them.

I/O consists of three parts: Terminal, Signal, and Label. There is also a numbered column referred to as the Port ID that references the I/Os position in the list.

There are buttons along the top of the interface for adding, editing, and deleting the I/Os for a product.

There are multiple ways you can add I/Os to a product within this interface. One method is to use the dropdown menus in each cell to select from your existing lists of terminals, signals, and labels.

The dropdown lists for terminals, signals, and labels are managed in your global I/O list.

You can also type directly in the fields, and you will be prompted to add any new terminals, signals, and labels to your global lists.

Another option is the New button, which will open a dialog for you to add multiple I/Os at a time.

The "Auto increment label, if quantity is greater than 1" option is useful when adding multiple of the same I/O to a product.

You can also select one or multiple existing I/Os for a product and click the Clone button. This will clone the selected I/Os to the bottom of the list.

The Cut, Copy, and Paste functions allow one or multiple I/Os to be cut and copied from one product and pasted to another product's I/Os.

Similarly, you can use the Copy To dropdown to copy selected I/Os to other products.

And yet another option for adding I/Os to products is to use saved configurations.

You can insert a blank port if you want some separation between the I/Os in your lists.

There are Move Up and Move Down buttons that allow you to position the I/Os to your preference. This is often useful on a per-project basis when doing Schematic drawings to avoid wires crossing over each other. I/Os can also be dragged and dropped to the desired position.

There is a Mass Update feature that allows you to update the terminals or signals for multiple I/Os at one time.

You can select common I/Os on a product and choose to save them as a configuration.

The Configurations tab at the bottom left of the I/O Studio interface lists your saved I/O configurations.

You can drag and drop configurations over to either the Inputs or Outputs columns. To select multiple products, hold down Shift (to select a series) or Ctrl (to select outside of a series) on your keyboard.

The Configurations tab also has the option to auto-increment the label if the quantity is greater than 1 and allows you to choose your starting number.

The Add Ports To button will add the quantity of the selected configurations to inputs, outputs, or both.

You can also open the I/O Studio within the Project Editor and work with product I/Os using all the functionality described above.

There is a Project setting to determine whether or not to update the products in your catalog with the changes made within the project.