AssetBase User Guide
DocsAB-012
Asset Hierarchies
Logical and BOM trees, building hierarchies, invariants, and audit roll-up
Real assets aren't flat. A server contains drives and memory; a production line is made of machines; a building holds floors, rooms, and the equipment inside them. Hierarchies let you link one asset to another so AssetBase reflects how things are actually organized — and so a scan or an audit of a parent can reason about everything beneath it.
Two kinds of hierarchy
The same asset can sit in two independent trees at once, each answering a different question:
| Type | Answers | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Logical | Where does this belong? — grouping by site, department, line, or assembly | Building A → Floor 2 → Lab → Microscope |
| Parts / BOM | What is this made of? — a bill of materials of physical components | Server → 4× Drive, 2× RAM module, 1× PSU |
A microscope can be a sub-asset of the Lab in the Logical tree and the parent of its own parts in the BOM tree — the two trees never interfere.
Building a hierarchy
You manage hierarchies from an asset's detail drawer, in the Hierarchy panel.
- Open any asset from the register.
- In the Hierarchy panel, choose the tab — Logical or Parts / BOM.
- Click Add sub-asset (Logical) or Add part (BOM) and pick the child asset from the list.
- For a BOM child you can also set a quantity (e.g. 4 drives).
- The child — and everything under it — appears nested beneath the current asset.
To unlink, hover the child and click Remove from hierarchy. Removing an edge only breaks that one link; the asset itself is never deleted, and it stays in the register.
The rules that keep trees clean
AssetBase enforces a few invariants so a hierarchy can't become corrupt:
- One parent per type. Within a single hierarchy type, an asset has at most one parent. (It can still have a different parent in the other type.)
- No cycles. An asset can never become its own ancestor — AssetBase rejects a link that would create a loop.
- Same tenant only. Both ends of a link must belong to your organization.
- Fast subtree reads. Each link stores its root, path, and depth, so pulling an entire tree — or just the ancestors of one node — is a single quick lookup.
Why it matters
- Audits roll up. Auditing a parent location naturally covers the assets nested under it.
- Impact is visible. Retiring or moving a parent surfaces everything it contains.
- Structure survives. Because links are edges (not copies), you can reorganize freely without touching the underlying asset records.