The Benefits of Logical Group Programming

Many people rely on Graphics View to see what is going on in their building. In addition to setting up graphic views, CBAS also has the ability to create logical groups and user-defined groups to display all of the points relating to each part of a building in a clean, organized format. It’s easy to create new groups and edit existing groups to get the information you need when you need it.

Logical Groups are a way of grouping points logically so that you can find them easily. It has nothing to do with the English Language Logic that is used in CBAS to command and control your building. 

For example, you can group all of the points for a floor of a building, the central plant, or a single data hall within a data center. You can put all AHU Start/Stop points or all Supply Temps in a group. There are also subgroups that can be used to group all of the points of a certain type of equipment, like AHUs, VAVs, and meters, for each floor of a building. You can see this in the following picture.

Generally, all of the points for the equipment will be shown in a Logical Group, and usually, not all of those points are shown on the Graphic Views. Only the most important points are usually included in a graphic in order to make it easily readable.

In the example above, there are too many points to crowd into a Graphic, and that’s not even all of the points for this particular SCU. In this example, there are 45 points relating to the SCU.

Like I said earlier, it’s easy to create and edit logical groups. It is advised that you make a backup of the database before editing. The backup utility can be found at the top of the Database Menu.

Refer to the first picture in this article as you go to Text View, Logical Groups then Edit Logical Groups.

To add a new group, click Insert then bring your cursor down to the list and you will see a blue line in the list. Move it to where you want to locate the new group on the list, then click again and a window will pop up. 

Or click the Edit button then click a Group name on the list. On the final screen of this article, you will see the points in the database on the left. Click a point on the left and it will be highlighted and shown on the right side, which is the list of points in the new group. To select a list of points, click the first point then hold down the shift key and select the last point on the list and all in between will be selected. In the top right, give your group a name and possibly make it a sub of another group. 

There are further instructions for this feature in the CBAS Programming Manual under Viewing the Database, Text View section. The manual can be downloaded from our website along with lots of other information: computrols.com/Support/Documentation.