Layouts

What are layouts

A layout is an interactive 3D floor plan of your site: draw the walls over a PDF drawing, place your equipment, draw the cable trays and pipes that connect it, and see the live status of every linked asset right on the plan. Open issues appear pinned exactly where they are in the field.

Open Layouts from the sidebar. Viewing requires the layouts.read permission. Every layout has a number (LY-1, LY-2, …) shown on its card and in the editor, so you can refer to it in chat and in reports. You can draw layouts yourself in the editor, or ask the Layout Builder Assistant to draw them for you — see the Build layouts with AI section.

The layouts list

The Layouts page shows every layout of the project as a card: its LY-number, name and description, chips with what it contains (walls, objects, rooms, issue pins and — once there are any — routes), and when it was last updated. Click a card to open it in the editor.

The New layout button (requires layouts.create) asks for a name, an optional description and, when the project has buildings among its locations, the building this plan belongs to — anchoring a plan to a building lets the Maps module offer it from that building's marker. The card menu offers Rename, Duplicate (a full copy of the drawing, requires layouts.create) and Delete (requires layouts.delete). Deleting a layout never touches the assets or issues it was linked to.

The editor: view mode and edit mode

A layout opens in the full-screen editor. The top bar shows the layout name and LY-number, the camera buttons and — if you have the layouts.update permission — a View / Edit switch on the right.

• View mode is for walking the model: orbit with the left mouse button, zoom with the wheel or middle button, pan with the right button. Equipment linked to assets shows its status, issue pins show theirs, and hovering or clicking opens details (see the View mode section).
• Edit mode adds the drawing tools to the top bar, an Undo/Redo pair and a Save button. Nothing is stored until you Save (Ctrl+S) — an orange dot next to the name means there are unsaved changes, and the browser warns before you leave with unsaved work.

A brand-new, empty layout opens straight in edit mode for people who can draw. Switching mode always returns to the Select tool and clears the selection.

Drawing walls, rooms, doors and windows

The plan is drawn in meters on a grid; while you draw, a readout shows the current segment length and the running total.

• Walls: pick the Draw walls tool and click corner after corner on the floor. Double-click or press Enter to finish, Esc to cancel, and hold Shift to lock the segment to 45° angles. Points snap to the grid and to existing wall ends. Each wall is extruded to the thickness and height set in the Drawing defaults panel (0.2 m and 3 m unless you change them); select a wall later to change its own thickness and height.
• Rooms: pick Draw rooms and outline the area; double-click or Enter closes the polygon. Rooms are flat colored zones with a name — select one to rename it, pick a color, and link it to a project location (building, floor or room) so the plan and the locations tree stay in step.
• Doors and windows: pick Place doors or Place windows, hover over a wall and click — the opening snaps onto that wall. Once placed, drag it to slide it along the wall, and use the properties panel to change its type (Door, Double door, Window or plain Wall opening), width, height, sill height, position along the wall and — for doors — flip the swing side. Deleting a wall removes the openings on it.

Placing equipment from the library

Pick the Place equipment tool and the Equipment palette opens on the right: a search box on top and the library grouped by family (transformers, switchgear, racks, pumps, tanks and so on), each item with a small picture of its 3D model and its size in meters (width × depth × height). Pick an item and a live 3D preview of it turns slowly at the top of the palette — drag the preview to orbit it and look at the item from any side. Then move the mouse over the floor to see its ghost, press R to rotate the ghost by 90° (Shift+R the other way), and click to place it — you can keep clicking to place several. If nothing in the library fits, place the generic box and set its real size.

Back in the Select tool, drag equipment to move it and select it to edit its properties: label, rotation, width, depth and height, and the Linked asset. Linking an object to a project asset is what makes it come alive in view mode — the asset's status is shown on the plan and clicking the object opens the asset. Ctrl+D duplicates the selected object next to itself (the copy is not linked to any asset).

