Attributes

The AIM Workhub Objects may have Attributes. An Attribute is defined as a class in the Class Library, which determines both the name and the data type of the Attribute wherever it is used – the same Attribute definition can be used for many classes. Every Attribute is directly or indirectly a subclass of the CHARACTERISTIC class:

The QUALITATIVE CHARACTERISTIC class allows the user to create attributes classes with a string, real, integer or date data type:

These data types control the AIM Workhub Attribute searching when doing an advanced find.

Specifying the data type for a characteristic gives the possibility to do query like searching for notes created before a specific date (in this case the data type needs to be Date) or searching for documents, where the revision is higher than three (in this case the data type needs to be Integer or Real). Attributes can be applied directly to an object or to its corresponding datasets. In AIM Workhub, attributes created using the QUALITATIVE CHARACTERISTIC class are also known as “Characteristic attributes”. Also, simple typed attributes, that is, Characteristics, Attributes, may have Units. Attributes with Units are known as Properties and are based on the PHYSICAL PROPERTY class. A property has a Name/Value pair but also a Unit Of Measure (UOM).

An example of a Characteristic might be:

• Attribute Name = Flow Type

• Attribute Value = Liquid

A Property might be:

• Attribute Name = Design Press. Max

• Attribute Value = 40

• UOM = barg

There are no Units Of Measure defined by default and so they must be defined before any PropertyClasses are defined. The user must define a System of UOM and then define a UOM class. A definition of a PropertyClass can then be created that makes use of a UOM (refer to AVEVA Asset Information Management Workhub XML Schema Reference). A Measure may have many units. A Measure of Length may have units of m, cm, mm, km, mile, furlong, chain, ft, and so on. A Measure will have a base Unit and all other units will supply a scale factor to convert that unit into the base unit. Note that this is only used internally for comparisons during searches. A UOM will only be returned as it was entered into the system. A UOM will never be converted into another UOM for any other purpose.

Some Units require a Constant as well as a scale for converting to the base unit; an example is Degrees Centigrade to Fahrenheit. For this purpose, a Constant may also be defined for a UOM. In this case the constant will be added after the scaling has been applied.

Note: The Base Unit for a Measure is the UOM that has no Scale and no Constant definition.

Attributes Applied to an Object

This is the case for all objects, which are classified as a class or a subclass of INFORMATION.

Attributes are added to a class by an Attribute Template. An example of a built-in AIM Workhub class with an Attribute Template is the DATASHEET class:

This is the case for all objects which are classified as a class or a subclass of INFORMATION.

Attributes are added to a class by an Attribute Template. An example of a built-in AIM Workhub class with an Attribute Template is the DATASHEET class:

Attributes Stored in Datasets

This is the case for all objects, which are NOT classified as a class or a subclass of INFORMATION, for example “PUMP”.

An object can have multiple datasets. They can be created in multiple ways:

• by type: MECHANICAL DATASET, OPERATIONS DATASET, PIPING DATASET

• by source: PDMS DATASET, VPE DATASET

• by class: PUMP DATASET, VESSEL DATASET

• by type and source

To store attributes in datasets:

1. Create datasets class as a subclass of DATASET:

   

2. Create Attribute Template for each Dataset created: So all objects which have this type of dataset, can automatically have these attributes created and assigned to this specific object dataset.

3. Populate attributes with values; here is an example of an object of class PUMP with 2 datasets: