Aspect Help

Entering Inspection Data

This topic will walk you through the steps necessary to take an infrared reading of a piece of equipment and mark that equipment as Inspected.  This section presumes you've already completed the following steps, outlined by earlier topics in Common Tasks:

• Created a new database
• Created a site and inspection
• Activated the site
• Activated the inspection
• Created a new location and equipment
• Set up your auto-sequenced fields for today's inspection.

Once you've completed all of the above tasks, the following steps will help you enter infrared data in the most efficient manner:

1. When first entering the location, determine if the ambient temperature is going to be consistent throughout the location.  If so, you can take one ambient temperature reading and enter it in the location's default ambient temperature field.  If not, leave this field blank.  To set the location's ambient temperature:

1. Select the location in the Locations & Equipment tree view.
2. In the location's detail area, Location Data section, set the ambient temperature of the location.

Note that the ambient temperature of a location is not persistent.  That is, it is not saved in either the customer or global database because the ambient temperature in the location can obviously fluctuate wildly over time.  It is only meant to be used for the duration of time you're conducting the inspection in that location.  Therefore, the ambient temperature of a location will be empty every time Aspect is restarted or a customer database is opened.

2. Select the equipment you are inspecting in the Locations & Equipment tree view.
3. In the equipment detail, select the component you are inspecting in the Inspection Point Components box.  Most of the time, in the case of something like a small to medium sized transformer or electrical panel, the equipment will only have one component named Primary Inspection Point by default.
4. In the Component Data box to the right of the Inspection Point Components box, press the Fill IR Data and Equipment/Component Defaults button or press F8.  Here are a few notes about what to expect when pressing that button:

• If the equipment does not have a barcode and the barcode auto-sequenced field in the ribbon bar has a value, the barcode will be filled in for this equipment.
• If the equipment does not have a manufacturer and a default one was specified in the parent location's default manufacturer field, it will be filled in for this equipment.
• If the currently selected component's Barcode checkbox is checked and the barcode auto-sequenced field in the ribbon bar has a value, the barcode will be filled in for that component.
• The ambient air temperature will be filled in if one was specified in the parent location's ambient current air temperature field.
• The temperature threshold will be filled in if either of these conditions are true, and in this order:

1. If the selected component has been inspected before, the temperature threshold of the most recent previous inspection will be used.
2. If the selected component has a component type, the temperature threshold of that component type will be used.

• If any of the auto-sequenced image fields have valid values, those will be filled in for the appropriate image(s): equipment, infrared, and daylight.

5. In the best case, the only field left for you to fill in will be the measured temperature.  If so, the cursor will jump to that box and be ready for you to enter that value.  If any other temperature data is missing, the cursor will jump to the highest text box with a missing value (temperature threshold, then measured temperature, then ambient temperature).
6. Once you enter the measured temperature for this component, you can mark this component (and possibly equipment) as inspected in one of two ways:
1. If more components need to be inspected on this piece of equipment, left-click on the inspection status for this component and choose Inspected or press F11.  Jump back to step 3 and repeat the steps until all of the components have been inspected.
2. If this is the only component or the last one to be inspected, either left-click or right-click on the inspection status and right-click on Inspected or press F12.  This will mark the component as inspected as well as the equipment.

For more information on setting the inspection status for a component, see The Component Data Section in the Equipment Detail topic.

7. Once all of the components have been inspected and you did not set the component inspection status using method #2 in step #6, set the equipment inspection status to Inspected.

You can obviously set the inspection status for a component or piece of equipment to anything you want.  We just used Inspected here to illustrate a typical case.  However, using the shortcut keys F11 and F12 will always set the status to Inspected (or Inspected (No IR Data) with the Ctrl key).

A majority of inspections where you are collecting infrared data for equipment in Aspect is simply a matter of repeating these steps for every piece of equipment and component you need to inspect.  Obviously, you need to Document a Problem if one is found, and this topic did not go into the detail of setting every piece of equipment and component data that Aspect tracks.  For more information on these other fields, see the topic on Equipment Detail.