Smart Client Extension for AutoCAD

Deleting Asset Symbols

When you delete asset symbols in a drawing, the Archibus Smart Client Extension for AutoCAD deletes both the asset symbol and the associated record (unless the asset is database-driven, as discussed below).

Note that to delete items in AutoCAD, you use AutoCAD's Home / Modify / Erase command.

To delete an asset symbol

1. Activate your drawing tool and the drawing containing the asset symbols that you want to delete.
2. Select the asset symbol or symbols you wish to erase.
3. From the Ribbon, click Home / Modify / Erase.

Drawing-Driven vs. Database-Driven

What happens when you delete an asset symbol depends on whether it is drawing-driven or database-driven.  

• If the asset symbol is drawing-driven, such as a room, the identity of the item comes from the drawing.  Deleting the item in the drawing also deletes it in the database.  
• If the asset symbol is database-driven, such as an employee designator asset symbol, the identity of the item comes from the database.  The item typically was entered in the drawing by a populate process. Deleting the item in the drawing does not delete its record from the database (since you are typically just moving or removing that employee from that location, not removing their identity from the organization as a whole).

The Record Source field of the AFM Asset Types table (accessible from the System / Add-In Manager / Edit Asset Types task) determines whether asset symbols are database-driven or drawing-driven.

Suppose you have generated furniture standards asset symbols from a survey -- that is, you first obtained database counts in a room-by-room survey, expanded that survey into a furniture standards inventory, and then populated the drawing with this information.  In this case, your furniture standards data derives from the database, so you want your furniture standards asset symbols to be database-driven (that is, if you delete the asset symbol, the record remains).

However, if you are using CAD to generate the Furniture Standards layout and counts, you will want to change the Record Source field in the A/FM Asset Types table to drawing-driven, so that deleting an asset symbol from the drawing deletes the item in the database.