Furniture and fit-out items

The equipment library also holds 45 furniture and fit-out items, so you can furnish offices, welfare areas, canteens and accommodation on the same plan as your equipment. They sit in the same Equipment palette, under these family headings:

• Desk: office desk, four-seat bench desk, reception counter.
• Table: meeting, round, dining and coffee tables.
• Chair: office, dining and visitor chairs, a bar stool and a bench.
• Sofa: two-seat and three-seat sofas and an armchair.
• Bed: single, double and king.
• Storage: wardrobe, bookshelf, filing cabinet, nightstand, sideboard and lockers.
• Kitchen: base units, sink unit, cooker, kitchen island and wall units.
• Appliance: fridge freezer, dishwasher, washing machine, vending machine, water cooler and multifunction printer.
• Sanitary: toilet, washbasin, vanity unit, urinal, shower, bathtub and toilet cubicle.
• Plant and Stand: a potted plant, a display on a stand and a mobile whiteboard.

To place one:

1. In edit mode, pick the Place equipment tool.
2. Type in the Search equipment box — for example "desk", "sofa" or "toilet" — or scroll to the family.
3. Click the item. Its live 3D preview appears at the top of the palette; drag it to look around the item.
4. Move over the floor, press R to turn the ghost by 90°, and click to place. Keep clicking to place more.

Furniture behaves like any other library item: drag to move it, and select it to change its label, rotation and size. The Layout Builder Assistant searches the same library, so you can ask it to furnish a room for you.

Select several things: align, distribute, mirror, array, group

In edit mode, with the Select and move tool, you can work on many elements at once.

Build the selection:

• Click an element to select it. Shift+click adds to the selection.
• Shift+drag on empty floor draws a selection box.
• Ctrl+A selects everything on the plan.

With two or more elements selected, the panel on the right becomes the Selection panel. It shows how many elements are selected and of what kind, and offers:

• Align: Align left edges, Center horizontally, Align right edges, Align top edges, Center vertically, Align bottom edges. Align works on equipment and issue pins and needs at least two of them.
• Distribute horizontally / Distribute vertically: equal spacing between the two outermost items. Needs at least three.
• Mirror left–right and Mirror up–down, plus Rotate 90° clockwise and counter-clockwise. A set turns around its own centre.
• Linear array: type the number of Copies and the Pitch x (m) and Pitch y (m) — the spacing between copies — then click Create copies. The original stays where it is. Handy for a row of racks or desks.
• Grouping: type an optional Group name and click Group. Grouped elements select and move together; Alt+click picks one on its own. Ungroup dissolves the group.
• Delete selection removes everything selected.

Copy and move:

• Ctrl+C copies the selection and Ctrl+V pastes it; each paste lands a little further away so copies do not stack.
• Ctrl+D duplicates the selection right next to itself.
• Drag any selected element to move the whole set, or nudge it with the arrow keys (0.1 m, Shift for 1 m). R rotates the set.
• Copies are never linked to an asset — link each copy yourself. Issue pins are not copied.

While you drag a piece of equipment, guide lines appear when its centre or edges line up with another item. Every action is one Undo step (Ctrl+Z), and nothing is stored until you Save.

Substations: outdoor equipment, fences and elevation

The library also holds outdoor substation equipment for 11, 33, 66, 132, 220 and 400 kV: power transformers and autotransformers, shunt reactors, live-tank and dead-tank circuit breakers, disconnectors (centre break, double side break, vertical break, pantograph, with or without earthing switch), earthing switches, current and voltage transformers, CVTs, surge arresters, post insulators and bus supports, gantries, tension insulator strings, capacitor banks, line traps, cable sealing ends, GIS bays, relay houses and control buildings, kiosks, lighting masts and transformer bunds. Search the palette by name or voltage ("132 kV breaker"). Every item carries its connection points: bushing tips, breaker T1/T2, CT P1/P2, gantry attachment points, earth — the assistant routes conductors onto them.

Equipment can sit above grade: the Elevation field in the properties panel raises an object's base (a transformer on its bund, a line trap on top of a CVT), and its connection points rise with it.

Some library items have geometry variants — a Variant field appears in the properties panel when the selected item offers them. Power transformers and shunt reactors mount their conservator across the phase-A end of the tank by default, above the radiators and clear of the HV bushings; the variants put it across the phase-C end or along the HV (rear) side. Variants change only the look; connection points stay where they are.

A wall can be a fence: select the wall and change its Type to Fence. Fences render as chain-link panels between posts (dashed on the assistant's plan) with the perimeter defaults of 2.4 m high and 5 cm thick; a door on a fence is a gate.

