For Visio Professional 2007 to track data in a space plan, you must uniquely identify each space with which you want to associate assets, equipment, people, and other resources. Even if your floor plan shows walls and rooms, you also need it to show space, as Figure 26-7 shows. This is a unique requirement of the Space Plan template that doesn’t necessarily make intuitive sense, but it’s how Visio 2007 keeps track of what goes where. The useful thing about tracking assets and people by space rather than by rooms or cubicles is that you can designate any area you want as space regardless of what your floor plan looks like.
Your drawing must include spaces, but what does that mean? In Visio terms, space in a floor plan is a shape—the Space shape. There are two general methods of adding spaces to a floor plan: either import it, or use space shapes. If you used the information in Chapter 18, “Laying Out Floor and Site Plans,” to create a floor plan, you know that you can draw a floor plan in Visio 2007 that already includes spaces for every room. If, however, you imported a graphic or CAD file to use as a floor plan, you’ll have to add spaces to the drawing. You can add spaces by dragging space shapes on top of rooms, or you can import a list of room numbers or other similar data to designate spaces in your floor plan.
The easiest method is to include both rooms and spaces from the outset by creating a floor plan in Visio 2007 using wall and room shapes that include space shapes automatically. That method is described in the section titled “Using Space Shapes to Start a Floor Plan” in Chapter 18. However, that information doesn’t particularly help you after the fact. The sections that follow describe how to add spaces to an existing floor plan that doesn’t already have any spaces.
Once your drawing includes spaces, each space must be uniquely identified. A unique identifier isn’t anything fancy; typically, it’s a room number. For example, to uniquely identify the space associated with a particular office, you could use 12-117 to specify office 117 on the 12th floor of a building. Depending on the method you used to add spaces to your drawing, you might need to manually identify each space. If you imported data, each space might already include a unique identifier. The value of unique identifiers for spaces is that they allow you to associate assets, people, and equipment with a given space.
Note
If areas in your floor plan don’t have room numbers, give them unique names that will make sense to people using the space plan, such as Kitchen 1 or Kitchen West.
If you already have a floor plan drawing, but haven’t yet designated the spaces for which you want to track resources, you can import that information. If you have a spreadsheet, database, or other external data source that includes a column or record of room numbers or other unique identifiers, you can import that information with the Import Data Wizard (of course, you can also do this with the Space Plan Startup Wizard). Visio 2007 adds the information to the floor plan in the Explorer window, as Figure 26-8 shows, and you can then choose which spaces to show in the floor plan drawing.
The space data you import is stored as part of the facilities model that Visio 2007 maintains. This means that the information about a space is available and Visio 2007 can track assets for it whether or not it appears on the floor plan. The spaces are listed in the Explorer window under the Unplaced Data category. By dragging a space listed in the Explorer window onto the drawing page, you add a space shape to the floor plan.
Visio 2007 also tracks other attributes of a space as shape data associated with the space shape. When you import room numbers or other space identifiers from a spreadsheet or database, you can also choose to import other information from your data source. Visio 2007 can create new shape data fields that store the values from your data source, or you can map the values to existing shape data fields. For example, space shapes already include a field called Space Use. If your data source includes a field or column of information about how a space is used—for example, Room Name—you can map the Room Name information from your data source to the existing Space Use field.
To import space information into a floor plan, follow these steps:
1. | Choose Plan, Import Data to start the Import Data Wizard.
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2. | Choose where you want your data to go. Each selection provides a preview and explanation in the Preview section of the dialog box. |
3. | Follow the instructions on each screen to link to your data source and specify the fields containing space information. For details about each wizard screen, see the section titled “Using the Import Data Wizard” later in this chapter. |
4. | Click Finish. Visio 2007 imports the data. If you selected the Show Report check box, Visio 2007 opens your browser and displays the Import Data Report, which lists all the spaces it imported and the action it took. “Unplaced” means that the spaces were added to the Explorer window but not placed on the drawing page. |
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6. | Click to expand Unplaced Data, and then expand Space. The column data or fields you imported as space identifiers are listed. |
7. | Drag a space from the Explorer window onto the drawing and drop it on top of the room, office, or area to which the space information corresponds. Visio 2007 creates a space shape and sizes it to fit the room if the room was created with Visio 2007 shapes. If you’re dropping space on top of nonwalled areas or an imported floor plan drawing, the space shape is not sized to fit. |
8. | If a space shape doesn’t fit in an office or area, select the space, and then drag a selection handle to resize it manually. Make sure that space shapes don’t overlap. |
9. | To see the properties that you imported with the space, choose View, Shape Data Window, and then select a space on the drawing. |
Note
If the Shape Data window is open, you can see the properties associated with each space as you select it. Then you can verify that the data you imported was added correctly.
