Creating Areas and Rooms
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There are two ways to deal with entering new areas and rooms. You can 1) enter them prior to adding the room contents, using the form provided for each type (top down), or 2) Enter them as needed while you enter the FF&E occurrences for a project (bottom up). The system is designed to make the second method as easy as the first, especially during the early stages of a project. 

You can also mix these methods as needed. The approach you use will depend on what is easiest to do with the information you have received. If you are simply creating a quick list of rooms, use the top down approach. If you are creating a complete list of all the items being proposed for each room, you can add areas and rooms as you need them. 

Finally, if you are creating a set of rooms that are very similar (containing a subset of the same items), you may want to create your rooms by first creating just a master room with the common items in it, then using the Room Screen's Clone button to duplicate that base set as the rest of the rooms, which would then be completed in the usual way on the FF&E Worksheet. This technique also works if you create the master room in a master project and then, in your current project, use the Room Screen's Add> Import command sequence to accomplish the same thing.

Top Down

  1. If you have not already, use Projects> Open> to open the desired project
  2. Click on the Areas button in the "Views" box. 
  3. Use the Add button to create new areas. The "Auto-Add" feature on the status bar (near the bottom right corner of the screen) can make entering multiple items easier.  Keep in mind that an "area" is normally a major subdivision of a project, not a single space (that is "areas" and "rooms" are not the same thing. See the Glossary for more).  The exception to this is that it is possible to have a single space large enough to be considered a major area.  In this case, you will have to create a room with the same name in it in order to place objects.
  4. Click on the Rooms button in the "Views" box. 
  5. Use the Add button to create new rooms, assigning them to the appropriate area. 
  6. If you happen to overlook an area you need, you can click on the small New button next to the "Area ID" on the Rooms screen to add a new one, and be automatically returned to the Rooms List when you save the new area.

Bottom Up

This procedure would be typical if you are starting with budgets for areas and rooms, and wish to start building the FF&E contents, adding the areas and rooms as you work. 

  1. As before, use the Open button on the Project Form if needed to activate a project.
  2. Select the FF&E Worksheet with the FF&E Wksh button in the "Views" box.
  3. On the Worksheet, use the Add button to begin adding occurrences of objects in rooms. 
  4. The basic procedure is 1) Pick the area/room in which you want to work,  2) Pick the object you want to place in it and then 3) Enter the quantity to place in that room.
  5. Note that the pick lists in the middle of the form show existing areas, room and objects for you to select when placing items in a room. If you are just starting this project, there won't be any yet, but the Worksheet allows you to add these directly as you need them.  Also note that these instructions also apply if you are editing an existing item in a room. For instance, you may want to move an existing object from its current room into a room that does not exist yet.
  6. If you need to work with a room or area that is not in the database, the system will let you add it "on-the-fly," using the Create New Area... and Create New Room... buttons below the corresponding pick lists. For instance, if you need to add a new area after selecting the Worksheet's Add function, click the Create New Area... button. When you do, the Area Form will appear with blank fields ready for you to fill. After entering information about the new area, you will click the "Save" button on the Area Form. This will add the area and return you to the FF&E Worksheet with the new area highlighted on the pick list. 

The three pick lists let you quickly tell the system where you want to work and then select an object to place in a room.
  1. Similarly, if you need to add a new room, click the Create Room... button. The Room Form will appear and you can enter the new room's ID, name, area and, if applicable, a budget.  Also, note that the Room Form itself will let you add a new area if you need one for the new room.
  2. Once you have selected a location and object and entered a quantity, either 1) click the Save command or 2) click the Save w/Auto-add command. The first saves your entry and returns you to the FF&E Worksheet. The second saves your entry and leaves you at the point where you can add another item (auto-add mode). You can cancel auto-add by clicking the Cancel button. 

Although this method works quite well for building a complex project, you should also be looking for opportunities to use the Room List and FF&E Worksheet screens' various Clone command to simply copy all or part of the contents of a entire room that is similar—but not exactly the same as a room you have just built.  This means that you would hold off on the creation of the similar room until the source room has the items in it that are the same.  See the Clone command on the Room List entry,  "Prototype-oriented Data Entry" and "Building Rooms with Cloning Techniques" for more.