Routes: cable trays, busbars, pipes, ducts and conduit

Routes are the services that connect your equipment. Pick the Draw routes tool and the Routes panel lists the systems — Cable tray, Busbar, Pipe, Duct and Conduit — each with its default profile and elevation. Choose one, adjust the width/height (or diameter), elevation above the floor and, for flat profiles, the orientation (Flat or On edge), then click the run's corners on the plan; double-click or Enter finishes, Shift locks 45° angles.

A route is drawn as a centreline, the way a single-line diagram is drawn: bends follow from the corners, a change of height is a riser, and runs pass through walls freely. Select a route to edit its label, run color (including the red/blue A/B-feed convention for busbars), width, height, elevation and orientation. Branches, fittings (tap-offs, expansion joints, valves…) and connections landing exactly on an equipment terminal are added by the Layout Builder Assistant — the properties panel shows how many points and fittings a route has.

Substation conductors: bus, droppers, jumpers, cables, earth and trenches

The Routes panel also holds the substation conductor systems: Rigid bus (tubular aluminium on post insulators), Strung bus (flexible conductor hanging between gantries), Dropper (bus down to an equipment terminal), Jumper (terminal to terminal), HV cable (buried, rising into sealing ends), Earth conductor and Cable trench (a channel recessed at grade). Their default heights follow the voltage class of the equipment in the yard, and each has a Phase field — A, B, C, N or E — that colours the run red, yellow, blue, slate or green; a strung bus also has a Sag field and hangs by that much between its points.

While the route tool is armed, every connection point of the placed equipment (bushing tips, breaker T1/T2, CT P1/P2, gantry attachment points, earth) shows as a small phase-coloured dot; move the cursor near one and the point magnets onto it at the terminal's exact height, so a dropper ends precisely on the bushing. Select a conductor to change its phase, sag, diameter or elevation in the properties panel.

A cable trench drawn by the assistant is always flat at its depth and runs in straight, axis-aligned legs with L corners (a diagonal you give it is squared), routed beside equipment rather than under a pedestal, a column or a bund wall.

The Layout Builder Assistant draws a three-phase bus in one step, and its connectivity check lists open terminals, conductors ending in the air, phase mismatches and spacing below the air clearance for the voltage class — as warnings you decide on, never as blocks. Its clash check adds the physical view: overlapping footprints, a conductor running through a transformer tank or a kiosk, three phases converging on one point, a trench cutting under a post-insulator pedestal or a gantry leg.

Pinning issues on the plan

In edit mode, pick the Pin an issue tool, click the spot on the floor, and choose the issue from the picker (search by title). The pin shows the issue number and title; select it to open the issue or delete the pin. Pins are saved with the rest of the drawing when you Save.

In view mode there is a faster path: click Pin issue in the top bar, pick the issue first, then click where it is on the plan — the pin is saved immediately, no Save needed. That button is disabled while the editor holds unsaved edits, so save them first. Esc cancels an armed pin.

Tracing a PDF drawing: the underlay and its scale

Pick the PDF underlay tool to upload a floor plan PDF (or replace the current one). The drawing appears under the grid so you can trace walls over it. The panel lets you show or hide it, set its opacity and page, rotate it by 90°, and remove it; drag the drawing on the canvas to reposition it.

To make the drawing the right size, click Set scale, then click the two ends of a known distance on the drawing (a dimension line, a door, a grid spacing). A dialog shows the measured length and asks for the real distance in meters — type it, Apply, and the whole drawing is rescaled to match. Do this before tracing so your walls come out in real meters.

Keyboard shortcuts

• Ctrl+S: save. Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y: undo / redo.
• Ctrl+A: select everything on the plan.
• Shift+click: add an element to the selection. Shift+drag on empty floor: draw a selection box.
• Alt+click: pick one element of a group on its own.
• Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V: copy and paste the selection.
• Ctrl+D: duplicate the selection next to itself.
• R / Shift+R: rotate the selection (or the equipment ghost you are about to place) by 90° clockwise / counter-clockwise.
• Arrow keys: nudge the selection by 0.1 m; hold Shift for 1 m.
• Delete (or Backspace): delete the selection.
• F: fit the whole layout in view (works in both modes).
• Esc: cancel the drawing in progress or an armed pin.
• Enter or double-click: finish a wall, room or route polyline.
• Shift while drawing: lock segments to 45° angles.

