Cut, Copy, and Paste

One of the most powerful features of the Locations & Equipment tree view is the ability to cut, copy, and paste locations and equipment.  This allows you to quickly create entire sites where the locations and equipment is common in different places.  For example, a building might have several floors that each contain electrical rooms that have the same number and types of electrical panels, transformers, and disconnects.  Once you have one floor defined as a root location with two electrical rooms as sub-locations, and each of those rooms contain 10 pieces of equipment, you can copy the entire floor to the clipboard (Ctrl+C) and paste it (Ctrl+V) to create a new floor containing the two electrical rooms and all of their equipment.  In fact, you can copy the original room once and paste it several times to create several floors full of equipment in seconds.


Cutting locations and equipment to the clipboard allows you to move items around the tree view, similar to dragging and dropping.  Cutting and pasting instead of dragging and dropping is handy when dragging the location/equipment would have to move over a lot of items in the tree view.  Instead, you can cut the location/equipment to the clipboard (Ctrl+X), select the target item you want to move the cut item to, and paste (Ctrl+V).

You may only copy and paste locations and equipment between sites.  Cutting and pasting locations and equipment between sites is not allowed because it is impossible to correlate existing inspection data attached to those locations and equipment between the sites.

Cutting and Pasting Problems

Aspect also allows you to cut and paste (but not copy) problems between locations and equipment, and components.  This feature is intended for those times when you inadvertently document a problem in the wrong location, component, or piece of equipment.  The following conditions must be met to allow cutting and pasting problems:

    1. You may only cut a problem that has no parent problem (that is, you cannot cut a recurring problem).
    2. You may only cut a problem that has no recurring problems or repairs.
    3. Only visual problems may be pasted into locations.

To cut a problem, simply select the problem in the problem documentation section of the location or equipment and right click on it.  If you are able to cut the problem based on the above conditions, a popup menu will appear allowing you to do so.  To paste a problem, select the destination location, equipment,  or component and right-click anywhere in the problem documentation section.  If you are able to paste the problem based on the above conditions, a popup menu will appear allowing you to do so.

Note that you cannot cut a problem from the problem list directly--it must be done in the problem documentation section of the location/equipment detail.