Here, you're going to learn about the Adept Designer. You’ll use it to create and manage fields inside Adept. If you want to add a new field for searching, extracting data from files, or populating a data card, you need to make those changes in the Synergis Adept Designer.
Before you start creating new fields, you have to stop the Adept Server. If the server is running as a service, select Adept Service, right-click, and choose Stop.
If you’re doing this during the day when lots of people are using the system, you might need to lock the system. This will prompt users to log out so you can make changes on the back end. For now, just stop the service, since that’s the next step.
After you lock it, go to your server and stop the service. This way, no one can log in while you’re making database changes.
Once the service is stopped, close the Task Manager. Then, launch the Adept Designer tool.
In Adept Designer, open the File menu and choose to open the Adept Database. You’ll need to enter the server name, database name, username, and password. At the bottom, choose the data type you’re connecting to. If you’re using Microsoft SQL Server, leave that option selected. Then, click Open.
You’ll get a message warning you that changes made here can’t be undone. If you want to undo something, you’ll have to delete the fields you added, but make sure there’s no data in them and they’re not already on a data card. Otherwise, you’ll need to follow a process to revert those changes.
For example, if a field is on a data card, you need to remove it from the card before you delete the field itself.
You’ll also see a warning about creating a backup of your database. I don't recommend using the backup option here. This is mainly for support purposes. So, when you reach out to Adept Support for help, sometimes they may ask you to do a backup from the Adept Designer. This creates an export of each individual table instead of making a proper SQL backup, which uses a BAT file.
Here, choose No because you don't need to make a backup at this time.
In the main window, you'll see three dialogs. The first one is the Database Editor, where you create and manage your fields. The Data Card Editor is where you place fields on specific data cards and the tabs within those cards. Then there's the File Guide Editor.
In this video, we're focusing on data card fields. You'll go through and create fields inside Adept. This helps you search faster and also extract data from documents.
For the first field you create, you need to specify a field name, a display name, the field type, the width and scale, and decide if you want it indexed.
Before you start, notice in the Database Editor, you see those same values along the top: name, display name, and flags. The flags show how the field stores data—whether it's extracted, protected, or just a character field that's open for everyone to edit and search.
Next, you have types—character, date, or numeric. You can also set the width and scale, which is how many characters fit in your field.
If you scroll down, you'll see a list of all the fields. If you started from a template or someone at Adept set up your implementation, these fields are probably already populated. Otherwise, you might be starting from a blank slate.
You need to collect enough information to create your data cards and extract documents in your system. It's important to enter this information here because this is a database change. This will drive how you search and extract your data in the Adept system.
For the field name, notice the naming pattern. You might see an A underscore, then the field name. If you scroll down, you'll see some people use C underscore. The C stands for character field, followed by the field name. For example, C underscore approval, approval one, approval two, approval three, and so on.
Now, you’re going to create a new field. Use the same naming scheme: start with C for character, then the name. For this one, use “cat” for category.
Let’s call it Design Category. That’s your display name. This will show up as the label for your field on the data card. Whenever you add new columns in your Adept environment and you search, this name will show up in the results pane as a column name. You can add or remove it to find things quickly.
Set the field type to Character. The width is set to 16 by default. If you don’t need that much, use 10 for your category. That should be enough.
At the bottom, you can enable indexing. This lets the system index this field, so you can find documents faster by searching for a category. You'll turn that option on.
The field scale isn't available. This setting is for decimal places when you use the numeric field type.
For now, go ahead and click OK.
Now, create a new field for Assembly Code. This will be your assembly code. Follow the same naming scheme you use with underscores. You'll choose Numeric, since that's the field type you need.
The numeric value will be four numbers. If you want decimal places, you can enter that here. For example, if you want two decimal places, you’d enter 2. In this case, you don't want any scale. You just want the four numbers, no decimals.
You can also choose to index this field. Since this is the assembly code, it’s important. Often, you need to search for content and find several documents by assembly code. So it’s a good idea to index this one.
Click OK.
Now, you’ll see your fields added in the Database Editor. Here’s the Assembly Code. That’s the field name in the database. The display name is Assembly Code. You have it indexed. That’s a flag for this field. The field type is numeric, with a length of four characters—so, four numbers.
If you scroll up, you’ll also see the character field for category, the Design Category. That field is indexed too, and the character length is 10.
Once these fields are created, go ahead and click Save. This will save your changes before moving to the next step.
The next step is on your data card. You need to select a data card where these fields should be populated. In this example, leave it set to Engineering. Then, go over to the Multi Layout Info. You’ll add a field here and another one on the right.
First, let’s add the Category field. Look for Design Category—it’s right here. Place the field here.
Now, find the other field. This one is numeric, and the name is Assembly Code. Find Assembly Code and place it over here.
On the data card, you can move these fields around as needed. You can do a window selection to grab the label and the field, then use your arrow keys to make sure everything lines up properly. You can move it up, right, or left—whatever you need.
You can also align these fields, so instead of the label being above the field, it can sit right next to it.
Now that you have your two fields on your data card where you want them, you’ll also see grips on these fields. Your Category field has a character length of 10. Go up and look for the category that has a length of 10.
