5.10 Project Setup
In this section we will discuss how to add a project to the Building Start platform, but more importantly how to pre-engineer a project by adding equipment to the project efficiently.
Topics covered in this section include:
Adding a Project
Equipment Tree Summary
Adding Equipment - System Level
Adding Equipment - Equipment Level
Adding Equipment - Component Level
Add Range vs. Add List
Equipment Naming & Numbering Conventions
1. Adding a Project
See the example below to the right for the Air handling Units: AHU-Main-North, AHU-Main-South, AHU-Mezzanine-North, AHU-Mezzanine-South and AHU-Storage/Assembly added to this sample project.
5. Adding Equipment - Component Level
Now that we have some Air Handling Units in our HVAC "Ventilation" System; we can add components to the Air Handling Units such as the Fan Section or Variable Frequency Drive (VFD) if applicable. Keep in mind that not all equipment will have components. If there is no (+) in front of your named piece of equipment then there are no components that can be added to it.
It is with the Component Level of the Equipment Tree that we can account for all of the different configurations of equipment. You have a single base Air Handling Unit and then you accessorize each Air Handling Unit individually with the appropriate components. Please review the screen shot below and to the right and see the many components that can be added to an Air Handling Unit.
2. Equipment Tree Summary
Now that we have a new project, we are ready to start adding equipment to this project. First let's consider a little background information to preface the topic. The Building Start platform allows for 3 levels of depth to the Equipment Tree. We will refer to these levels as the System Level, Equipment Level and Component Level. If there is part of our reference material to re-read this would be it! It is very important to understand how these levels work as they will be an integral part of pre-engineering a project. These levels are used to help organize a project so that it is easier to navigate and find systems or equipment.
At the top level of the Equipment Tree, we have systems. When opening up the Equipment Tree you will see at the top items like Electrical Systems, HVAC Systems, Fire Protection, etc. Even though these are objects on the Equipment Tree they serve more as an organizing folder for related equipment and/or devices so we don't have to look at all 400+ objects in a single list.
The level below systems is the Equipment Level. This is the level that is most self explanatory because this, as you would expect, is where you find all of the equipment that is associated with the system above it. Another words, under HVAC Systems you will find equipment like Air Handling Units, Rooftop Units and Heat Pumps; whereas, under Electrical Systems you will see equipment like Generators, Panel Boards and Lights at the Equipment Level.
The bottom level of the Equipment Tree is the Component Level. What you find at this level is best described as components, devices or accessories to parent equipment. For example, you will find a Fan Section can be added to an Air Handling Unit, Rooftop Unit or Make-Up Air unit. You will also find that a (VFD) Variable Frequency Drive can be added to some of the objects in the Equipment Level of the tree as well. This allows you to have, for example, a single Air Handling Unit template that can be individually accessorized with fans, water coils, dx coils, economizers, etc. to accommodate the endless configurations that you will see from one project to the next.
3. Adding Equipment - System Level
First, let me start by saying that the ability to Add or Copy Equipment is tied to a permission. If you have access to the Project Portal page where the Equipment Tree is (which is also tied to its own permission) you will notice next to each tree object (add new). If you do not see this link, then you have not been given permission to perform these actions.
This section is labeled Adding Equipment - System Level, but note that we are using the term "equipment" here in a somewhat generic sense, we are NOT referring to the Equipment Level of the tree. What you are really doing is pre-engineering the project on the system to ensure that all of the checklists are accounted for that eventually need to be completed.
So, once you have a project added to the system you are now ready to start pre-engineering that project. There are two key points to remember here when pre-engineering a project. First, be sure to have the Hide Empty Objects box unchecked. Second, start at the top of the tree and work your way down. This simply means that you should add a system to the Equipment Tree, then add equipment to the corresponding system, and finally add the appropriate components to the equipment. Let's take a minute to expand on this concept of starting at the top of the Equipment Tree and working your way down.
As we described earlier the top level of the tree is the System Level. So before we can add anything to the Equipment Tree, we have to add a Named System. Now system names and the number of named systems can be anything that you can think of so it is totally up to you. So if you want to add Chillers to your project, you need to start by adding a Named System to the HVAC Systems object, such as, Chiller Plant as an example or splitting equipment up into Ventilation and Hot Water Heating as shown in the example to the right. To do this you would click on the (add new) link next the corresponding System Object, in this example HVAC Systems and the screen shot to the right would appear. You will want to use Option 2 to type your names in with a carriage return after each name in your list. When finished typing click the Add List Now button below that text box and a confirmation message regarding adding your named systems will appear as shown to the right.
Regardless of what you call it you must have a Named System added before you can actually add any equipment to your project.
4. Adding Equipment - Equipment Level
Now that you have a Named System of Ventilation and Hot Water Heating for HVAC Systems objects you can expand the Equipment Level of the Equipment Tree by clicking the plus sign (+) in front of either named system (Ventilation or Hot Water Heating). You will see all of the equipment associated with the HVAC Systems group that can now be added to either named system.
As you can see in the screen shot to the right the Ventilation object has been expanded to show all of the HVAC equipment that can be added to this Named System. Please note that expanding the Hot Water Heating object will give you the same HVAC equipment list.
To add equipment to the Named System "Ventilation", click the (add new) link next to the corresponding equipment object, maybe Air Handling Unit for example, and the same dialog box for adding equipment you saw earlier will appear.
Once again, we will use Option 2 to add a list of names to add Air Handling Units to this project. Naming conventions generally match what is reflected on the equipment schedule or other project documentation. If you have the equipment schedule in Excel you can copy that list and paste it right into the Option 2 text box. When you are finished entering or pasting the names click the "Add List Now" button.
