Brick tag dictionary

The Brick tag dictionary is an instance of the standard Niagara Smart Tag Dictionary and does not contain any custom properties or actions. There are no custom views associated with this dictionary. The dictionary contains a collection of definitions for tags, tag groups, relations, and tag rules.

To create a Brick tag dictionary, establish a Fox connection to the station. In the brick palette, select the Brick component and add it to the TagDictionaryService container on the station.

Starting with Niagara 4.15, you have three tag dictionary components available for installation from the brick palette:

  • The main Brick tag dictionary includes tag groups that contain tags derived from the Brick schema subclass and hasAssociatedTag information.

  • The BrickHasTagsOnly dictionary in the AlternateBrickTagDictionaries folder contains tag groups with tags derived only from the hasAssociatedTag information .

  • The BrickSubclassesOnly dictionary in the AlternateBrickTagDictionaries folder contains tag groups with tags derived only from subclass information.

Overview

A Brick schema organizes entities of a building into a class hierarchy, where each level is a more specific version of its parent. In Brick, the types are defined as a hierarchy of classes.

The Brick tag dictionary contains a library tag groups, relations, and rules that enable a Niagara station to be modelled using Brick semantics defined in the Brick ontology. As a station is being constructed, these dictionary elements can be applied, or they can be applied to components of an existing station. The Brick tag dictionary does not contain any custom properties or actions, and it has no custom views associated.

Module information: The brick-rt module, which needs to be installed on your station, implements a Niagara Smart tag dictionary to support modelling a system using the Brick schema. This module has a dependency in the tagdictionary-rt module, which is required for any tag dictionary.

The Brick tag dictionary contains the following definitions for tag groups, relations, and tag rules:

  • Brick subclasses: Brick schema entities can be declared a subclass of another entity. These are modeled as tag groups in the dictionary. The subclass hierarchy elements are included as tags in a tag group. For example, the airHandlingUnit tag group includes subclass entries for hvacEquipment, equipment, and entity.
  • Brick hasAssociatedTag: Many Brick schema entities have a hasAssociatedTag property. These are modeled in the dictionary as tag groups. For example, the airHandlingUnit tag group includes tags for air, equipment, handler, handling, and unit.
  • Brick aliasOf: A few Brick schema entities are declared as an alias of another entity. For example, the Brick AHU entity is an alias of the Air_Handling_Unit entity. Alias entities are included in the Brick dictionary as tag groups with the same contents as the originating entity tag group.
  • Brick class: Each tag group includes a class tag with a String value of the Class name declared in the Brick schema. For example, the airHandlingUnit tag group contains a class tag with the value "Air_Handling_Unit".
  • Brick Id: Starting in Niagara 4.15, the id tag has been removed from the dictionary.
  • Brick inverse relations: Most of the relationships defined in the Brick schema have associated inverse relationships. For example, if one entity has a bk:isPartOf relationship to another entity, there is an associated inverse bk:hasPart relationship. In these cases, when you apply one of these relations between two entities in a station, the dictionary rules will imply the inverse relation between those two entities.


Note: The Haystack smart tag dictionary and the Brick tag dictionary can run simultaneously.