Shortcuts are ignored while you type in a field. The Shortcuts panel on the right of the editor (shown in edit mode when nothing is selected) lists them too.

View mode: live status, hover cards and layers

In view mode the plan becomes a live picture of the site:

• Equipment linked to an asset carries a floating status marker in the project's status colors, with the asset ID; issue pins carry the issue's status color. Rest the pointer on either and a hover card shows a summary — the asset's type, status and linked issues, or the issue's status and assignee — with an Open button; clicking the marker or pin opens the asset or the issue in place.
• The Layers menu (the layers icon in the top bar) toggles what is drawn: Asset status markers, Asset ID labels, Issue pins, Room areas, Routes and X-ray walls (see-through walls). Your choices are remembered on this browser.
• The camera buttons work in both modes: Top view, 3D view, Fit to view (F), a dollhouse cut that lowers the walls so you can see inside, and a slow auto-rotate spin — also remembered.
• Pin issue drops a new issue pin without entering edit mode (see the pins section).

Build layouts with AI

You don't have to draw layouts by hand — the Commissioning Assistant can do it with you in chat. Start a conversation and describe what you want (drawing layouts needs the layouts permission in your role, granted to project admins by default):

• Describe a plan ("a 20 × 12 m data hall with two rows of ten racks facing each other, a UPS room on the east side") and it draws the walls, doors, rooms and equipment.
• Attach or name a PDF drawing and it traces it: it reads the sheet, works out the scale from a labelled dimension, draws the shell and internal walls, and can load that page as the underlay so you can compare.
• It searches the same equipment library you see in the palette, places items with real footprints, links them to your assets and rooms to your locations.
• It draws routes between equipment — cable trays, busbars, pipes — and can land them exactly on an equipment terminal (a transformer's LV box, a UPS roof), add branches and fittings, and pin issues.

The assistant looks at a rendered plan of its own work after each step and fixes what looks wrong — it can also render an elevation (side view) and the real 3D view of the editor from any corner of the plan, and it runs two numeric checks before calling a bay finished: connectivity (open terminals, dangling conductors, phase mismatches, clearances) and clashes (overlapping equipment, routes through equipment, routes crossing, trenches under columns). Long builds such as a whole substation are allowed to run for well over an hour. Its changes go through the same permission checks as the editor. When it finishes it posts a layout card in the chat — click Open layout to jump to the editor.

Live updates: the assistant, other tabs and the "Updated elsewhere" chip

The editor and the layouts list refresh live. If the assistant (or a colleague in another tab) changes the layout you have open and you have no unsaved edits, the new geometry simply appears. If you DO have unsaved edits, your work is never overwritten: an "Updated elsewhere" chip appears next to the layout name instead. Click it to load the latest version — your unsaved changes are discarded — or Save first if you want to keep yours; the last save wins.

Who can view and edit layouts (permissions)

• layouts.read — open the Layouts page and view layouts.
• layouts.create — create and duplicate layouts.
• layouts.update — switch to edit mode, draw, and pin issues from view mode.
• layouts.delete — delete layouts.
• Drawing layouts in chat has its own permission (agents.layoutbuilder, "Layouts skill in the assistant"), granted to project admins by default: without it the Commissioning Assistant does not draw.

A project admin can also switch the whole Layouts module off for a project in the project settings; the page and the assistant's tools then say the module is disabled.

Layouts troubleshooting

• Layouts missing from the sidebar: your role lacks layouts.read, or a project admin switched the module off for this project.
• No View / Edit switch or no Save button: you need the layouts.update permission.
• Equipment shows no status in view mode: the object is not linked to an asset — select it in edit mode and pick the Linked asset. Also check the Layers menu: Asset status markers may be switched off.
• Only a generic box is offered in the palette: the equipment library could not be loaded — reload the page.
• The PDF looks the wrong size: use Set scale in the underlay panel and type the real distance between two points.
• Walls end up inside out or the door opens the wrong way: select the door and use Flip swing side; wall thickness and height can be corrected per wall.
• The Pin issue button is greyed out in view mode: save (or discard) your unsaved edits first.
• An "Updated elsewhere" chip appeared: the layout changed in another tab or through the assistant — click it to load the latest version, or Save to keep yours.
• Save fails: the drawing is checked before it is stored — the error names the element; undo the last change and try again.