Design Assistant Overview

Commands

Prerequisites

• A FireCAD project must be open

Overview

The Design Assistant is FireCAD's automated validation system. It checks your drawings for common design issues, data inconsistencies, and out-of-date reports. Results are displayed in a dockable palette with categorized findings and severity levels.

Steps

1. Type ATDESIGN_ASSISTANT in the AutoCAD command line
2. The Design Assistant palette opens (or becomes visible if already open)
3. Validation runs automatically against the active drawing
4. Results are displayed with severity indicators:
   • High (Red) — Critical issues that must be addressed
   • Medium (Yellow) — Warnings that should be reviewed
   • Pass (Green) — Checks that passed successfully

What Gets Validated

The Design Assistant runs multiple validation rules, including:

Device Connection Checks

• Unconnected devices that should have circuit connections
• Devices missing required input connections
• Circuit topology issues

Current Limit Checks

• Standby current exceeding circuit limits
• Alarm current exceeding circuit limits
• Current threshold warnings (approaching limits)

Battery Capacity Checks

• Required battery capacity vs. panel charging capacity
• Battery sizing validation per NFPA 72

Report Validation

• Out-of-date reports (data has changed since report was generated)
• Report fingerprint comparison for:
  • Battery Calculations
  • Point-to-Point
  • Lump Sum
  • dB Loss
  • Speaker Schedule
  • Device Schedule
  • Device Legend
  • Bill of Materials

Circuit Quantity Limits

• Device counts exceeding circuit quantity limits
• Recursive counting through child circuits (passthrough devices)

Rechecking Validation

After making changes to your drawing, you can recheck validation in several ways:

1. Click the Recheck button in the Design Assistant palette
2. Run ATDESIGN_ASSISTANT_REFRESH from the command line
3. Close and reopen the Design Assistant

Each recheck gets fresh data from the database to ensure accurate results.

Tips

• The Design Assistant validates based on database state, not drawing geometry — run ATAUTO_DRAW_CIRCUIT_WIREPATH before validation if you've changed wire routing
• Keep the Design Assistant palette open while working to quickly catch issues
• Use the validation results to navigate directly to problem devices in the drawing

Related Commands

• Refreshing Validation
• Validating the Active Drawing

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