03_Know Your Workspace: A Tour of the AECinspire Sheet View Tools (4:59)

 

Overview

This video is a lay of the land for the AECinspire user interface as you see it with a sheet open. Once your project is created and your files are uploaded, this is the screen you will spend your working day in. The narrator walks the three toolbars — left-hand authoring tools, right-hand review tools, and the bottom navigation toolbar — and points out which ones you will use constantly and which are covered in more depth in their own videos.

What you'll learn

• Where every authoring tool lives on the left-hand toolbar
• How AECinspire sets sheet scale automatically and how to calibrate it when the sheet is wrong
• How to document a sheet with live tables, text boxes, and screenshots
• How the IQ window and the shared IQ Notebook work together
• Which review tools live on the right-hand side — layers, properties, overlay and compare, view settings
• How to navigate sheets fast with the bottom toolbar, the select tool, and the three cursor modes

 

Before You Begin

Create your project and upload your files first. This video assumes you are already inside a project with a sheet open — everything described here is on the sheet view, not the dashboard.

Your left-hand toolbar may not look identical to the one in the video. Assemblies, parts, and pieces are stored per company, so if your company has an entire library saved, your categories will differ.

 

Part 1 — Get Oriented: The Three Toolbars

The sheet view is organized around three toolbars. Knowing which side of the screen a tool lives on is most of the battle.

Toolbar	Location	What it holds
Authoring tools	Left-hand side	Scope boxing, Inspire Search, assemblies, Connections, Quantities, linear distance, tables, text boxes, screenshots, IQ Notebook, project settings
Review and display tools	Right-hand side	Undo, layers, properties, sheet tools (overlay and compare), print PDF, view settings
Navigation toolbar	Bottom center	Pan and select, cursor modes, scale, sheet number navigation, opacity/transparency, symbol and tag resizing

 

Part 2 — Work the Left-Hand Authoring Tools

Everything on the left-hand side is a tool you author with. Work down the toolbar in the order the narrator covers it.

1. Open the scope boxing tool. This is where you kit and scope box areas of the sheet.
2. Open Inspire Search. This houses all of the smart count tools — general smart count, devices and fixtures, and tags.
3. Open Assemblies. Your stored assemblies and parts and pieces live here, organized into categories.
4. Open Connections. This is used as the workflow advances beyond initial takeoff.
5. Open the Quantities tab to see the quantities produced by your work on the sheet.
6. Select the linear distance tool to dimension a sheet.
7. Take a test dimension against a known length before doing any real length work.
8. If the test dimension is off, go to the bottom center toolbar and adjust the scale.
9. If the sheet itself was produced at the wrong sheet size, use the calibrate function instead of changing the scale value.
10. Use add table to place a live, dynamic table on the sheet.
11. Configure the table. As you place items, the table populates with everything you detail.
12. Use a text box to put sheet notes on the sheet.
13. Use screenshot to capture a note or a detail. Screenshots are accessible at any point in the project.
14. Save the capture into Screenshots.
15. Note that an IQ window opens by default when you open a sheet.
16. Start prompting IQ directly from that window.
17. Click expand to open the full IQ window. The full window gives you access to Inspire Searches, your favorite prompts, and more.
18. Push a response from IQ into the IQ Notebook so the rest of the project team can see it.
19. Close the IQ window while you are detailing to free up screen real estate.
20. Locate the pan and select tools on the bottom toolbar.
21. Leave the toolbar on select.
22. Navigate the sheet using the grab function with your mouse scroll wheel rather than switching tools.
23. Highlight the sheet number field in the bottom toolbar.
24. Type the sheet number you want — for example, sheet 18.
25. Press Enter on your keyboard. The view jumps straight to that floor plan.

Note: Your assembly categories reflect your company's saved library. If your company has a full library loaded, your toolbar will not look the same as the one in the video.

What the Quantities tab holds

BOM	What it covers
Assembly BOM	Assembly bill of materials, per sheet
Wire BOM	Wire bill of materials
Supplier BOM	Bill of materials organized for the supplier

 

Part 3 — Dimension Sheets and Confirm the Scale

AECinspire senses the scale on the sheet and adjusts automatically, so sheets arrive scaled. The exception is a sheet that was printed or exported to PDF at the wrong sheet size — the scale reads correct but the geometry is not.

Best practice: Always take a test dimension. If you are doing anything with length on any sheet, it is always worth a test dimension just to make sure that sheet is scaled properly.

Situation	Fix
Scale not detected or detected incorrectly	Adjust the scale in the bottom center toolbar
Sheet printed or PDF'd at the wrong sheet size — right scale, wrong dimensions	Use the calibrate function

 

Part 4 — Document the Sheet with Tables, Text, and Screenshots

Note: The add table output is live. It is not a snapshot — it updates as you continue placing items.

