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Feature Focus: Hardware Groups & Multi-Door Openings
AVAproject ‘Hardware Groups’ are an innovation variation on Hardware Schedule headings introduced by AVAware many years ago. By allowing users to use single Hardware Groups to create multiple headings, the time spent completing hardware specifications and assigning hardware to individual openings can be dramatically reduced.
The key to this feature lies in the fact that dissimilar opening types, even those with different sizes and door quantities, can share the same Hardware Group. When AVAproject generated the project’s Hardware Schedule, headings are automatically separated and arranged based on industry standard rules and user preferences. Put differently, a single Hardware Group can results in the automatic creation of a virtually unlimited number of Hardware Schedule headings.
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Hardware items within the group are assigned to doors within a given opening based in the role of each leaf. Quantity columns are used to define if and how many of each item are to be used on the active and inactive doors. In addition, hardware items (i.e.: power supplies) can be placed “off door” to indicate they are used by an opening, but are not positioned on any specific leaf.
Multiple Active Doors 
| On rare occasions, openings may be designated as “double active” – having two active leafs. The most common example of this are ‘double egress’ openings.
In the event one needs to specify different hardware on each of the two active leafs, they simply need to use a notation showing in the adjacent image. Multiple ‘active’ (or ‘inactive’) doors can be individually specified by using multiple quantities separated by commas.
In the example shown, the hardware item on the first line of the group (“L1”) is assigned to the first active leaf, while the hardware on the second line (“L2”) goes to the other. |
Multi-Door Openings Another application that often requires hardware to be specifically assigned to an individual door leaf is in the case of multi-opening openings. This refers to “openings” that contain a series of openings (singles or pairs) with it.
Typically these are drawn using AVAcad, and an example of such an opening is depicted to the right. It contains a pair of doors with a single surrounding it on either side. (3 sub-openings in total)
The “sub-openings” as they’re referred to in AVAproject, are numbered from “1” to “3” beginning from the left. Hardware can be specifically assigned to any or all of them by using the “Sub-Opening Number(s)” column in the Hardware Group (depicted below).
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| The first hardware item, with no sub-opening numbers given will be placed on all openings. Each leaf (‘active’ and ‘inactive’) will receive 3 of them. The second hardware item, however, will only be assigned to sub-openings “1” and “3” (i.e.: the two outside singles). While the third will only appear on sub-opening “2” (i.e.: the ‘active’ leaf of the pair).
NOTE: these features can also be combined for an additional level of specificity. For example, one can specify one of two ‘active’ doors on a specific sub-opening.
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The power and flexibility of the AVAproject Hardware Groups extends to even the most unusual of openings.
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