**Update** The Fire Alarm Template has been updated and is currently listed on This site with an updated photo.
Added an access control template (more robust that initial announcement).
If you are looking for the fire sprinkler template, please comment below. **Update**
If you haven’t been following my other project, I have an Autocad template that I have been working for about 8 years. The idea of this template is to offer a low cost alternative to the people in the fire alarm industry and less costly alternative to simplifying their fire alarm designs.
The fire alarm Template I sell at The top of the page here Fire Design Blocks Is currently for sell.
Things that are being added to the next fire alarm template are blocks that have these features:
Horn/strobes-Strobes with candela rating and amperage, built in them.
Both “the last strobe” and “the last horn strobe”. These blocks are their own block with multiple devices inserted that way you can drop the single device in a location and select from a drop down menu to change the orientation of the device and the candela. Yes you can still just buy each of these independently if you are not in need of the full alarm template with all fire alarm blocks added.
Dynamic Title block. To change settings for all of the title blocks. Such as job name, jurisdiction, notes for technicians.
Initiating devices with addresses ready to type in.Smoke detectors,heat detectors,control modules,relays, and pull stations. You just insert their block and you will be prompted to type in the address. There is also a version of the fire alarm devices for each that does not have this option, if you are just doing a quick mark up.
All of the previous blocks and template features are still included in the new fire alarm template. The difference is a small handful of blocks have been altered a pretty good amount. In this case it would be in your best interest to keep both templates if you qualify for a the new template after purchasing the current template.
The date of launch for the new fire alarm blocks template will be June 1st. at that date the price will go up to $450. For now the price is reduced to $375.
The plan is to create a new post on this site explaining how to use the fire alarm Autocad template and insert the blocks to optimize your fire alarm design to reduce design time, and increase accuracy of fire alarm design.
The fire Sprinkler template is for title block and legend attributes to simplify the initial set up of fire sprinkler design.
The access control template works much like the fire alarm template.
If you want to just skip ahead to the pricing fire alarm template pricing
For a few years now I have been working on a fire alarm template. Actually a couple templates. I recently added a fire sprinkler template and an access control template.
In the templates I have tons of tools that I have created. They make my job much easier. I am continuously adding more features to the templates. The end goal is some day to own my own fire alarm company and be able to hire people who are in need of a job, yet have no skills. I can then hand them a computer with autodesk/autocad on it and turn the person into a fire alarm designer and I won’t have to worry about much to teach them and the jobs go as flawlessly as I can make them go.
and here is the fire alarm template version from 2015 (Videos showing function) <– NEW Also please notice I added a fire sprinkler template and an access control template with symbols.
Features of the fire alarm template
If you look click this image of a section of the fire alarm title block, everything that says “select one” has a drop down menu to select through the options I regularly have. Such as AHJ, Sales Person, Job type (new construct,add to existing) and so on.
I have also created Attributes for the site title and the address.
If you look at the fire alarm legend your will see I have parts numbers listed along with part count for relocated devices, existing devices and new devices. Also I made sure to show the little menu so that you can see when you click of the parts numbers of say …. for a Fire alarm Horn/Strobe you will see the little globe pop up next to the pointer telling you that you can click on it and get taken to the manufacturer’s website to download the cutsheets for the device. This cutting out the time it normally takes you to look up the devices on the web and find the cut sheets for each fire alarm device. Every place you see the word “select” there is a menu of items I regularly use pertaining to that mart of the legend. No sense in typing that stuff with every fire alarm I design.
Cool feature I added in Autocad/autodesk for fire alarm design
The goal is to be able to click the legend and a menu will come up asking you what vendor or parts distributor like genesis,system sensor, or firelite etc. you select one and the legend changes to the correct parts numbers. Then click the numbers on the left (parts count) and a drop down comes up of 0-1000. So if you have 43 pull stations , you go to the 00 to the left of the pull station in the legend and click once for the menu, then scroll to the number 43 and you now have your count as accurate as you need. Also the devices are on separate layers, this way if I want to not show my smoke detectors in the drawing, I just turn that layer off. It removes the smoke detectors from the drawing and the legend, and the theory of operation and the parts count. Kind of cool.
Now, there is a function that uses excel that I have been working on and “Table” command that is in progress. The goal to so that when you select your notification devices such as strobes or horn/strobes your counts change for your battery calculations. Yes you still have to manually do a few things to make this work so right now, that isn’t much worth mentioning unless someone has a better option they would like to share with me
I currently have three custom fire alarm templates that I use regularly and in their current state, It is BLISS. So much stuff you have to memorize about fire alarm design is a non issue while using these templates. Depending on task, location, manufacture and a few other issues, I will decide which template I need most for the job.
Many of the blocks and data links and attributes I have added to the fire alarm templates, are to remove human error, some are for my own security. Such as print time, creation date designer “Field” entries. Say if someone comes to me and asks me questions, I can see what date the drawing was printed and who’s computer printed the drawings. This is for my security and prevents people from tampering with my designs, and getting away with it. Yes I have worked in a pretty cut-throat office with people who tampered with my designs. These are great features.
