tl;dr

A bit more to read:

In Maintenance Connection, your root asset has to be of type Location, or none of the ones off of it have a location even if they or their parents have a 'location' type.

This is because the definition of the location of an asset is to go all the way up the tree to the root asset, then read all the ones that are of type 'location' until you come to one that is of type 'asset'.

Once you hit one of type asset, any children or grandchildren etc.., that happen to be of type 'location' are NOT used in the location definition for themselves or deeper assets.

In the tree, location show only the name. In the tree 'asset' (not location) show name [id]

And a bit more:

If it helps, think of

• Location type as "Assets that are or have a location, and assets that have even 1 children that is a location."
  • Imagine a building
  • Imagine a manufacturing room where an injection molder is the 7th in the 3rd row of machines - location might matter to you. Or it is 12 metres South and 6 metres West of the NE corner-location might matter to you.
  • Imagine a truck, that has a device that sends out it's location once a minute, and you are using our API or DataHub to read those values in and update the location-location might matter to you on the truck, but not on the child assets like engine etc.., Just knowing where the truck is is enough.
• Asset type as "Equipment that location doesn't matter to us or it isn't tracked"
  • Doesn't matter, as you'll see if you read the example below, you might not care that the boiler is in the NE corner of the boiler room, after all it is filling up 90 starting from the NE corner.
  • Isn't tracked, it's on wheels and it's location changes and you don't care that it's location changes. On the other hand a forklift, while movable, you might care about the location it parks in at night so you might want it to be a 'location'.
  • The engine in a vehicle. You may or may not want to track the location of the vehicle, as above, but chances are - you don't want to track the location of the engine - it is in the front (or back) of wherever the vehicle is currently located, so the vehicle location is what you care about, and the engine level it's just an asset/equipment.

Details:

Display in tree

If it is type is Location,

in the tree it shows the ID

If it is type Asset

it shows the Name [ID]

Unless the name and ID are identical, in which case it only shows one

Why you have to have everything a location until you get to one of type Asset

If it helps, think of 'Location' type assets exactly that way "Assets that have a Location"

Think of 'Asset' type assets as "Assets where you don't care about where you don't care about it's location relative to it's parent"

So, is a root asset a Location? If you want Locations for anything - then yes it has to be a Location.

Is a city a location? Yes, especially if anything in it you want to be a location

Is a building a location? Yes, especially if anything in it you want to be a location

Is the floor of a building a Location type? Yes, as above.

Is a room in a building a Location type? Yes, as above

Is a boiler in room 6 of the basement floor a Location type? Depends ... do you care that it is in the NE corner of room 6, if yes, it is a location type.

Is the igniter on the boiler a Location type? Probably not.

Example of why you might want a non-location type in the wrong place:

And why it HAS to be a location type anyway.

Consider in the example above you have a level between building and floor, and here you split into "private" and "public" areas. So then a copy of each floor is in both private and public. And now you are thinking "This private and public isn't "a" location, so it shouldn't be a 'location' type asset conceptually. But if it isn't, then floors, rooms etc.., also can't in a practical way be Location type. Sure you can mark them as Location type, but they won't work as Location type because, as above, as soon as MC works down the tree and finds something that isn't a Location type, it stops looking for Location information on assets deeper in the tree.

MyCompany (location type)

• Calgary (location type)
  • Main Building (123 main street. location type)
    • Private areas (you MIGHT think this should NOT be a location type, but it has to be because of the children being location type)
      • basement (Location type ... it's in the basement)
        • boiler room (location type)
          • boiler (MAYBE a location type)
            • Gas connection (likely Asset type, if boiler is asset type then this has to be asset type)
            • Steam Drum (likely asset type, if boiler is asset type then this has to be asset type)
            • Circulator Pump (likely asset type, if boiler is asset type then this has to be asset type)
            • Combustion chamber (likely asset type, if boiler is asset type then this has to be asset type)
              • igniter (likely just an Asset type, if Combustion Chamber is asset type then this has to be asset type)
        • laundry room (location type)
      • 1st floor (location type)
      • 2nd floor (location type)
      • Grounds (location type)
      • Roof (location type)
      • PowerConverter (asset/equipment type because we don't care about it's location)
    • Public areas (location type and again you MIGHT think this should NOT be a location type.)
• Toronto (location type)

Note:

Rotating parts has to be of type 'Asset'