Why Services matter
A single drawing can produce twenty or thirty marker groups: sprinkler heads, three pipe sizes of cold water, the heating flow and return, their bends and T-junctions. Left in one long list they are hard to scan and harder to price. Services let you divide that list into named sections, such as Cold Water, Heating or Fire Alarm, so each discipline reads as a block with its own groups.
Services do more than tidy the sidebar. The Live Legend can lay its rows out by Service, the Excel export gets a Service column and a subtotal per service, the mask picker lists groups under their Service, and Auto Takeoff files each Service's fittings into its own Bends and T-Junctions groups.
Services are not Categories. Categories organise the drawings on the project page. Services organise the marker groups inside one drawing, and each drawing has its own set.
Where Services live
Services appear as collapsible sections in the marker sidebar as soon as the drawing has at least one. Every group that is not assigned to a Service sits in a trailing Ungrouped section. Each Service header has a collapse arrow, the Service name, and a menu.
The list of Services for the drawing is also in the sidebar toolbar, under the AoIs, Legends & Zones dropdown, in the Services section at the bottom.
Creating a Service
- 1
In the sidebar toolbar, click AoIs, Legends & Zones.
- 2
Scroll to the Services section and click New.
- 3
In the New Service dialog, enter a Name (e.g.
Hot Water). The name must be unique on this drawing. - 4
Click Create, or press Enter.
The new Service appears as an empty section in the sidebar. You can also create one from any group's Move to Service submenu with New service..., which creates the Service and moves that group into it in one step.
Assigning a group to a Service
There are three ways to put a group into a Service.
From the group's colour swatch
- 1
Click the group's colour swatch (or template thumbnail for a Detection group) in the first column of its row.
- 2
At the bottom of the popover, open Move to Service.
- 3
Pick the Service. Choose New service... to create one, or Remove from service to send the group back to Ungrouped.
Move to Service is in the colour swatch popover, not in the menu. The Live Legend group is the one group that cannot be moved.
By dragging the row
Press and hold on the group's header row for half a second, then drag. The row dims and a small chip with the group's colour, name and count follows the pointer. Drop it anywhere on a Service section to assign it, or on Ungrouped to unassign it. Moving the pointer during the hold cancels the drag, so keep still until the chip appears.
By making a Service active
If you are about to create several groups for one Service, make it the active Service first and every new group lands there automatically.
- 1
Click on the Service header.
- 2
Choose Create new groups here. The header is tinted and a pill with the Service name appears in the sidebar toolbar.
- 3
Create your groups as normal. Click the pill's when you are done to stop.
Renaming, reordering and deleting
All three actions are on the Service header's menu:
| Menu item | What it does |
|---|---|
| Rename | Turns the name into an inline field. Enter saves, Esc cancels. |
| Move up / Move down | Reorders the section. Sections cannot be dragged; use the menu. |
| Delete service | Asks Delete Service? and explains that its groups are not deleted, they move back to Ungrouped. |
The Services list inside the AoIs, Legends & Zones dropdown also has a per Service, and that one deletes immediately with no confirmation. The groups still move to Ungrouped rather than being lost, but the Service order and name are gone.
Reset Drawing clears the drawing's Services along with its markers, so a reset drawing does not reopen with a list of empty sections.
Where Service subtotals appear
The sidebar section header does not show a subtotal. Service totals surface in three places:
- Live Legend — click Group by service on the Live Legend row to lay the legend out by Service, with an Ungrouped block at the end. See The Live Legend.
- Excel export — when a drawing has Services, its worksheet gains a Service column, rows are ordered by Service with Ungrouped last, and a Service totals block below the groups lists each Service with its group count, total count, total length and total area. See Understanding the workbook.
- Mask picker — groups are listed under their Service, with a mask all link per Service. See Mask view.
Services and Auto Takeoff
When Auto Takeoff or Auto Detect Linear samples a pipe run while a Service is active, the linear groups it creates and the Bends and T-Junctions groups for their fittings are all filed under that Service. Two Services each get their own Bends group rather than sharing one drawing-wide bucket, so fittings are counted and priced per service. Dropping a pipe size onto a masked run also files by Service, so two services drawn in the same colour stay in separate priced groups.
Next steps
- Mask view — isolate one Service on the drawing with the mask picker's mask all link.
- The Live Legend — show your Services and their totals on the drawing itself.
- Understanding the workbook — where the Service column and Service totals rows land in Excel.
- Sizes, bends, T-junctions and reducers — how Auto Takeoff names and files the groups it creates.