Items and Groups

Using the same context menu described here, it's possible to add both items and groups. While an item is an individual entity, a group is a collection of the same item type. E.g. you could define a group of documents, or a group of dredging areas.

Since normal assets can contain child elements it's perhaps a natural question to ask, 'what is the purpose of groups?'. The answer is twofold; firstly, it allows for a more rigid data structure to be enforced when required and tends to improve the organisation of the project when used correctly. Secondly, because the items in the group have the same properties, the software can summarise items within a group. For example, if you define a group of dredging areas, the software can give you the volumes for each dredging area, but it will also give you the total volume for the dredging group. If you added these dredging areas as children of a generic element, for example, you would not be able to see these totals.

As well as taking a collection of individual items, a group can also accept another group as a child element, provided that it is of the correct asset type. This allows for complete flexibility in laying out how the data should be summarised.