Where is your text? Pros and cons?

[eas]

Having recently moved to the wonderful world of viewports (jumped from 10 to 12.5), my office is considering making the next big leap to putting notes, dimensions and so on in the annotation area.

As we figure this out it would be great to hear from other users: How are you dealing with text? In the design layer? In the annotation? Somewhere else entirely?

Most importantly, what are the advantages and disadvantages to how you deal with text?

thanks much!

[Jonathan Pickup]

i have covered this in one of my blogs....

http://web.mac.com/jpickup1/iWeb/Site/archoncad/0D807C50-B13B-433C-BD1D-59EF2A6D4DBA.html

[cbaarch]

This applies to mostly 2D working drawings:

Do as much work as posible in the design layer

this will pay off if you do a lot of exporting to dwg for the consultants.

title blocks on sheets at 1:1

drawing labels as annotations since it picks up the scale of the VP

annotations and some dimensions when doing larger scale details OK since the engineering consultants rarely need those details

[Petri]

since the engineering consultants rarely need those details

Words of wisdom. By all means, send all your notes, details etc etc to consultants as PDF or whatever, but do NOT burden them with all the crap when they just want "the design" as the backdrop of their drawings.

This may be difficult to accept, but no-one will read your text before there is a problem or dispute.

[eas]

thanks for you thoughts--this is useful as we establish office standards.

Also, one of my colleagues wants to know if it is possible to view information on the annotation from the design layer. I don't think so but thought I would ask here.

Edited April 2, 2007 by eas

[P Retondo]

I always put notes now on the Sheet layer to keep the design layers free of clutter, and for maximum flexibility. If you export the sheet layer as a .dwg, you will get an AutoCAD layout in Paperspace that contains all of your viewport annotations. All of your design layer objects will show up in Modelspace as well.

Bear in mind that AutoCAD treats 3d objects very differently from VW, and your consultants will probably want just 2d representations of things. So this conversion can take a bit more effort than just exporting the .dwg file. I always open the file in AutoCAD and explode blocks, remove wall fills, etc., which can take up to ten minutes or so. Alternatively, you can convert your walls to lines and clean everything up in VW. Put that stuff into a separate layer so that it can be isolated in ACAD.

With some minimal effort you can make this go smoothly for the folks at the other end, and avoid the #@!#&* VectorWorks syndrome.

[Christiaan]

One problem with putting text on Design Layers is that if you want to present multiple Viewports at different scales?derived from the same Design Layer?the text ends up at different sizes also.

[eas]

Christiaan,

Did you see my question about CA sketches?

If you have your text in the annotation how does your issue small-size sketches during construction?

I would appreciate hearing how a larger office handles this.

[Christiaan]

Hi eas, what do you mean by CA sketch? And can you elaborate on your 2nd question? Give me a what-if scenario.

[eas]

Oops. The two questions are the same thing.

It is not unusual here in the US to issue drawings, called sketches, during construction to clarify issues that have arisen during the construction process.

CA is construction administration. So a CA sketch (CASK) is one issued during construction administration.

One example might be that due to some condition on the site the entry stair has to be changed and extra riser or something. So I would go to the original drawing, make the change and bubble it. If it is something small instead of reissuing the whole sheet it would be issued as a sketch on letter-size paper. Ideally then, at the end of construction one has a set of as built drawings.

Does this explain why I am having trouble shifting to text on the annotation? How does one issue a small part of a sheet, with all of the original text, if that text is connected to a viewport?

thanks!

[digitalcarbon]

keep design layers clear of all annotations. viewports are singular "snapshots" of a part of the building that you want to say something specific about. no two viewports are going to convey the same annotated information, so how in the world can you put annotations in the design layer w/o having a way to turn off one type of annotation for another? keep design layers clean.

the only text that one might put on the design layer are "design notes". notes that would help you remember stuff about the design. this would be turned off in the viewports.

[Grant M]

keep design layers clear of all annotations. viewports are singular "snapshots" of a part of the building that you want to say something specific about. no two viewports are going to convey the same annotated information, so how in the world can you put annotations in the design layer w/o having a way to turn off one type of annotation for another? keep design layers clean.

the only text that one might put on the design layer are "design notes". notes that would help you remember stuff about the design. this would be turned off in the viewports.

What interesting statements in absolutes. I have an almost entirely opposite view. To leverage the power of cad and minimise errors i try to use elements, including text, only once if possible. So such elements are likely to appear in more than one viewport.

