Areas

The Areas node is a core building block in any asset hierarchy. Areas are used to model the logical or physical zones that make up your operation - such as sites, departments, production lines, rooms, or any other organizational level relevant to your business.

By structuring your hierarchy with nodes of type Area, you can accurately reflect your real-world organization, making it easy to contextualize data, manage access, and maintain clear separation of equipment and workflows.

What is an Area?

An Area is a node type designed to represent a distinct section of your environment within an asset hierarchy. Areas help you group related assets, equipment, and data flows under a common context. For example, in a manufacturing facility, you might create Areas for each production line, packaging zone, or quality lab.

Areas are not limited to physical locations - they can also be used for logical segmentation, such as separating test and production zones, or grouping equipment by process or function.

Key Features of Areas

  • Hierarchical Organization Areas can be nested, allowing you to build multi-level structures (e.g., Site → Building → Production Line).

  • Data Connectors Configure data connectors directly on an Area node to establish connectivity with the equipment or subsystems within that area. This ensures data collection is logically organized and managed at the appropriate level.

  • Job Configuration Define jobs at the Area level to automate workflows such as moving files from the edge to custom modules for processing or move the files to the cloud using supported protocols (e.g., FTP or FileShare). Jobs can also be used to transfer files from the Cloud to Edge and the production floor.

  • Meta data and Description Add descriptions and custom meta data to any Area, ensuring all contextual information is available throughout the platform and as contextual information in the time series database.

  • Flexible Grouping Use Areas to isolate environments for security, reporting, or deployment - such as separating by customer, department, or use case.

Example

A typical hierarchy with Areas might look like this:

- Copenhagen Plant (Area)
  - Packaging Line 1 (Area)
    - Labeler (Asset)
    - Conveyor (Asset)
  - Quality Lab (Area)
    - Test Bench 1 (Area)

Areas are the foundation for organizing your digital twin, enabling scalable asset management, clear data flows, and flexible deployment across your IIoT landscape.

Creating an Area Node

To add an Area to your Asset Hierarchy:

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

The Node actions menu

  1. In the context menu, you can select Add Area to add a child node of type Area to the currently selected node. 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

You can continue to add child Areas or Assets within any Area node, allowing you to build a detailed, multi-level representation of your operation.

Set Area Information

In the Area Info tab, you can provide key details that define and identify your Area:

  • Area Name The display name for the Area as it will appear throughout the hierarchy.

  • ISA-95 Alias An optional alias used to influence how tags for child assets are named, in alignment with the ISA-95 standard. For example, setting the alias to S1 will result in any child Tags being named as AE.S1.A1.Tag1. Refer to the ISA-95 documentation for further details.

  • Icon Choose a custom icon to visually represent the Area node, making the hierarchy easier to navigate and interpret.

  • Description Optionally add a description for the Area. This description provides additional context and is stored in the time series database, enhancing the traceability and documentation of your digital environment.

The Area info Tab lets you specify Alias for ISA 95 structure as well as a description for the Area

Set Meta data for Area

You can add additional contextual information to the Area using Meta data which can be added as key/value parameters.

  1. Select the Area node in asset hierarchy

  2. Make sure you select the Area info tab of the Area

  3. The Meta data dialog will appear on the right side of the page

  4. Click Add property and specify a Property name and Value then click the Save icon

Meta data is added to an Area, in this example the physical address of the Site

Metadata for all nodes and tags is automatically made available in the time series database after the hierarchy is deployed. For guidance on accessing and querying this metadata, please refer to the Intermediate Queries section.

Best Practices

  • Model your organization as you would describe it to a new employee or partner - each Area should reflect a logical grouping that makes sense for navigation, reporting, and access control.

  • Use Areas to separate different physical locations, lines, departments, or operational functions for maximum clarity.

  • Add metadata to Areas to enhance data contextualization and simplify later analysis or integration.

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