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Relationships
Relationships describe the connections between your assets.
Each relationship has a start point, an end point and a direction. For example, a light switch feeds power to a light-bulb in the ceiling, so in this case the 'Power' relationship between the two moves from the switch to the bulb.
ARDI uses relationships to provide detail about how your various assets are physically and logically connected.
Relationship Types
Relationships fit into three major types…
You can click on the names above for detail, but as a basic summary…
Physical Relationships define actual, physical connections between assets, such as power cables, network connections, piping or WiFi network links.
Logical Relationships describe non-physical associations, such as describing concepts such as…
- Is A Tool For
- Controls
- Is Next in Sequence
- Is Dependent On
These sorts of relationships are usually not obvious when you are out in the field, since there isn't the same physical connection as found in physical relationships.
Hierarchical Relationships describe how assets are associated based on some form of logical hierarchy
Avoiding Cycles
While ARDIs relationships can be quite complex and involve many forks and branching paths, it is not able to deal with cyclic relationships - a relationship where a line turns back on itself and comes back to the start.
However, these relationships are common in the field, in closed-loop systems such as cooling and hydraulic systems.
To get around this - while at the same time making the relationships between your assets even more informative - we suggest splitting loops such as this into two relationships.
In a hydraulic closed systems, you can have a 'Hydraulic Supply' and 'Hydraulic Return' relationship, which then clearly marks if the oil within the hydraulic line is travelling to where it is used, or from where it has been used.
Similar Relationships
In some applications your media remains the same as it passes through your process - for example, the water being pumped through your cooling system may change temperature, but it's always water.
However, in other applications, it's the processes job to change the media into different forms.
A good example of this is in mining, where rock crushers usually send the crushed material to a screen, which separates it into small pieces and large pieces. The small pieces fall through the screen and continue the process while the large pieces are diverted back around to be crushed again.
At each stage, the media has a different name. For example, 'Coarse Ore' is fed into the crusher, but 'Granulated Ore' comes out through the screen on the other side.
If you have these relationships, try to ensure that you have common words between the various relationship names. ARDI will use this as a hint that they are related, and will in some places offer extra navigation hints based on this fact.
Ie. if you reach the end of the coarse ore relationship in a diagram, you'll be shown any granulated ore relationships that are present, as these might indicate a point where your ore has changed state.
Administering Properties
See the article Managing Relationships to see an example of how new relationships are created, existing relationships are edited, and useless ones removed.