The Physical Workspace

The purpose of the Physical Workspace is to give a physical dimension to your logical network topology. It gives you a sense of scale and placement (how your network might look in a real environment).

The Physical Workspace is divided into four layers to reflect the physical scale of four environments: Intercity, City, Building, and Wiring Closet. The intercity is the largest environment. It can contain many cities. Each city can contain many buildings. Finally, each building can contain many wiring closets. The wiring closet provides a view that is different from the other three views. This is where you actually see the devices that were created in the Logical Workspace; positioned in networking racks and on tables. The three other layers provide thumbnail views of their layouts as the next level icons. This is the default arrangement in the Physical Workspace, but the devices in the wiring closet can be moved to any of the layers. When the devices are moved to another layer, they revert to the icons used in Logical Workspace, although those can be customized (covered under Customization) to any graphic you would like to use.

When you first enter the Physical Workspace, the default is the Intercity view (or "map").

By default, the intercity contains one city object called "Home City." You can click and drag the City icon to move it around in the intercity map. You can also simply click on the City icon to change focus to the map of that city.

The Home City also contains one default building object called "Corporate Office." This building, like the Home City object in Intercity view, can be moved anywhere around the city. Click on the Building icon to change focus to the interior selected building. All buildings are limited to one floor. From the City view, you can also return to the Intercity environment by clicking on the Back button twice in the Physical Workspace Bar.

The Corporate Office contains one default wiring closet called "Main Wiring Closet." Click its icon to view its contents. You can also return to any of the previous environments (Intercity or City) by clicking the Back button in the Physical Workspace Bar.

The "Main Wiring Closet" initially houses all the devices that were created in the Logical Workspace. It neatly arranges those devices onto racks and tables so you can see where your devices physically are. The wiring closet view also shows the connected ports and the link light status of the devices in the wiring closet. If the device is clicked, its configuration window pops up just as it does in Logical Workspace. Learn how to move these devices around in the building or even the city in the "Moving Devices" section.

Wiring closets, buildings, and cities can all be renamed.

Creating New Locations

The Physical Workspace allows you 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.