Creating a Room Design Specification

The Room Design selection process sets the specification reference of the newly created element that means, (Door, Window, Fitting, Fixture ) to point to a GPART element in the catalogue database.

The use GPARTs enables SFITT or TMPL elements to be used interchangeably with each other as the GPART has the ability to reference either item types through the CATREF and TMPREF attributes.

The GPARTS are selected by selecting a TABITEM from a TABGROUP in a process described below:

The structure for the selection tables used in the sample data is as follows:

The Specification world (SPWL) contains a new kind of table called a Table Group (TABGROUP) which contains one or more Component Table (CTABLE) elements.

The TABGROUP item in the hierarchy represents a category of items that will be displayed in the Room Design application.

In order for the standard selection form used in Room Design to pick up the catalogue items as shown above, a number of data items need to be set in the catalogue so that the application knows where to look for them.

Room Design allows a number of item types to be created using the appware:

• Furniture

• Ceiling Tiles

• Doors

• Windows

• Electrical Fittings

• Fire Protection Fittings

• HVAC Fittings

• Information Fittings

• Wall Panels

For each category of items at least one TABGROUP will be required (users may create their own) for each of the item types listed above.

The standard selection form used in Room Design looks in the catalogue for specific TABGROUP attributes so that the correct items are obtained for the specific part of the application and this is achieved by setting specific purposes for the TABGROUP.

The list of Room Design TABGROUP purposes is as follows:

The CTABLES represent sub-categories of each TABGROUP type so for instance the above example shows a category TABGROUP named ‘Door-Catalogue’ this owns the subcategory CTABLES named ‘std-marine-doors’ and ‘std-doors-table’ each of which contain references to components of that specific type.

Each individual CTABLE element contains one or many TABITEM elements, TABITEMS provide the individual links to GPARTS by their PARTREFERENCE attributes but they may also own a series of Table Question Elements which are used to set up the Choose form with relevant selection information.

With just a single list of TABITEMS, the Choose form definition would simply be a single column list of TABITEMS names. The ability to add TABQUESTIONS adds a set of extra columns for the choose forms and enables extra selection criteria to be applied.

For example:

To get the output above, requires 3 TABQUESTION elements defined as follows:

1. Tpurpose = TYPE, Tanswer = ‘Internal escape, Double door, open inwards, no step’

2. Tpurpose = WIDT, Tanswer = 750

3. Tpurpose = HEIG, Tanswer = 2045

To obtain the headings the CTABLE requires a Table Heading (TABHEA) to be defined. This has a matching set of elements with purposes matching the table question elements and these are used to define the list header. This requires three Table Header questions (TABHQU) with purposes set to TYPE, WIDT and HEIG respectively.

Providing the catalogue has been set up in accordance with the rules listed previously the Room Design application will be able to pick up the relevant catalogue items for each detailing discipline.

The example below shows the Doors and Windows detailing application which has picked up all relevant door types mentioned previously and is displaying them for a door selection operation.