Your floor plan probably already includes spaces if you see areas with green diagonal lines (the default fill style for the space shape), as Figure 26-9 shows. If your Visio floor plan doesn’t have space shapes, though, or if you’re using a CAD drawing or graphic for your floor plan, you can add space shapes to the drawing manually. The technique is simple but it can be time-consuming, particularly if your floor plan contains many rooms or offices. After you’ve added a space shape for every room in the floor plan, you need to assign a room number or other unique identifier to each space. You use the space shape’s shape data to do this. That means manual data entry, another time-consuming process, but you do it only once.
Inside Out: Checking spaces in Visio floor plansIf you’re using a Visio floor plan, you might already have a space shape for each room in the floor plan. To verify, select a shape, and then choose Format, Special. (Choose Tools, Options, select the Advanced tab, and turn on the Run In Developer Mode check box to see the Format, Special command.) If it is a space shape, you’ll see Master: Space at the top of the Special dialog box. Visio 2007 adds a space shape automatically when you use the Room shape to create a room. In addition, when you start a floor plan by designating spaces, you have the option to create space shapes when you convert the spaces to walls. |
Follow these steps to manually add spaces to a floor plan:
Note
After you position space shapes on an imported CAD or graphic floor plan, you can hide the layer that contains the CAD or the graphic image so that your drawing is less cluttered. To hide the layer, choose View, Layer Properties, and then uncheck the Visible column for the graphic or CAD drawing layer.
When you’re setting up spaces in a floor plan, you can designate special areas by using the Boundary shape on the Resources stencil. The Boundary shape is useful for calculating square footage for areas that include multiple rooms or spaces. You can also use it to denote spaces that belong to a particular department or function. The Boundary shape just gives you another way to track information in your space plan. It’s listed in the Categories view of the Explorer window and appears on the page as a dotted line that encloses the spaces you specify, as Figure 26-10 shows.
You can’t associate people or assets with a boundary, but you can use a boundary to track space usage. Boundary shapes include shape data for space use, name, department, phone number, occupancy, and capacity. In addition, you can give a boundary a unique space identifier.
To add a boundary around spaces in your floor plan, follow these steps:
1. | Drag the Boundary shape from the Resources stencil onto the drawing page near the offices or areas you want to put a boundary around. |
2. | Drag a selection handle on the boundary shape to stretch the shape so that it encloses the area you want. |
3. | If the area you want to enclose isn’t rectangular, edit the boundary shape. To do this, select the Pencil tool, hold down the Ctrl key and click the edges of the boundary to add vertices, and then drag the vertices to reshape the shape. For details about editing with the Pencil tool, see the section titled “Editing Shapes with the Pencil Tool” in Chapter 22, “Drawing and Editing to Create New Shapes.” |
4. | If you want to indicate the purpose of the bounded space, display the boundary’s shape data, and then type in the Space Use field. To display the boundary’s properties, you can either open the Shape Data window (choose View, Shape Data Window), or right-click the boundary, and then click Properties. |
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6. | To display a name on the boundary shape, select the boundary, choose Plan, Label Shapes, and then select a property to use for the name. |
For details about labeling shapes, see the section titled “Displaying Labels on Shapes” later in this chapter.
Troubleshooting: Text looks fuzzy after adding Boundary shapes to a floor planThe Boundary shape includes a 70 percent transparent fill that is barely discernible but has the side effect of making shapes underneath look somewhat washed out. If shape text looks less readable after adding a Boundary shape to your floor plan, you can try one of the following:
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