The 3D designer draws a site as a building model: levels with walls, doors and windows that make rooms, and items placed from libraries, such as pumps, tanks, racks, conveyors, vehicles and people. A design is drawn once and then attached as a 3D view to devices and sites, where its items are connected to live values.
Open the designer
Open 3D Designs in the IoT menu and select New design, or Open an existing one. The designer opens in place of the list; the region is named “Designer:
Without Create, edit and delete 3D designs you can look but not change: “You can view the designs. Changing them needs the permission to edit 3D designs.”
The designer header
| Control | Does |
|---|---|
| Plan / 3D | Switch between the floor plan and the 3D view |
| Panel | Open the designer’s panel again (rooms, the library, levels) |
| Section box | Clip the model to look inside |
| Grips | Show handles to move and resize items |
| Save | Store the design |
| Save automatically | A per-browser switch, off by default |
| Publish model for dashboards | Export the saved design as an IFC model for 3D model cards |
Building
Draw on the plan, one level at a time:
- Levels (storeys): add, rename and switch levels. A Design, live (3D) card can draw one storey or all of them.
- Walls: draw them; the rooms they enclose are found for you and can be named.
- Doors and windows: place them in walls.
- Columns, slabs, stairs, zones and roofs: for the structure and to mark areas.
Every saved item, room and level gets a readable key. A site’s status colours and drill-down clicks find a room or level by its key: when it equals the code of an asset under the site, that room takes the status of the devices in it (see 3D views and Asset kinds, codes and attributes).
Items
Place items from the library in the panel: pick a tile and click on the plan, or drag the tile. Each item:
- starts at a real product’s standard size, and can be resized in its Width, Depth and Height fields; emptying a field returns to the standard size;
- can be moved with its X and Y fields or the grips, turned and labelled;
- is warned about when it overlaps another item or stands in another item’s clearance.
Duplicate, Paste and Make array copy items; the copies’ labels count on (“Pump 1” → “Pump 2”, “P-101” → “P-102”).
Libraries
| Library | Contents | Access |
|---|---|---|
| Basic shapes | Boxes, cylinders and other simple shapes | Free |
| Home | Home items, including the 3D twins of the Home library’s appliances, electronics and kitchen symbols | Free |
| Core set | The 3D twins of the core 2D symbols | Free with the SCADA module |
| Industry libraries | The 3D twins of the Process, Building, Power, Water, Oil and gas, Heavy industry, Factory, Food and pharma, Hydro, Telecom, Textile and Plastics libraries | Opened by the same purchase as the 2D library |
| Mobility | Road and rail vehicles, railway track and people | Bought on its own; no 2D twin |
Every vehicle follows one standard: one kind of vehicle is one 3D item, with working lamps (tail, brake, reversing, indicators and, for emergency vehicles, a light bar), so vehicles from any library look and behave alike.
Locked libraries
The designer offers the items of the libraries your organisation holds. A notice names the others (“Not open: … Their items are not offered in the library. Items of these libraries already in a design keep drawing and can be moved or removed; new ones cannot be added.”), and More 3D libraries (N not included in this workspace) lets you look at What
A save that adds items of a library you do not hold is refused: “This change adds items of a 3D library this tenant does not hold (…). Undo it to keep saving.” Moving, editing or deleting placed items never needs the library.
If the libraries cannot be checked, only the free items (basic shapes, home, core set) are offered, with Retry: “The 3D libraries could not be checked, so the design was not saved. It will be saved with your next change, or press Retry.”
Links between items
Items join through ports the way 2D symbols do: pipes, hoses, cables, wires, strips, conveyors, ducts and trays, routed in 3D with fittings. A link starts at its port’s size and is named by its ends, for example “pipe Booster set → Ground reservoir”. Conveyor belts can carry goods along running belts. Links take part in live state like 2D connections.
Saving
- The designer saves only on Save, unless you turn on Save automatically in this browser. “Unsaved changes” shows while an edit waits; then “All changes saved”.
- Leaving with unsaved changes asks first (Discard changes or Keep editing). Closing the tab asks the browser.
- If someone else saved meanwhile: “Your changes are not saved yet. Keep your version (it replaces theirs) or load the saved one (your changes are dropped).” Choose Keep my version or Load the saved version.
- A design the designer cannot read opens read-only and is never saved over: “The designer cannot read the stored design, so it is not shown and nothing is saved over it.”
Connect items to devices
Items are connected on a device’s or a site’s Views, not in the designer. Attach the design as a 3D view, then use Edit symbols or Match everything. See Binding symbols to live data. Rather than drawing a plant from scratch, you can let Hermetry lay one out from a 2D drawing: see 3D views.
Limits and requirements
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Designs per organisation | 200 |
| Browser | WebGL required |
| Display screens | 3D is not shown on display links |