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I'm planning a switch from the spaghetti wiring of my current networking rack to an organized cut-to-length system. I'd really like to plan ahead as much as possible. The best way I can imagine doing this is to map all the connections virtually first. In the image below you can see my attempt to do just that with Visio 2010. Unfortunately the connector tool in Visio doesn't seem capable of handling this because it always finds the shortest path between two points.

Are there free or low-cost tools available to do this?

enter image description here

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Anytime I've ever seen maps, they have been spreadsheets with port numbers. Each row is a cable path and each column is a switch/patch panel/wall plate/etc. Just make sure that you use something like a ptouch machine to label everything. Each cable should also be flagged with the port it goes into on both ends with a to/from model (only covers the points it touches, not the whole path). –  MaQleod Oct 12 '11 at 16:54
Do you have a suggestion on handling length? I suspect that with things mapped out in Excel the tech would be measuring and cutting each cable as he plugs them in rather than doing it ahead of time. I have a limited amount of time to redo my networking rack and I am hoping to visualize/plan the cable lengths ahead of time too. Thoughts? –  idon'twearsuits Oct 12 '11 at 17:04
You typically want to cut to length as you are making the cables. You can certainly have a number of pre-cut cables that are all the about same length for a switch to patch-panel project and then cut down to exact length (plus a small service loop) when the cables are actually being terminated. –  MaQleod Oct 12 '11 at 17:15
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