Re-issuing drawings *unchanged* in a 3d workflow - how do you approach this?

[line-weight]

When I drew in 2d, each drawing sheet was largely independent of the others in a drawing set.

 

That is (with some exceptions) it was mostly the case that if I changed a drawing on one sheet it wouldn't change things on other sheets.

 

So if I have drawings 001 through 010, and I've made revisions to drawings 002 and 006, I have two choices:

 

a) issue just the revised drawings, 002-B and 006-B

b) re-issue the full set, 001-A, 002-B, 003-A and so on.

 

Option (b) is often useful, especially that drawings now tend to exist in PDF form rather than on paper, because it reduces the risk of anyone looking at out-of date drawings. They can always just look at the latest issue, and this will contain all drawings in their most recent revision state.

 

However - this all becomes more complicated if the majority of your drawings are generated from a 3d model, because as soon a you change anything in the model, it's likely to cause a change in multiple drawing sheets. So, how to deal with this if I want to re-issue the full set, but keep many of the drawings in an unrevised state?

 

a) Simply not update any viewport that I don't want anything to change in. But this feels very precarious and prone to error.

b) Export only the altered drawings, then manually substitute them (as PDF pages) into the previously issued PDF set. But this is rather tedious.

c) Change the revision number on every drawing each time I issue the set, whether or not anything's actually changed. But, this can cause confusion and a lack of clarity about which drawings have changed, and also means going through and checking every sheet to make sure unexpected things haven't happened in any viewports.

 

Anyone have a better system?

 

It would be very useful if there were something built into the VW "Publish" function that solved this issue.

[Jonathan Pickup]

my feeling is that if you update the 3-D model and it updates several of your drawings, all those drawings need to be revised and issued. Every revision should be clouded on the drawings so that the recipient of your drawings knows what's changed. You only have to create a revision on the drawings that have changed, but I agree with you that the drawings should be completely re-issued as a set, because they go as a PDF and it's a hassle to swap drawings and a PDF file. if the recipient is using something like BlueBeam, then it's easier for them to receive a whole set of drawings and they can then use the BlueBeam tools to look through your drawings for any changes anyway. Even if you choose not to cloud an area of your drawing because you don't think it's important, BlueBeam will find that change and clouded for the recipient anyway.

 

I'm curious how you could change the 3-D model and have changes appear in your drawings that you don't want. if you've updated the model, you'd want all of your drawings to be up-to-date as well.

[cberg]

Unfortunately version control is best managed at the PDF level not the BIM model. (For the reasons you describe.)

 

Tedious as it may be, managing PDFs manually (option 2B) is the only failsafe solution.

 

At the end of the day the primary deliverable is still the PDF drawing set.

 

Archive your model after each release. So you can preserve the model at a given point in time.

[cberg]

@Jonathan Pickup

9 minutes ago, Jonathan Pickup said:

 

I'm curious how you could change the 3-D model and have changes appear in your drawings that you don't want. if you've updated the model, you'd want all of your drawings to be up-to-date as well.

 

It takes a lot of effort to keep 2d plan/rcp sheets free and clear of 3d junk. Adding 3d detail can wreak havoc on plans or have unintended consequences elsewhere in a set.

 

Going back through a set to make sure nothing was messed up is more tedious than switching out changed PDF sheets. (my opinion only).

 

[line-weight]

2 hours ago, Jonathan Pickup said:

I'm curious how you could change the 3-D model and have changes appear in your drawings that you don't want. if you've updated the model, you'd want all of your drawings to be up-to-date as well.

In the ideal world, where infinite time was available, of course it would be best to update the whole set.

 

But in the real world (especially when a project is in construction phase) you need to prioritise the information that goes out, so you may want to revise certain drawings, the ones that are important at that time to communicate something particular, and get them out as quickly as possible, rather than spending lots of time tidying up a large number of drawings that aren't actually that critical to what you are dealing with at that point in time.

 

Generally those other drawings "catch up" in a later revision.

 

It's never the case that a change in the model just automatically makes everything else update perfectly - the reality of modelling in VW is messier than that. For example, there is usually a load of stuff in annotations space that needs to be adjusted manually.

Edited July 3 by line-weight

[shorter]

Careful drawing management and reducing duplication is key. Sadly, duplication of data and BIM are synonymous.  Don't get into the situation where editing one flat layout means reissuing 150 GA plans as one of my clients did.  A well-managed and well-planned drawing set would have meant only issuing the flat layout drawing.

 

Caching viewport graphics and not showing the infernal out of date viewport border helps to leave drawings generated from a model as they were until you choose to update the viewport.  Not the case with standard viewports of course.

 

So, as @cberg mentioned, an archival procedure is essential to return to key stages, and the batch convert tool is very useful for this.  Don't 'convert in place' and it copies files from one location to another, and resolves referencing (assuming referenicng is used correctly to start with).  Should be standard practice in all practices and if you have organised your CAD folder correctly, shouldn't take long to do.

 

Yet to be tested with PS but as with all procedures, test and document, test and document.

[shorter]

22 hours ago, line-weight said:

For example, there is usually a load of stuff in annotations space that needs to be adjusted manually.

 

This should be avoided at all costs!

[line-weight]

Agreed about the principle of archiving, which I do at quite frequent intervals anyway. I don't use "batch convert" but might look into this - perhaps it provides a convenient way of making a copy of the notes database at the same time.

 

To preserve the exact state of a drawing at an issue point, really I'd say the PDF already does this. The Vectorworks file is certainly useful to go back to, but (for obvious reasons) it's not like you can just copy-paste a sheet layer or viewport back into your current drawing. You might be able to copy-paste a chunk of 3d geometry to revert to a previous design, but chances are you'll still have to do quite a bit of surgery on it where it connects with other bits that have changed in the meantime and which you don't want to revert to another state.

 

Another problem is to do with the notes database - reverting callout notes to a previous version is rather tricky. You obviously can't just revert the whole notes database to the previous version because there will be lots of other things that you've changed since then and want to retain. Any kind of merging is going to have to be done manually and very carefully.

Edited July 4 by line-weight

[shorter]

3 hours ago, line-weight said:

perhaps it provides a convenient way of making a copy of the notes database at the same time.

 

Sadly not.  Add that to the wish list!

 

Your concerns are very valid and as yet, I am not sure there is a solution to rolling back a model and this is symptomatic of one of the many negatives raised by BIM that we have all walked blindly into.

 

BIM seems to give with one hand and take away with two.

Edited July 4 by shorter

[line-weight]

When there's an element of a design that I suspect might get reverted to, I tend to save the relevant geometry in a duplicate layer, or hidden class, or similar. And I'll try and think about the "seams" where it would need to get re-attached and bear that in mind in how the model in general is set up and developed.

 

Moving something back into the active model from elsewhere in the same file, rather than from an archived file, tends to create fewer problems I find. For example you can end up with duplicate class definitions and stuff like that.