Automated Scopebox Creation

Creating Scope Boxes Automatically with AutoScopebox

AECInspire's AutoScopebox tool reads the rooms on an open floor plan sheet and generates scope boxes for all of them in a single pass, pulling room names directly from the tags shown on the sheet. What used to be a manual, room-by-room exercise now takes a few seconds to a couple of minutes, leaving you with a colored, named set of scope boxes ready for review. This guide walks through running the automated detection, performing QA/QC on the results, editing scope boxes after they are placed, and creating one manually when the tool misses an area such as a corridor.

What You Will Be Able to Do

• Generate scope boxes for an entire floor plan automatically
• Correct room names that were blocked or missed during detection
• Exclude areas that should not become scope boxes
• Resize, move, and update an existing scope box
• Draw a rectangular or polygon scope box manually

Before You Begin

Three conditions determine how much cleanup you will do after detection:

Part 1: Run Automated Scope Box Detection

1. With your floor plan sheet open, go to Scope Boxes in the upper left corner of the screen.
2. In the window that opens, select the scope box automation option on the left.
3. Click Detect Rooms. Inspire begins analyzing the sheet, identifying rooms and applying naming from the visible tags.
4. Let the process run. Detection typically takes a few seconds and no more than about two minutes. You can leave it processing and continue other work in the meantime.

Note: Naming depends entirely on the tags shown on the sheet. If a tag is not visible, Inspire creates a generic name rather than leaving the scope box unnamed — so a generic name is a signal to check the sheet, not an error.

Part 2: Review the Generated Scope Boxes

When detection completes, every scope box populates on the sheet at once. Inspire assigns each room a different color automatically, giving you a clear visual spread across the plan, and tags each scope box with its room name directly on the sheet.

Scan the sheet for two things:

• Generic names — Room 1, Room 2, and similar. These indicate no visible room tag was found at that location.
• Detected areas that are not rooms — bathroom stalls inside a restroom, for example, are commonly picked up as separate spaces.

Part 3: QA/QC the Scope Box Names

Correcting a name takes two clicks. In the example below, classroom CR 262 was identified correctly, but the adjacent room came back generic because a data symbol was covering its tag.

1. Click the scope box on the sheet. Inspire highlights the matching entry in the list on the left-hand side automatically.
2. Update the name in the left-hand list to match the room — CR 260, for example — and move to the next one.

For a more methodical pass through every room, use the navigation control instead of hunting on the sheet:

1. Scroll through the scope box list on the left.
2. Click Navigate to Room on any entry. Inspire centers and highlights that room on the sheet so you can confirm the name against the drawing and update it.

Part 4: Remove Areas That Should Not Be Scope Boxes

Detection is deliberately inclusive, so it will pick up spaces you do not want — individual bathroom stalls being the most common. There are two ways to exclude them:

Tip: Double-clicking on the sheet is the faster method when you are working visually through a plan. Reach for the list when you are already reviewing entries one at a time.

Part 5: Create the Scope Boxes

1. Once you have finished the QA pass — names corrected and unwanted areas unchecked — click Create All Selected Scope Boxes.
2. Inspire places every selected scope box on the sheet.

At this point you have moved from a detailed drawing to full installation drawings in a fraction of the time a manual pass would take.

Part 6: Edit an Existing Scope Box

Scope boxes remain editable after they are created, so you can adjust coverage as the drawing develops.

1. Locate the scope box in the list — scroll to it or navigate to it on the sheet.
2. Open the drop-down on the scope box tool and click the pencil (edit) button. This lets you move the scope box or edit its area.
3. Drag the grips that appear on the boundary to capture a larger area or reshape the coverage.
4. Click Update. Inspire updates both the scope box and the contents inside it.

Part 7: Create a Scope Box Manually

If detection misses an area — a corridor is the usual case, since it lacks a conventional room boundary — you can draw one by hand using the same tool.

1. Go to Create New in the scope box window.
2. Name the scope box — Corridor, for example — then click Check and Save.
3. Choose a shape: Rectangular for a simple boundary, or Polygon for an irregular one such as a hallway.
4. Click Start, then click along the perimeter of the area you want to capture.
5. Press Enter to close the shape. Inspire connects the last point back to the first.
6. Save. The new scope box is added to your existing scope box list alongside the automated ones.

Key Points to Remember

• Visible tags drive naming. Turning room tags on before you run detection is the single biggest reduction in QA time.
• A generic name usually means an obstructed tag. Check the sheet before assuming the room is untagged.
• QA before you create. Correcting names and unchecking unwanted areas before clicking Create All Selected Scope Boxes is faster than editing afterward.
• Automated and manual work together. The automation is built to speed up the bulk of the work; manual creation stays available for anything it does not catch.