 

Part 5 — Use IQ and the Shared IQ Notebook

The IQ Notebook is a shared notebook. Anything pulled out of IQ can be pushed into it, and everyone with access to the project can open the notebook and see the notes you have pushed into the system.

Note: Closing the IQ window does not lose your work — reopen it when you need to prompt again.

 

Part 6 — Open Project Settings

Project settings sits in the lower left corner of the sheet view. It is covered in more detail in a later video in this series.

 

Part 7 — Review Tools on the Right-Hand Side

Tool	What it does
Undo	Steps back your last actions
Layers	Controls sheet layers
Properties	The panel you will work in for a large share of your time on a sheet
Overlay and Compare	Sheet tools for comparing sheet revisions against one another
Print PDF	Prints the sheet to PDF. Sheet-by-sheet print only at this time
View Settings	Turns tags and leaders on and off, and hides or shows annotation tags

Note: Print PDF is a sheet-by-sheet print right now. There is a separate video that covers the print PDF function in detail.

Best practice: View Settings has a lot of features built into it. Spend time in it early — turning tags and leaders off is the fastest way to read a congested sheet.

 

Part 8 — Navigate with the Bottom Toolbar

Best practice: Leaving the toolbar on select and using the scroll-wheel grab lets you navigate the sheet much faster, because you are not scrolling back and forth between the pan and select commands.

Change your cursor

There are three cursor modes.

Cursor	Appearance	When to use it
Default cursor	Simple pointer	General work
Crosshair cursor	Crosshair	Precise placement
Custom cursor	Full-length hash mark	Popular when routing conduit and squaring up 90s

Jump to a sheet

Adjust what you see

Control	What it does
Scale	Sets or corrects the sheet scale
Show / hide	Shows or hides sheet content
Opacity / transparency	Adjusts sheet transparency
Resizing tool	Resizes the symbols and tags on the sheet

 

Part 9 — Knowledge Base and Project Users

The Knowledge Base is accessible from the top of the sheet view. You can also manage the users on your project from here.

 

Quick Reference

What you need	Where to find it
Scope boxing and kitting	Left-hand toolbar
Smart count tools (general smart count, devices and fixtures, tags)	Inspire Search, left-hand toolbar
Stored assemblies, parts, and pieces	Assemblies, left-hand toolbar
Connections	Left-hand toolbar
Assembly BOM, Wire BOM, Supplier BOM	Quantities tab, left-hand toolbar
Dimension a sheet	Linear distance tool, left-hand toolbar
Change sheet scale	Bottom center toolbar
Fix a sheet printed at the wrong sheet size	Calibrate function
Live dynamic table	Add table, left-hand toolbar
Sheet notes	Text box, left-hand toolbar
Saved captures	Screenshots
Shared project notes	IQ Notebook, left-hand toolbar
Full IQ window	Expand, on the IQ window
Project settings	Lower left corner
Undo, layers, properties	Right-hand side
Overlay and compare	Sheet tools, right-hand side
Print a sheet to PDF	Print PDF, right-hand side (sheet by sheet)
Turn tags and leaders on/off	View settings, right-hand side
Pan and select	Bottom toolbar
Cursor modes (default, crosshair, custom)	Bottom toolbar
Jump to a sheet number	Bottom toolbar — type the sheet number, press Enter
Opacity / transparency and symbol resizing	Bottom toolbar
Knowledge Base and project users	Top of the sheet view

 

Troubleshooting

Issue	Resolution
Dimensions come out wrong even though the scale looks right	The sheet was likely printed or PDF'd at the wrong sheet size. Use the calibrate function rather than editing the scale value.
Not sure whether a sheet is scaled properly	Take a test dimension against a known length before doing any length work on that sheet.
Scale was detected incorrectly	Adjust the scale in the bottom center toolbar.
Your assembly categories do not match the video	Assemblies are company-specific. If your company has a full library saved, your categories will differ from the demo.
Constantly switching between pan and select slows you down	Leave the toolbar on select and use the grab function with your mouse scroll wheel.
Sheet is too congested to read	Use view settings to turn tags and leaders off, or hide annotation tags.
IQ window is taking up too much of the screen while detailing	Close the IQ window to free up screen real estate; reopen it when you need to prompt.
Print PDF will not print the whole set	Print PDF is a sheet-by-sheet print at this time. See the separate print PDF video.
Symbols or tags are too small or too large on the sheet	Use the resizing tool in the bottom toolbar.

 

Next Steps

Continue to the next video in the series: Creating Folders and Uploading Floorplans.