Drawings¶
Drawings displayed in the ASSETS screen are essentially Library records where the Library Type has the “Show as Drawings” flag checked.
“Layers” can be added to drawings for the purposes of:
- Navigation
- Data overlay
- Reporting
“Layers” are marked up regions on the drawing which can be linked to assets in the asset hierarchy.
Properties of a Drawing¶
Library Type - By default, this will be “Drawings”.
Name - A 50 character field which is the name for the drawing, it is most common to use either the drawing title or the drawing number here.
Description - A 100 character field which provides more descriptive information of the Drawing.
Document No. - A 50 character field which stores the Drawing Number or Reference.
Revision - Revision of the drawing (eg. “A” or “C”).
Reference Date - Reference date of the drawing.
Physical Location - If this Library Item is a reference to hard copy document, then enter the physical location of the document here.
Hyperlink - When linking this document to a UNC or URL, then the full hyperlink is stored in this field.
Attachment - When loading a drawing into the NEXUS IC database, or replacing an existing drawing then click on the Import sub menu item. Other menu items available from this dropdown are:
- Link - Link to a file on a mapped drive. A copy of the file will be stored in the NEXUS database and updated when the file changes.
- Export - Saves the drawing to a folder location of your choice.
- Launch - Launches the drawing in the default Windows viewer.
- Copy - Copies the drawing to your clipboard.
- Clear - Removes the drawing from the library item.
Show Grey Scale - A flag which will display DWG or DXF drawing layers in black and white in lieu of designed colours.
Show Captions - A flag which will show or hide caption layers of a DWG or DXF drawing.
Show Dimensions - A flag which will show or hide dimension layers of a DWG or DXF drawing.
Use in Reports - Can be used to filter what drawings are output to reports.
Force 2D - If you have DWG or DXF drawings which NEXUS is detecting as 3D, and you’d prefer NEXUS to treat them as 2D, tick this box for those drawings.
Background Colour - Allows you to define the background colour of a Drawing. Please note that this functionality will only work on drawing types which support transparency (eg. DXF, DWG, GIF etc.).
The Drawings Toolbar¶
The Add menu item allows you to add a new Drawing. When you click Add, the Add Library dialog will appear. (This is because Drawings are Library Items in NEXUS IC 6.) Enter the Name of the Drawing and any other relevant document information. Then click on the Attachment button.
Note
You can also add drawings by dragging image files from Windows Explorer onto the Drawings pane. If you drag/drop one file, you will be given the Add Library dialog, and clicking Cancel will cancel the add. If you drag/drop multiple files, they will simply be added.
Note
NEXUS IC supports the following image formats:
- GIF, JPG, JPEG, TIF, BMP, PNG, PDF, DWG, CGM, DXF, SVG, WMF and EMF.
Edit the properties of the current drawing. From this dialog you can also Add and Edit connections to the drawing.
Delete or Unlink the drawing from the asset. Delete will delete the library item from NEXUS. Unlink will remove the link to the asset, but keep the library item.
You can select which library types appear here. (To control what appears on this list, go to LIBRARY, edit the library types in question, and tick or untick Show As Drawings).
If you check Include Parents, drawings on this asset’s parents will be shown in the thumbnail list for you to select.
Copies the drawing to your clipboard at the current scale and offset shown. The drawing thumbnail and layers will also be included.
Layer Tools¶
- Click this, and when you click on a layer in the drawing you’ll be selecting it. Ctrl-click to select additional layers. You can click inside a layer and drag to move layers. (Click-dragging a point will move just that point.)
- Click this then click-drag to create a rectangular region on the drawing. Once complete, you can drag the four corners of the rectangle separately so that it’s not a rectangle anymore.
- Click this to start drawing a polygon region. Each click in the drawing will add a point to your polygon. Press Enter or right-click and choose Create Layer to complete the polygon.
- Click this then click-drag to create a ellipse region on the drawing. Once complete, this is turned into a 50-sided polygon.
