Locations and Infrastructure
This page describes how to create locations and infrastructures in Pathfinder.
In Pathfinder, it is possible to define nested infrastructures and therefore, accurately reproduce realistic construction conditions for buildings, floors and rooms. This can be done easily from the Navigation module in the sidebar.
Create Location
To create a new location, click on the navigation icon (1) on the sidebar (Alt + N). Click the add location, building, floor or room button icon and select Location (2) from the drop down menu.
Fill out the information for your new location (3) and select OK to add your location on the map.
You can also attach files belonging to the nested location directly to it via the Documents tab.
You can create and manage buildings, rooms, floors and components in a similar way as well.
Create Building
You can create buildings for your location from the navigation module. Click on the add button and select building from the drop down menu similar to adding a location.
You can also select a building on the interactive map (1), right click on a building block and click on add building (2) from the drop down menu to add the building to your location.
Fill out the new building information and click on OK.
You can create multiple buildings for a single location.
You can add and remove infrastructure from the nested hierarchy by dragging them in or out of locations, buildings, etc. in the navigation sidebar window.
Create Floor
After you have created your buildings, you can add floors to your building in the same way.
Right click on your newly created building from the navigation section or map and select add floor (1) from the context menu.
Fill out the information for your floor and click OK. Repeat this process until all your required floors are created.
Double clicking on the building name in the navigation sidebar module will take you inside the building where you can see your floor definitions. You can also add floors to your building from inside the building through the context menu.
Inside your buildings you can create a detailed overview of the site by loading a background image by right clicking on the map, selecting Background (1) from the drop down menu and clicking on load (2). You can set a image file as the background of link the image file from your local files.
For buildings, you have the option to generate pre-rendered views of the background. This is also possible inside the created floors.
Specific to floors, you can load an AutoCAD .DWG file as the background image.
You can edit the viewing area using the (3) zoom in and out, scale to best fit and resize components in design mode (F12) options available in the bottom right corner of the screen.
You can also arrange the floor object size in design mode (4).
Create Room
Once the floors are created, enter one of the floors to start creating the rooms in the same way as the buildings and floors were created. Select add room (1) to insert a room object in the floor.
Right click on the map screen area and turn the room limit active on (2) and define the scale (3) of measurements to create components in the room to scale. To define the perimeters of room (4) Click on the Design mode (5) or press F12 and resize the room area limit.
For more information about design mode, formatting and other visuals in Pathfinder, go to: Visualization.
Define Room Limit
With the room limit active checked, click on the design mode or press F12 to enter design mode.
Select the room for which you want to define the perimeters. A blue interactive box will appear around the selected room. Resize the box to define the perimeter of your room.
Right click on the room and select Background from floor from Background option to use the room perimeters from the floor as the background of that room.
You can also import multiple rooms at once from an AutoCAD .DWG file as the background image by importing it from the DWG background.