Creating Assets: Overview

Asset symbols are the means of binding together drawings and databases. An asset symbol is an item in a drawing that is linked to a database record, providing you with alphanumeric and graphical formats of an item in your facility. Many different types of facility information can be tracked with asset symbols, including:.

a floor's gross areas, vertical penetration areas, and service areas
suite boundaries, departmental (group) boundaries, and room boundaries
furniture items, equipment items, and telecom devices

Use the following table as a guide when creating asset symbols:

	Step	Description	To Learn More
1.	Set the drawing's current layer to the appropriate asset layer using one of the Process Navigator tasks in the CAD tool, such as: Set Rooms Set Jacks	These commands set the asset type for any asset symbols created on this layer and open the asset type's default view, which activates the view's layer template.	See About Asset Layer Series.
2.	Add polylines and blocks to the prototype layer.using: AutoCAD's block and polyline commands and editing features If you want to add an entity based on an existing standard, use the Asset Graphic/Insert Asset command. If you want to add an entity based on an asset symbol in the drawing that has a particular standard, you can copy the existing asset symbol to create a new one. This copies the standard information, but does not assign a primary key.	This step creates the drawing entity.	See Creating New Asset Symbols by Copying.
3.	Convert the drawing item to an asset symbol, using one of the following commands on the Ribbon: ARCHIBUS/Asset/Edit Data ARCHIBUS/Asset/Edit Data Multiple ARCHIBUS/Asset/Number	If you have created the drawing entity by asset inserting, standard information has been added to the drawing entity giving it some intelligence. However, it is still necessary to use these commands to assign primary key

What Happens When You Create an Asset

When you process the ARCHIBUS Edit Data and Number commands, the drawing tools catalog the item to create an asset symbol. This entails:

Passing the provided values to the database server program so the database server program can generate a record in the appropriate asset table.
Moving the drawing entity from the prototype layer to the asset symbol layer.
Registering the record's primary key, table name, and standard (if specified) as extended entity data in the asset symbol.
Generating and displaying asset text.