- This tool is useful for putting regions on P&IDs etc., where you have a thin, possibly branching line and you want to put a narrow region over it. Click the Line Region button, then left-click on an end of the line you want to trace, left-click at the next point that it turns a corner, etc. As with Rectangle, when you complete (by pressing Enter or right-clicking and choosing Complete Layer), the layer is a region and you can adjust all its corners independently.
- Click this then click in the drawing at the top left of where you would like your caption to appear. In the Layer Properties dialog, type some Caption text. Optionally choose a Caption Colour and a Caption Angle — blank or 0 gives ordinary horizontal text.
- Click this then click in the drawing at the top left of where you would like your caption to appear. In the Layer Properties dialog, type some Caption text — if you type no text, you will get a very small button, because the button sizes to fit the text.
3D Drawings Toolbar¶
3D drawings get different items on their toolbar. Add, Edit, Delete and Colour are as described above.
- When selected, dragging on the 3D drawing will change the “camera” angle. When unselected, dragging on the drawing will pan.
- Select between these to control rendering of the drawing. Some are faster; some are prettier. For some drawings, Wireframe may not show anything.
- Toggle a panel at the bottom of the Drawings pane showing information for the selected region of the drawing.
- Toggle the display of coordinates at the bottom right of the drawing, showing the mouse location.
View Menu¶
For 3D drawings, the View menu contains extra items:
- Same as the Rotate button.
- Select one of 10 viewing directions. You can get to any of these viewing directions via the Rotate button, but this is faster.
- For a 3D drawing, available viewports will be displayed on this menu.
- Same as the Wireframe / Hidden Lines / Smooth Shading / Flat Shading buttons.
- Similar to , but information will be displayed as a mouse-over hint on the region you’re currently on, rather than as captions.
- Information and Coordinates are the same as their respective buttons.
- Grid may or may not show a grid, depending on the drawing. Axis will show/hide the axis orientation arrows at the bottom left of the Drawing panel. North Arrow may or may not show an arrow illustrating the North direction, depending on the drawing.
Refer to 3D Drawing Setup Example and 3D Drawing Preparation in Autocad on how to configure 3D drawing objects to link to assets in the asset hierarchy.
Asset Information¶
You can right-click on an Asset Information field name and select “Display on drawing” to show values from that Asset Information field on drawing layers.
Drag and Drop¶
When you are editing layers, you can drag an asset from the asset tree at the left of the window onto the drawing. You will then be given a dialog asking you what type of layer you would like to add to represent this asset on this drawing.
You can also drag from the asset tree onto an existing region. The existing region will be given this new asset as its Caption and Asset, and you will be shown the Edit Layer dialog.
You can also drag an Asset Information field from a form onto the drawing. This makes the selected layer display text from that Asset information field.
Properties of a Layer¶
- Layer Type - Specifies the way the layer will be rendered on the drawing. Only Region and Button with Region let you create complex outlines.
- Colour - Colour of the layer. This colour is used for both the outline and the fill.
- Opacity - Opacity of the filled part of the layer. 0 is transparent; 100 is solid.
- Show Caption - Tick this to set the Caption (below) visible.
- Caption - Text string to show for this layer. This caption text grows/shrinks as you zoom in/out. It can be moved using the “grab point” at its top left. The text can be replaced with other text when the drawing is used in a report template or the drag AIG feature is used.
- Caption Colour - Colour of the Caption.
- Caption Angle - 0° is horizontal, right way up. Positive angles rotate the text anticlockwise.
- Associated Field - You can show text from an Asset Information field on this layer. The text will be appended after the fixed text specified in Caption.
- Asset - A layer can link to an asset. Specify that asset here.
- Relative Asset - Instead of specifying a particular asset, you can enter text here. NEXUS will search for children that match that name. If multiple children match, when the user clicks this layer and chooses Navigate to, there will be one entry for each in the pop-up menu.
- Associated Drawing - When the user clicks this layer and chooses Navigate to, you can choose here which drawing will be selected once the navigation is complete. That drawing must be available on that asset.