Asset Hierarchies

The Asset Hierarchies section is where you define the overall structure of your operations in Tricloud Nexus. An asset hierarchy is a digital map of your physical or logical environment, capturing the relationships between different parts of your plant/sites or organization. It provides the foundation for contextualizing data, organizing assets, and enabling scalable, consistent deployments across your IIoT landscape.

What is an Asset Hierarchy?

An asset hierarchy represents the structured organization of your assets and equipment. By creating a hierarchy, you can model how your operations are organized in the real world - supporting everything from high-level enterprise sites down to individual machines and sensors. Asset hierarchies are essential for ensuring data consistency, enabling analytics, and streamlining deployments.

Here is a simple example of an Asset Hierarchy that models a single site called Dallas Factory:

The Asset Hiearchy follows the ISA 95 structure:

• Dallas Factory (ISA95 - Site) - Root Node of the hierarchy

  • Injection Molding (ISA95 - Area) - An Area within the factory where Injection Molding takes place

    • Press 103 (ISA95 - Line) - An Area in injection molding area that contains the Press 103 Line

      • Stamper (ISA95 - Cell) - An Asset of the Press 103 Line called Stamper. This is an actual machine/equipment containing sensors and data that can be read or written to

    • Conveyor Belt (ISA95 - Area) - An Area in injection molding area containing a conveyor belt

    • Cooling Storage (ISA95 - Area) - Another Area in the injection molding area containing Cooling facilities for the produced goods

  • Lab (ISA95 - Area) - Another Area within the factory that contains a Lab responsible for Quality Control (QC)

Nodes

Every Asset Hiearchy has a Root Node that contains audit information about the version of the hierarchy as well as letting you define a data store for the measurements of the hierarchy. Besides the root node, there are generally two types of nodes in an Asset Hierarchy; namely Areas and Assets.

• Areas - Area nodes are used to represent distinct zones or sections within your organization, such as sites, lines, departments or production areas. You can configure Data Connectors at the area level to establish connectivity with equipment within the area. Additionally, areas enable you to define Jobs for establishing workflows for files at Edge using FTP or FileShare protocols.

• Assets - Asset nodes represent individual pieces of equipment or logical assets within your organization. On asset nodes, you can configure Tags, which serve as identifiers for reading from, or writing to data connectors. Tags have a Measurement Type that can be Analog (numeric values), Digital (boolean), or String (text or JSON). Tag configuration is organized into sections for collecting, processing, and storing data. Asset nodes also allow you to host and configure custom Models (containers), connecting them to live operational data through input and output tags.

Both types of Nodes contains the possibility to add descriptions and Meta Data to the Area, Asset or Tag. Any meta data added to the nodes or tags will be available in the time series database upon deployment, ensuring that all contextual information is readily available for analysis and reporting.

Creating Asset Hierarchies

Creating a new asset hierarchy is simple:

1. Navigate to the Asset section within Designer

2. Click New Hierarchy which opens the Create Asset Hierarchy dialog

1. Provide a name and, optionally, a description for your asset hierarchy. You can also select a data store, which determines where the asset hierarchy and its metadata will be synchronized. The selected data store also defines where all associated measurements can be ingested. Click Create to create the hierarchy

2. An empty asset hierarchy is created. You can build your hierarchy from scratch, or import an exsisting asset hierarchy to use as a starting point

3. As you build your hierarchy, you can save your progress at any time, in which case the version of the hierarchy increases

4. If you make a mistake, you can always use the Asset Hierarchy selection drop down to select a previous version of the hierarchy, and continue to make changes. When you are happy just click Save again.

Tip: You can create multiple asset hierarchies to represent different sites, projects, or logical environments.

Adding Nodes to Asset Hierarchy

When you create a new asset hierarchy - or select an existing one from the dropdown at the top of the page - you can build your hierarchy by adding nodes to the tree structure.

1. Right click on a Node or left click the actions menu of a node to bring up a context menu with node actions

1. In the context menu, you can select Add Area or Add Asset to add a child node to the currently selected node of either type Area or Asset. Additionally you can use the menu, to rename the selected node, select an icon to represent the node or delete the selected node

2. Adding or Renaming a node puts the node into edit mode, and lets you specify a name for the Node

Importing and Exporting Asset Hierarchies

Tricloud Nexus supports importing and exporting asset hierarchies, allowing you to:

• Import existing hierarchies from allready exported hierarchy file (zip format) for rapid onboarding or migration from other systems.

• Export your asset hierarchy for backup, replication, or deployment to other environments.

This makes it easy to manage your hierarchies across projects, collaborate with other teams, or maintain consistent structures in multiple locations.

Importing an Asset Hierarchy

1. To import an Asset Hierarchy simply click the Actions menu and select Import in the dropdown menu.

1. The import Asset Hierarchy Dialog will appear.

1. Click Browse to navigate and select an Asset Hierarchy file to import

2. Select whether to import the Asset hierarchy as a new hierarchy or import it into an exsisting hierarchy (The currently selected hierarchy). In the above example, its chosen to import the hierarchy as a new hierarchy called 'Oregon Factory'

3. Select the Data store to use for the data of the hierarchy (meta data and measurements)

4. Click the Import button, and the hierarchy is imported

Exporting an Asset Hierarchy

1. To export an Asset Hierarchy you must first select the Hierarchy to Export in the Asset Hierarchy selection drop down.

2. Then simply click the Actions menu and select Export in the dropdown menu.

1. The Export Asset Hierarchy dialog will appear

1. Select the Version you want to export

2. Type the filename you want to use

3. Click the Export button and the hierarchy is exported

1. Click and download the hiearchy export file to your environment

Validate and Save Hierarchies

At any point during editing, you can validate your asset hierarchy to ensure structural integrity and catch configuration errors before deployment. Validation helps maintain high data quality and avoids issues downstream.

You can also save your hierarchy at any stage of the process, letting you work iteratively and collaborate with confidence.

Validate Asset Hierarchy

To validate a hierarchy first select the hierarchy to validate then simply click the Validate button which brings up the validation dialog. If the hierarchy in its current version cannot be validated, configuration issues will appear in the dialog.

Upon closing the the dialog, the Management Portal will hightlight where the validation errors are located in the hierarchy, by marking the Tree nodes, Tabs, Rows and details with red text. This makes it easier to locate and fix any validation issues.

Once the validation errors are fixed, running another vlidation check should show no errors.

Save Asset Hierarchy

You can also save your hierarchy at any stage of the process, letting you work iteratively and collaborate with confidence, simply by clicking the Save button, which brings up the Save Asset Hierarchy dialog.

A validation of the entire asset hierarchy is performed in the dialog, and any validation errors will be displayed. Asset Hierarchies can be saved, even though they contain validation errors, but they cannot be deployed to a device.

A save comment can be added in the Save dialog, which will appear as comments in the hierarchy revisions (versioning) of the hierarchy.