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Representing Furniture, Equipment, and Telecom Devices in CAD

Note: If you are developing equipment and using Revit, see Equipment Elements (Revit)

Method 1: Populate CAD Drawings

When you create furniture and equipment items in the Asset Registration Console or create equipment and telecom devices with the Telecom Console, you will be adding these items to the database. If you want the items to appear in your furniture, telecom, or equipment CAD plans, you will need to represent them in CAD and link them to the existing records.

Since the records already exist in the database, you can represent the items in floor plan drawings using the Archibus population command, which adds the corresponding block to the drawing and links the block to the record to form an asset symbol. Population uses an item's standard (such as Equipment Standard or Patch Panel Standard) to determine the block to add to the drawing, Therefore, be sure that the standard fields are defined for the furniture, equipment, and telecom items that you create using the Telecom Console or the Asset Registration Console.

Procedure

Follow this general procedure to represent your furniture, equipment, and telecom devices in CAD.

  1. In Archibus Smart Client, move to the Equipment, Tagged Furniture, Furniture processes under Assets or Enterprise Assets applications. Choose one of the following tasks, which will prompt you to select a floor plan drawing. The commands will then launch your drawing tool and set to the appropriate layer for developing the item at hand.
    • Draw Equipment
    • Draw Jacks
    • Draw Faceplates
    • Draw Patch Panels
    • Draw Furniture
    • Draw Tagged Furniture
  2. Alternatively, you can go directly to your CAD tool, move to the Assets or Enterprise Assets section of the Navigator, and set to the appropriate asset layer using one of these commands:
    • Set Equipment
    • Set Jacks
    • Set Faceplates
    • Set Patch Panels
    • Set Tagged Furniture
    • Set Furniture Standards
  3. Run the appropriate task for the selected layer:
    • Populate Equipment to Rooms
    • Populate Jacks to Rooms
    • Populate Faceplates to Rooms
    • Populate Patch Panels to Rooms
    • Populate Tagged Furniture to Rooms
    • Populate Furniture Standards to Rooms

    You will be prompted to select the rooms you want to update.

    Based on the database information, the system adds the blocks to the selected rooms, convert them to asset symbols, and connect them to the existing records. Once the system generates the asset symbols, you will want to position your asset symbols within the room boundaries to represent the items' physical location in the actual rooms.

  4. So that your plans can be viewed using Archibus Web Central, run the Publish Enterprise Graphics command (located on the CAD Navigator for your convenience) to publish your drawing as an Archibus Enterprise Graphic file.

For more information, see Creating Asset Symbols by Populating.

Method 2: Create Asset Symbols by Starting in CAD

The above procedure, which uses the population method to create asset symbols, assumes that the records already exist in the database.

As another approach, you can develop you furniture, telecom, and equipment inventory in CAD, which will create telecom, furniture, and equipment records. In this case, you can use the forms of the Telecom Console and Asset Registration Console to edit the values or complete additional fields not available from the CAD interface.

For information on starting in CAD, see:

  • So that your plans can be viewed using Archibus Web Central, run the Publish Enterprise Graphics command (located on the CAD Navigator for your convenience) to publish your drawing as an Archibus Enterprise Graphic file.