The hierarchical structures used in Bentley Facilities Manager form the foundation on which the structure of the FM Model is based. In building a computer model of an organization's corporate structure,or the sites and buildings it occupies, it is important that this structure is correctly reflected in Bentley Facilities Manager's hierarchies. These hierarchies not only allow movement about the FM Model in an intuitive way but also set up the structure of the model that provides the power of Bentley Facilities Manager's reports and queries.

Bentley Facilities Manager supports different parallel hierarchies. Navigation can be carried out using any of these. The demonstration model delivered with the product contains two hierarchies, organization and location, but other hierarchies(such as heating zones, fire compartments, and so on) can be created by customization where required.

These hierarchies are used in every aspect of Bentley Facilities Manager. They are the means by which every asset in the database is allocated to areas and organizations. For example, a desk is automatically linked to a room when it is placed. This room can be linked through the hierarchy to a department and, of course, to the owning zone, floor, building,and so on. These links then allow you to create a report listing, for instance,desks by department.

Bentley Facilities Manager provides tools to allow you to create areas of several predefined types, for example floor, zone and room. The list of types can be added to if required. You can also create logical Organizational entities such as companies, divisions and departments. Both the logical and physical items can be linked together in one or more hierarchies that reflects the structure of the organization being modeled.

The Browse window then allows you to view or navigate down these hierarchies to find the area that you are looking for. The Navigate window of Bentley Facilities Manager allows you to view or navigate down these hierarchies to find the area that you are looking for. By creating the hierarchy to reflect structures that are familiar to users, a quick and easy way of finding information is created. Bentley Facilities Manager provides two such classes of hierarchies by default, Location and Organization. Additional classes can be added if required.

As the hierarchies are parallel and concurrent, the Browse window Bentley Facilities Manager offers many different ways to find the same information. For example, in the location hierarchy you might find a room by looking in a site,a building, a floor and then a zone. In the Organization Hierarchy you could look in a division of the company, a department and then find the same room.

To display location and organization hierarchies

1. In Bentley Facilities Manager, right-click in the Navigate window and choose Navigate > Top.
2. Right-click again and choose Links > Location Link.
3. Right-click one more time and choose Links > Organization Link.
4. The top-level entry of the selected hierarchies appears in the list.
You can expand the hierarchies by double-clicking the entries or clicking on the + symbol to the left of each entry. Those that have entries below them expand.