This text box will automatically come in extended so 10 characters can fit. If you want to shrink this Category field because you’re not too concerned about seeing the entire value on the data card, you can do that. Or you can just leave it at the maximum width based on the number of characters.
You can make that field wider or shorter—as wide as the field can go, or shorter if you need more space to add more fields.
Now that your two fields are on your data card, save your changes again. This information is being written back to the Adept database.
Now you can close out of Designer because your fields are created.
After closing Designer, make sure you start the Adept Server again. Go into the Task Manager, open the Services tab, and select Adept Service. Right-click and start.
Now the Adept Server is running.
Next, log in to the Adept Server. You’ll see a document sitting in your work area.
Inside your Adept work area, you have a document currently checked out to you. You’re going to extract information from this file into the fields you just created.
First, make sure your fields are extractable. On the System tab, use the Database Fields button.
To administer these database fields, find the name of your database field. You have Assembly Code, and this field is set to false for Protected and Extracted. It’s true for Index because you checked the box in the Designer option. It’s also false for Restricted.
On the right-hand side, you’ll see different options you can turn on. These are the ones shown here.
You need your Assembly Code field to hold data extracted from your CAD engineering documents. In this case, you’re working with electrical drawings that have assembly codes written into the files as an attribute. So, turn on Extracted because you need to configure the plugin to pull metadata from the CAD files into this field.
Scroll down to your numerical field, which you called Assembly Code. That’s the Assembly Code that’s extracted.
Now, find the Category, C_CAT, and Design Category. You want to make that field extractable too. Then, click OK.
Inside your results window, you can right-click and add new columns. Here, you’ll add the new columns you created: Design Category and Assembly Code.
Right now, these two fields aren’t showing any values. If you select this document and refresh, this would usually pull the data from the CAD file and import it into your data card. But nothing’s happening yet.
To get this working and make sure the fields are in the system, go to your data card. Select the same tab in your data card where you added the fields.
You’ll see Design Category and Assembly Code. Both fields are blank because they’re extracted fields, but they are not linked to the CAD document yet.
To extract data from the CAD document into these fields, go to your System tab and Configure Plugins.
Since this is an AutoCAD drawing, you need the extraction to work for those file types. Your file extension is .dwg. Make sure that's turned on and that you can extract certain options—like attributes.
You can also extract layouts, relationships, and thumbnails. You can update the document, too. If you filled out information in that field on the data card, you can write that information back into the attribute inside AutoCAD if you need to.
This is a powerful tool and plugin for controlling your engineering documents.
Check that you have Extract Attributes enabled.
Now, you need to perform a scan to bring in your data. Remove anything that's already there. Select your work area. Inside your work area, select the drawing file, click Open, and then OK.
Now, the system scans the file and pulls all the metadata into the bottom-right section, showing available fields or data.
Now, you see a list of fields based on block name, the attribute inside that block, and the type of data.
Go down to where you see your block’s name inside the drawing file. Select the attributes you created. For example, Assembly Code.
Grab the Assembly Code and drag and drop it into this section. This creates a mapping between the Assembly Code field you made and the Assembly Code attribute inside your AutoCAD drawings.
Next, do the same for Category—Design Category. Select CAT from here, drag and drop it.
Now, that attribute links to the Design Category inside Adept from the drawing attribute named CAT.
Now, hit OK.
Select the same document from your Tools tab and perform a re-extract. The document is being extracted now.
If you look at the two columns in the Adept results pane, you’ll see “Electrical” and the assembly code “1001.” That matches what’s in the document.
Now, go back to your Home tab and look at the data card. That information is now populated.
That’s how you create fields to extract from documents and populate inside Adept. This lets you search faster and find documents quickly when you need to make design changes.
You can also go into the search card, switch to the same tab, and enter values here. This is how you search using these fields.
Let’s say your Assembly Code is 1001. Click the Search button and the system finds that document right away.
There are other types of database fields you can use. Some fields have restricted lists. You might already have one set up for restricted fields.
Let’s take a look.
Here, you see the Discipline field. Some drawings are sorted by discipline. If you open the data card for the Discipline field, you’ll see only these options to choose from.
If you hit Cancel here and go back to the data card and find Discipline, you can only pick one of those values. This way, you’re restricted to just the list of values for this field type.
Another database field option is Extracted, which you just saw when you extracted data from a CAD file.
There’s also Protected. Let’s find an example.
Here’s the O File ID. This is a file ID field that can be filled in on the data card, as well as the Project Name. Only certain people can change a project name.
Let’s go find that field.
Here you see the Project Number, and you can’t edit this field. Only certain people can edit a protected field, and that’s controlled by the library.
So, if you go into your User Groups Libraries and pick one of the libraries, you can add a group. When you edit this group’s rights on the library, that’s where you can edit protected fields.
Only certain people in the company can change the values in those protected fields.
That’s everything for creating new fields and checking out the different field types. It’s really important to know what kind of data is in your current files. That way, you can map them correctly in Adept and search those documents easily.
To learn more about the topics presented in this video, use the Adept Online Help at the top of the Adept window. Select the Help tab and then select the Topics button or the Manuals button to search for more information.
