Open topic with navigation

System Administration / ARCHIBUS Administrator - Application Configuration

Enabling Multiple Units for Area Fields

If your site develops drawings in both meters and feet, some users might need to see either of these area fields displayed. For example, CAD Managers need views that show them both Metric and Imperial areas as they check and correlate data from drawings, some of which are drawn in sqft and some in sqM. In this case, your ARCHIBUS Administrator for Application Configuration would enable the application to show area fields in both square meters (m2) or square feet (ft2) by setting the AbCommonResources-ConvertAreaAndLengthToUserUnits application parameter to "True."

If your site uses a single unit for area fields, you do not need to enable multiple units for area fields. In this case, all areas are stored in ft/square feet. or meters/square meters, and these area values are shown to all users without any need to convert them. Drawings are shown in square feet or square meters depending on the setting for the schema preference set for your project.

If your site uses the multiple units feature, by default, all area/length field values are displayed in the User Display Units of Measure.

When multiple units for area fields are enabled:

• The area or length unit of measure is shown when the area is shown in views and reports. For example, Total Area would be 580 ft2, rather than just 580.
• The application converts values from the Base Units (the storage units) to the User Display Units in views and reports shown to the user.

How the Program Stores and Converts Area Fields

Area and length fields are always stored in the database as Base Units - either square feet (ft2) or Square Meters (m2). Your Add-In Manager defines your Base Units per project using the schema preference, afm_scmpref.units.

Additionally, users have a per-user display unit that is based on the User Display Unit of Measure field entered in their User Profile.

If your site develops drawings using different area units and the user's units are different than the Base Units, the area fields are converted from the Base Units to the User Display Unit of Measure when the user accesses views that include area fields. In this case, your administrator must enable multiple units.

The System Management Help provides information on implementing the multiple units feature. These topics are found on the System Management Help's Table of Contents at the following location:

• Add-In Manager / User Interface Extensions / Multiple Units / Working with Multiple Units

Converting Drawings Between Metric and Imperial Projects

If you change a project’s Base Units after cataloging drawings, you must recatalog the drawings. You can only have one Base Units setting per project.

1. Decide whether the project’s areas should be reported in square feet or square meters and use the New Project command to set the Units option to Metric or Imperial.

If you wish to have square feet (even though your drawings may be drawn in centimeters), set your project’s Units setting to Imperial. If you wish to have square meters, set your project’s units to Metric.

Note: You can have some drawings drawn with a base unit of inches, others drawn with a base unit of meters, and still others drawn with a base unit of centimeters all in the same project. However, ARCHIBUS will always report your areas in either square feet or square meters, depending on the project’s Units setting. If you do change a drawing’s base units after you have already cataloged its areas, you must scale the drawing accordingly and recatalog the assets. If you change the project’s Units setting while the project is open, you must re-open the project to have the setting take effect.

2. Scale any drawings whose base units are changing. Use the table at the end of this topic to determine the scale factor to use.

Use the System / Schema / Control / Drawings task to change each drawing’s Units and Base Metric Units settings in the ARCHIBUS Drawings table according to the base units used in the drawings themselves.

For example, if a drawing is drawn in inches, set the Units field to Imperial; the Base Metric field has no effect. If a drawing is drawn in meters, Units should be Metric and Base Metric Units should be Meters.

3. Recatalog all drawings whose units have changed by running the Catalog command.

Conversion Table

Use the following table to determine the appropriate scale factor.

If your site has enabled multiple units, by default, area fields are shown in the User Display Units. If the User Display Units are different from the Base Units, the User Units must be converted to Converted (Opposite) units. For example, if User Units are feet and Base Units are meters, then Converted Units are meters. These converted field values are stored as Converted (Opposite) Units - OppositeArea or OppositeLength.

Base Units: units of area/length specified per project in the ARCHIBUS schema preferences table. Field values are always stored in the database in Base Units.

User-Display Units: per-user display units of area/length, based on the user’s locale. Field values require conversion to be displayed in User Units, if User Units is different from Base Units. If a site uses the multiple units feature, all area/length field values are displayed in User Units by default.

Converted (Opposite) Units: units of area/length that are opposite from User Units. For example, if User Units is feet, then Converted Units is meters. Field values require conversion to be displayed in Converted Units.

Enabling Multi-unit

Enable multiple units per project using the AbCommonResources-ConvertAreasLengthsToUserUnits application parameter. When it is set to false, views and reports display area and length fields as in pre-v20. When it is set to true, views and reports:

• Display area/length field titles with units. E.g. "Area ft²" instead of "Area".
• Convert field values from Base Units (i.e. the storage units) to User-Display Units.

Fields affected by this feature include:

• Database fields that have the Numeric Format property of Area or Length in the schema (e.g. bl.area_avg_em).
• Formula-based virtual fields such as Sum or Count that use the base field that has the Numeric Format property of Area or Length in the schema.
• Virtual fields that use SQL have no numeric format defined in the schema. You must tag these fields with the Numeric Format property of Area, Length in the view file.

Setting Base Units for the Project

Define the Base Units per project using afm_scmpref.units (Base Units) schema preference. The supported values are:

imperial: Web Central will use Imperial Base Units.

metric: Web Central will use Metric Base Units.

perLocale: Web Central will determine units based on the server operating system locale, and save the resulting Metric or Imperial value into the afm_scmpref.units field.

Setting User Display Units for the User

Users define their User Display Units using the My Profile form. The preference is stored in the afm_users.display_units field.

The default value of the afm_users.display_units field is perLocale. The Web Central program handles this as follows:

• If the user locale is en_US, use Imperial units.
• Otherwise use Metric units.

You can choose the units type for area/length fields:

• A field that shows values in Base Units. This is the default field presentation in projects that do not use multiple units.
• A field that shows values in User Units. This is the typical field presentation for most views in projects that do use multiple units. If the User Display Units and Base Units are different for the user, the view converts the field value from Base Units to User Display Units.
• A field that shows values in Opposite Units. This is the presentation used for CAD Managers and planners’ views on sites that do use multiple units.