I annotate in both viewports & design layers but mostly in design layers.

A couple of examples: common dimensions on floor & foundation plans, room names on floor and finishes plans.

How to achieve this: classes

[digitalcarbon]

your going to need annotated classes for every type of view port then.

it can be done, i have drawn that way.

this gets really complex if you have finish dims/notes, framing dims/notes, mechanical dims/notes, electrical dims/notes etc

for errors with notes issue, our standard notes are symbols that everyone references from a master file. they are placed on the sheet layer (1:1) and not in the view port because of the scale issue. hence, eliminating duplication error. this now gets us into a master notes system which is another story.

granted i have placed room names on design layers. however, i end up shuffling them around because sometimes they get in the way with dims & notes on the 1st floor plan sheet layer only to have them end up in the way on the reflc ceiling plan sheet layer or the mechanical sheet layer. i just use symbols so they can be in two different locations.

[eas]

Mechanix I suspect you are working on a different kind of project than I am.

I only have architecture notes on my plans. RCPs are done by WGR (not something I necessarily think is a great idea but that is the office standard). We haven't had a renovation since we started using 12.5 but I suspect that the standards czar will want to deal with demo through WGR.

So I already have 7 or 8 ANNO layers to cover various things and keep the drawings organized. Not a big deal for me.

I really like your idea of drawing notes that get turned of in the viewports. One of the things I miss most about AutoCad is the defpoints layer and the ability to have non-printing stuff on a drawing.

So how do you deal with revisions to drawings as I described above?

[digitalcarbon]

little changes during construction get an SK sheet. this is an 8.5x11 w/ a little title block. i copy an paste the view port to it and put an X over the original view port w/ a note like "see SK-1". i'm not crazy about this method but that is how they want it done were i work.

if the whole D sheet gets changed then then we print a new D sheet

"So I already have 7 or 8 ANNO layers..." this is not a bad way to do it. i have done it that way also. kind of the best of both worlds for plans at least.

[ErichR]

eas, Why not print to a PDF for issuing CA sketches?

[eas]

Erich,

What do you mean?

Print to PDF and add notes in the PDF?

[ErichR]

eas,

Sorry, your original question had to do with where to put notes. In that regard, I would have to agree with those who suggest doing it by annotating the viewport, for the reason, stated above, to keep the design layer/model space unencumbered. For one thing, viewports inevitably change scale. For another, as earlier stated by someone else, the consultants don't need or want your garbage.

You can annotate a PDF, if you use Acrobat, but keeping everything on your original document set has something to be said for itself.

[Robert Anderson]

There are several interesting approaches being discussed in this thread. I'd like to offer some guidelines:

1. If the text / dimensions / annotations is going to be shared, i.e. seen on more than one view, it -must- be located in a design layer. (this seems obvious, but it's still a useful rule as the first decision point.) Thus room names, general dimensions (e.g. overalls and grid dimensions), etc., will all be on design layers.

2. As a corollary to the above, text that is view-specific (i.e. seen in only one view / viewport) benefits from being in an annotation group of a viewport. This prevents you from having to create drawing structure (layers or classes) to manage view-specific notes and (as has been noted above) "de-clutters" the information in design layers for consultants, etc.

3. "Live" elevations and sections -must- be annotated in the viewport annotation.

Beyond this, it's user preference, isn't it?

[Jonathan Pickup]

Robert,

i agree with most of what you say, and it certainly is user preference...

i like putting my notes and dimensions on the design layer, especially dimensions. Then i can associate the dimensions to the stuff on the design layer.Edit the information on the design layer and the dimensions update, super cool...

[DDDesign]

If you want to issue a "sketch", why not just duplicate the viewport, send it to another sheet, and make the sheet, or pages the size you want to print eg in your case letter. The new viewport can then be re-scaled and/or re-edited as necessary.

Because I'm always using 3D models, I use annotaions for text, apart from on-sheet title blocks, and comments on sheets when several viewports on a sheet require further elaboration. One suggestion I liked - I haven't tried it yet - is to put personal design notes on the (3D) design layer, then they wont show up in the viewports, which I always use for presenation. This could also be done using a class, but I don't think it is as neat.

Where details require further elaboration, I often do this as a vp annotation as well, instead of in the design layer - this might range from adding hatches to clarify sectioning, to a whole new partial drawing of the design detail itself. This means I don't mess up a design layer when I only want that extra detail to appear in that one vp. It also means I can easily add 2D sketches to hidden line renderings of 3d views.