Another helpful feature is the option to insert devices anywhere in a drawing with just a simple insert command. Then just hit the enter button as many times as you need to drop the same device. Example:
I typically start my design with initiating devices. Pull stations first so I just simply type “insert” or “i” and hit enter. Then a window pops up asking what I want to insert I type in “pull” and hit enter. and boop, a pull station as at the end of my pointer. Now I just find a place that the pull station needs to go and click that spot.. There it is… pull station. I notice a few more spots, so I just hit the enter button (repeats last command) little window pops up again, this time “pull” is already in there, so I just hit enter again. From here out with the pull stations I repeat this ; enter-enter-click, enter-enter-click, enter-enter-click, enter-enter-click. By doing that I have just placed 4 more pullstations in the time it usually takes someone to place 1 pull station.
Like this:
I had some time to sit and listen to the people from HiTech Integrated Solutions, a fire alarm, security and sprinkler company in Houston Texas, about a new product that amazed me. See I was looking for close to home technology that I could locate and not have to quote someone’s website and basically repeat someone who has sales pitched their news article. Soooo I called around and asked if I could ask a few places some questions. Of course I am a bit simple minded when using a telephone book (if it does not have a screen, my imagination is quite limited). So I headed straight to looking for anything with the word tech in it’s name that was located here in Houston. I stumbled upon ” HiTech Integrated solutions” . I called and spoke to a little lady ( I forget her name) and she sent me right through to the owner of the company, Mr Dan Cooley.
I asked Dan If he could give me ideas as to what makes his company High Tech . You could hear the smile in his voice and tiny chuckle when he said ” Well, simply we have nothing in beta, but we do have Focal Point“.
Yeah Right away I hit google. Came across the only documentation on it, pdf .
Seems like no one actually has it yet.
Wait you will see why this is High Tech! ..
This is some sort of Monitoring software for fire alarms and what seems to be security also. I had to call back later and ask a few questions after the conversation with Dan, i got in touch with “Eric” the CEO of HiTech. Eric Told me that The owner of companies that purchase the plan, get this little tablet pc thing , so they themselves can see and monitor alarm activity on their location. This thing is amazing.
It allows the owner see specifically what room and what device is causing the alarm. I am not talking text notification. i mean an actual detailed blueprint of the building with devices properly located in simulation to the real alarm installation. if there is a smoke detector in the far east hall of the building two feet passed the last door on the left, you see that device on the blue print. If that specific device is detecting an alarm, it will notify the Fire Alarm Control Panel, The panel will then activate the “gateway card”, the gateway card (it’s in a pci slot looking thingy, on the control panel) will then notify the Focal Point Tablet Pc ViA Internet connection.
This Tablet Pc has Microsoft Windows Xp on it. Kinda cool. Has a start button and everything.
ok so far this fire alarm company is turning out pretty HiTech.
The signal is sent to the Tablet Pc In data Form and Translated back for the user to activate the images on the screen, showing the owner of the location exactly what device in what location is going into alarm.
So yeah, I had to drive up there, I wanted to see this thing in action. Looks
Other than the glass being on the face of the machine, it looks really tough.big Rubber bumper pads on the corners and a leather casing that wraps around it. Some big pen stylus with a button on the side of it. I would prefer that large of a stylus anyway, would hate losing the little tiny stylus’ that comes with pdas.
Just had to test the protective casing (evil grin). for starts , I laid it face down to see how much clearance there was, to see if the screen is easy to scratch up. Exactly 1/2 an inch. That’s pretty good. You could lose a pen under there and not scratch the screen.. Weight and feel
I give this about 4-6 pounds of solid durable hard plastic, encasing steel.This thing is not a little mini laptop, this thing is not some little kid’s video game machine . This is made for the working people who are in the dirt (minus the exterior screen). Just keep it in it’s case while you are not using it.
While I was there, I spoke more with Dan Cooley and he showed me how the thing works. Dan walked me to this little tiny demo room they had near the Accounting Manager’s office. In this room they had smoke detectors, Horn/Strobes and plain strobes and multiple pull stations mounted on the wall. Mr Cooley then booted up the tablet pc and showed the scoop. He had this imaginary building drawn up looking like a futuristic castle. Dan then pulled down on the pull station and instantly we got notification that the pull station in the butler’s chamber had been triggered. That was cool. Right then, Dan’s phone rang and I could hear the guy on the end of the line laughing saying “our castle is burning up!” . It was HiTech’s IT guy, 400 miles away in Corpus Christi. He had notification at the exact same time as we did. Very impressive. They seemed like a happy bunch.
So basically the owner of the property will have notice to his tablet, before the monitoring company has a chance to call him, but not faster than the emergency teams can be contacted. i learned that the monitoring company is automated to make all contacts the instant a warning is made. This sounds like it saves lives and property a whole lot faster than just some dude named bubbah saying ‘hey you alright?” .
I have made requests for further interviews. The guys at HiTech said they would be happy to entertain, and may point me straight to Fci, so I can see more HiTech exclusive products before it can be advertised.
Focal Point was an amazing set up, but man, i swear that sounds like it used to be a M$ product.
