Archibus SaaS / Space
Space / Space Inventory / Room Inventory (Non-Transactional)
Space / Space Inventory / Room Inventory - Set Up & Manage (Transactional)

Comparing Room Lists and Room Plans

Unlike the Building Performance Inventory and the Group Inventory processes, when you create a room inventory, you can choose between two methods: a room list or a room plan.

• Room List -- Some sites need to quickly get started with a basic alphanumeric list of their rooms -- a room list. They can do so by working with the Define Locations task and entering each room, and optionally, its area. If these sites later decide that they want a room plan -- a floor plan drawing that depicts each room -- CAD specialists can add rooms to floor plan drawings and connect the room polylines to the existing records.
• Room Plan -- Sites that already have CAD floor plan drawings or have the resources to develop floor plan drawings from the beginning will have CAD specialists use CAD environment and its asset symbol technology to draw room polylines and generate room records in one step. Room plans enable users to graphically see a room's location on the floor plan, provide area information which can be summed for the entire building or department, and enable you to graphically indicate rooms of a certain type or belonging to a certain department.

Since rooms are used throughout the entire Archibus system -- for example, as locations for maintenance items, as areas that can be reserved, as locations for furniture and equipment -- you may already have developed a list of rooms. Your site may wish to focus on completing this list or verifying its accuracy before taking the time to depict rooms in CAD. Similarly, your site might find that it does not require a detailed room plan if it already has a group plan in CAD. Often times, sites find it useful to quickly generate a room list and then have CAD specialists take the time to depict individual room boundaries. They can then link the room boundaries to the existing records.

Facility managers and business process owners should assess the conditions and needs of their specific sites, and then decide on the room inventory method that best suits their needs.

Note that if you choose to work with a room list only, you will not be able to work with certain reports and tasks because they are based on room plans. For example, the Space / Space Inventory / Space Manager / Assign Room Attributes and Occupancy (transactional method) task presents a room plan so that you can visually see a room's location, select it, and then assign its attributes. If you do not have a room plan, you need to assign these attributes by completing them in a database record.

The Room Area Fields

To accommodate the two methods of recording a room inventory, the Rooms table offers two area fields:

Room Area -- This field holds the room area derived from a room polyline in a CAD drawing. This field is not editable from Web Central.

Room Manual Area -- If you are developing a room list, use this field to manually input a room's area, rather than derive the area value from a CAD polyline. Space calculations use the value in the Room Area field; therefore, to have the system use this manually-entered value for room data in its calculations, run the Update Room Areas from Manual Areas action. which copies the value from this field to the Room Area field (if Room Area has a value of zero). Entering your room area in this field is handy for sites that want to start off with an alphanumeric inventory and gradually incorporate CAD areas as they inventory each floor plan in CAD