The ability to create a new project is tied to the Permission - User can Add and Copy Projects. If you have this permission you will notice a plus sign icon next to the words Add New Project in the upper left hand corner of the User Portal page. If this icon is not visible then you do not have permission to create a new project. If the icon is available, you can access the screen displayed to the right by clicking the Add New Project link.
Adding a project into Building Start requires the minimum data of a Project Name, City, State and Country.
In the screen shot to the right you will notice a drop down for Location and also a link to Add Location before you actually enter project data. With the 3.5 update we have added in some database infrastructure to track and group projects by location if you want. If you do a lot of work for a hospital or university you could potentially have a number of projects tied to the same physical location. If you already have a location defined you can select it from the Location drop down menu and this would pre-fill all of the address information for your new project.
Below the Location drop down is a checkbox for automatically creating a new location using the address information that you type into the fields for the project you are creating. Every project must have a location associated with it, therefore, you must pick a pre-defined location from the drop down menu or check "Create new location using project data when adding a new project. Then simply fill in the rest of the relevant project information, select the appropriate Project Folder and click the Save new project button at the bottom of this window.
As you can see from the list of components there are different types of coils, economizers, fan sections, filters and VFD's. You only add the components to each Air Handling Unit as you need. One Air Handling Unit may have a Variable Frequency Drive and the next one may not. Add the VFD or any other component as needed, outfit each AHU individually as required.
If you have multiple components that need to be addressed with one object, then you simply add them with different names. Again, naming conventions are important, you can do whatever you want but it needs to make sense to people. For example, if I have an Air Handling Unit that has a Supply Fan and a Return Fan how would that be handled with the Equipment Tree's component level? You would navigate to the Component Level of the Equipment Tree as shown to the right and find the Fan Section tree object and click the (add new) link. Then using the Option 2 box again, you could add AHU-1 SF and AHU-1 RF or SF-AHU1and RF-AHU1. We need to be sure that the name incorporates the parent objects name into it rather than using a more generic name like Supply Fan or Return Fan. Please keep in mind that your Pre-Functional Checks or Installation Checks related to your fan would need to be setup in the Fan Section object in Detail Report Setup which is only accessible from the Admin Menu screen which is restricted from many users.
"What checks to place in what objects?" is more of a Detail Report Setup question which will impact users that pre-engineer jobs. What is being referred to here is what Installation Checks belong in the Air Handling Unit object versus the Fan Section object or maybe the Damper object. Please note that you do not have to use them all. In other words, let's say that your checklist for Dampers is two questions: "Verify damper linkage is tight." and "Verify that dampers move easily and without obstruction." The best place for these questions maybe in your Air Handling Unit object, leaving the Damper object un-used. On the other hand having all of the Installation Checks related to a VFD definitely makes sense to have the 20-30 questions you may have for that component in the VFD object as opposed to having all of the those questions in your Air Handling Unit object, Rooftop Unit object, and Pump object. In which you would have to ignore all of those questions when they do not apply. As was stated earlier, this concept is addressed primarily in the Detail Report Setup area, where administrators have made these decisions already. It is still important that users know which components a company is wanting to use versus which they will not. If you have any questions regarding which equipment to use, please direct them to your internal company administrator or contact Building Start Support via our 800 line or e-mail our support staff.
6. Add Range vs. Add List
In these first two examples, adding equipment to the system level and then adding equipment to the equipment level; we did it using the Option 2 box. As you can see there are two ways to add objects to the Equipment Tree. The first option is adding a range of equipment while the second option is to add a list of equipment names or equipment tags in the second box. As with the system level or adding a Named System; you can refer to your equipment anyway that you like, however, the recommended practice is to refer to equipment in the same fashion that it has been named on the equipment schedule of the plan.
Because equipment is rarely numbered sequentially in order, adding equipment to your Named System with the Add Range function is less effective than the second option which is essentially a text box that you can either type or paste into it anything you like. This is why we used Option 2 in the examples above and encourage users to have that be there default method for adding objects to the Equipment Tree. Additionally, if you have the Mechanical Schedule in Excel you can highlight the equipment names and paste them directly into the Add List text box and save yourself some typing.
If you do, however, encounter a project where you have a high number of unitary equipment and the engineer did number them 1-335, for example, this would be the time to use Option 1 and Add a Range of names rather than Option 2.
Refer to the screen shot to the right for tips on how to use the Add Range feature. The first thing you need to do is type in the base name for whatever object that is being added; in this example HP for Heat Pump. Next, you need to fill in the starting and ending numbers in the range sequence. Even though we have 335 total Heat Pump, there is a system restriction which only allows you to add 99 at a time. So, we start with 001 and end with 095. (We will discuss why we need to use the leading zero's in this example in the section right below this.)
Once we confirm that 95 Heat Pumps had been added, then we would repeat this process again only we would start with 096-190 and so on until we had added all of our Heat Pumps.
So, in the example with a high number of objects that are sequentially named and numbered; Option 1 Add Range is your preferred choice.
7. Equipment Naming & Numbering Conventions
Please consider how the Building Start platform will organize equipment names when adding them to the system. Numbers will be ordered ahead of letters. Numbers will be organized from left to right meaning that 10 will be listed before 2. So, when numbering larger groups of equipment be sure to insert a leading 0 to have the system order it the way you would expect (01, 02, 03 etc). If your numbering exceeds 99 then it will be necessary to have two leading zero's as was the case in the example above.
