View Plans Opening Locations - Managing Pins and Anchors

What are Pins and Anchors?

The terms of Pins and Anchors in general refer to the teardrop shaped icon in View Plans that displays on sheets to indicate where an opening is located. 

A PIN refers specifically to those locator icons that are automatically found on plans using the metadata of the PDF. Every time a user opens a set of plans, Overtur scans the metadata and text of the PDF and tries to match door numbers to locations where the text/meta data match the door number as a way to automatically locate openings.  That means the pin location might change every time the plan opens if the plan metadata / text changed, it also means that pins might be located in areas where the metadata had text matching a door number even if it didn't refer to a door.

An ANCHOR refers specifically to locator icons that are manually placed by a user.  When a user places an anchor, Overtur stores the page coordinates where that opening was manually located.  Every time a plan is opened after that, the opening is located using the anchored page coordinates rather than Overtur attempting to automatically align the page text/meta data and opening number.  The pros of this are that the openings will always be correct as long as the page information does not change from when the user located the opening.  The cons are that if the page changes or the plan shifts on the page, anchors will be incorrect until the location is manually set again.

How to identify a Pin from an Anchor
Because the difference between a pin and anchor is one is located by Overtur automatically and one has a location set by the user, there is visually no difference between a pin and anchor.  If a User needs to identify if a locator icon is anchored, they go to the Plan Tools menu (Right side of View Plans) and click "Delete Anchors" under the Anchor/Pin Tool set. If the locator icon turns orange, it is an anchor but if it remains grey it is a pin.

Managing Pin Locations in View Plans

A frequent question users ask is how they can delete or change the location of automatically placed locator pins. Overtur will automatically attempt to pin any opening that does not have an anchor and users are not able to directly delete/change the pin.  Because of this, the way users correct an incorrect pin location is to place an anchor for that opening in the correct location and that will automatically remove the incorrect pin.

If there is an opening that a user does not want located on the plans (ex. a site gate that has a door number of "A" might not be on plans, but a pin shows where there is a gridline label of "A") but it has a pin automatically located, the value entered under "Door Number" for that opening may be updated with a prefix or suffix that makes it unique from any text on the plan.  If Overtur can't find the exact door number text on the plan, a pin will not appear for that opening.

Managing Anchor Locations in View Plans

Users have several tools to allow adding, removing, and otherwise managing their Anchor locations in View Plans.  The tools can be accessed by going to the "Plan Tools" menu on the right side of the screen and expanding the "Anchors/Pins" toolset. 

Note: Users must have the "Hardware Consultant" Role and "Editor" status in the project to use these tools.  If you need to manage anchors for the plans and don't have access to the tools to do so, contact the project owner to have your role and status changed accordingly.