Using the Design Assistant

After creating a design, you can proceed with design work using the Design Assistant, which provides a workspace for constructing the work locations of the design as well as tools for assigning facilities and compatible units. The Design Assistant also provides optimization tools.

Performing Design Tasks with the Design Assistant

With the Design Assistant, you can perform the following design tasks:

Select a different job default for the design. The job default determines the default attributes of facilities and other settings. See About Job Defaults. Any job default that you select within the Design Assistant applies only to the current design session. The design's permanent job default is determined by the Job Default setting on the Design Properties dialog box.
Create a design layout with work locations, either by retrieving point and span data from a path in the GIS or by manually creating paths, points, and spans. The type of path you select in the Design Assistant determines how Bentley OpenUtilities Designer interprets your sketch on the GIS map and then generates the required work locations. See Constructing Paths and Work Locations.
Assign features from the Feature Catalog to selected work locations. See Using the Features Catalog.
Assign compatible units from the Units Catalog to selected work locations. See Using the Units Catalog.
Edit the attributes of assigned features. See Editing Attributes of Assigned Features.
Customize assigned compatible units. See Customizing Assigned Units.
Optimize the design. See About Electric Optimization.
Define the boundaries of the design. See Working with Design Bounds.
Add construction and field notes to a GIS design sketch. See Working with Comments and Leader Lines.
Print a cost estimate, bill of materials, and other reports. See About Reports.
Plot a GIS design. See About Reports.

Opening a Design in the Design Assistant

When you want to begin constructing the layout of a design or make changes to the existing layout, you have several ways of opening the design in the Design Assistant window.

From the My Designs view:

Double-click the design.
Right-click the design and choose Design Assistant from the shortcut menu.
Select the design and click the Design Assistant button on the Actions toolbar (see Using the Actions Toolbar).
Select the design and choose Design Assistant from the Go menu.

From the My Work view (for attached and associated designs):

Double-click the attached or associated design.
Right-click the attached or associated design and choose Design Assistant from the shortcut menu.
Select the attached or associated design and click the Design Assistant button on the Actions toolbar (see Using the Actions Toolbar).
Select the attached or associated design and choose Design Assistant from the Go menu.

From the Find dialog box:

Right-click the design and choose Design Assistant from the shortcut menu (see Finding Designs and Design Templates).
Right-click the work request to which the design is attached and then choose Design Assistant from the shortcut menu (see Finding Work Requests).

If the design contains any unresolved work locations, opening the design in the Design Assistant window will automatically launch the Spatial Wizard (see Using the Spatial Wizard). Work locations are flagged as unresolved when a non-GIS design (offline or template) is converted to a GIS design. For more information, see Changing the Format of a Design.