The Physical Workspace: Moving Devices

The Physical Workspace allows you to move your devices to various locations. You will first need to create new locations to expand your physical topology. In the Intercity environment, you can create cities with the New City button. You can place new buildings and closets directly onto the Intercity environment with the New Building and New Closet buttons. Similarly, you can create new buildings in the City environment and new closets in the Building environment. To keep things simple, you should create locations according to the established hierarchy.

New cities (and buildings and closets) always initially appear on the top left corner of the workspace. To avoid confusion, you should immediately rename and move them.

In this example, the default "Home City" is renamed to "San Jose," and a new city called "Irvine" is created. Inside San Jose is a building called "Cisco," which has a wiring closet called "MDF." Similarly, Irvine has a building called "Linksys," which has a wiring closet called "IDF." Initially, all devices are located in the MDF, including two routers named "Router0" and "Router1," which are connected via a serial link.

If, for example, you want to move Router1 into the IDF, you would first need to go into the MDF. Inside the MDF, click the Move Object button. Click on Router1, then go through the hierarchy to find the IDF and select Move to IDF. If you exit out to Intercity view, you will see a black line between Irvine and San Jose. The line tells you that there is a connection between the devices of these cities. In this case, the line represents the serial connection between Router0 and Router1.

You can quickly return to the default wiring closet in any environment by pressing the Working Closet button on the far right of the Physical Workspace Bar

In addition to moving devices with the Move Object button, you can also move buildings and wiring closets. The procedure is the same. Alternatively, you may use the Navigation Panel by clicking on the Navigation button to move devices. To move an object, drag and drop the appropriate object into the desired location. There are few restrictions on where you can move objects and devices. In general, something bigger cannot be moved inside something smaller; otherwise, all moves are possible. You can move buildings to other cities or directly onto the intercity. Wiring closets can be placed directly onto cities or the intercity view. Devices are not confined by racks or tables and can go anywhere. However, you should maintain their hierarchy to avoid confusion.