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How do others deal with revision clouds?


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I recently started testing a new set of Classes in our template for revision clouds. i.e.:

Revision Clouds-Revision A

Revision Clouds-Revision B ...and so on.

This allows for keeping a history of revision clouds for future ref in the file. What I've found though is that it can get heinously confusing if you have a number of drawings in a file at different revision stages.

What are others doing out there with revision clouds? Is there a recommended VectorWorks way?

My other thought was to put them in Viewport Annotations; the only downside of this is that you then have to constantly flip between the Design Layer and the Viewport Annotations while you work on a revision.

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I'm old fashioned, then. I keep a hard copy of each revision instead. When a drawing is revised to Rev B I remove the Rev A clouds from the file. At least it means that if I see a cloud on a sheet I immediately know that it's the current revision.

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When a drawing is revised to Rev B I remove the Rev A clouds from the file. At least it means that if I see a cloud on a sheet I immediately know that it's the current revision.

That's what we used to do but we found it to be a potential for a lot of confusion if someone forgot to delete the previous cloud revisions, especially when you have a number of people working on a project on and off.

I think if we were to go down this road again (of not putting them on a rev. class) I think we'd go for putting them on the Viewports Annotations.

I guess what would be really useful would be a date element to the Cloud tool, that you could view either on the drawing next to the Cloud or in the Object Info Palette, or both.

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As a one man band I don't have the same problems, in that I'm the only person working on the drawings, but agree that a date element would be an excellent idea if it was visible on the drawing. I'm not sure it would work if it only showed in the OIP. As for where you put the cloud, I've always put them in viewport annotations. It seems the most sensible place.

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I'm not sure it would work if it only showed in the OIP.

The option could be there to show on the drawing but we probably wouldn't use it (at least not for issued drawings).

As for where you put the cloud, I've always put them in viewport annotations. It seems the most sensible place.

Except that when you're doing the revision your most likely to be working in the Design Layer.

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It's self discipline, that's all. I make my revision, add the cloud to viewport annotation and then print. I don't like my design layers cluttered with notes and clouds; all my notes etc live in Viewport annotations. But the key, I think, is to make sure you actually have got a system, or procedure that the entire office will follow, in place regardless of how you actually implement it.

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You can grab the shoulder and move it in. The tag length field is in the OIP - you can reduce this to a small number.

You can also ungroup it and delete the lines.

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Eventually I'd like to put our drawings under a version control system like subversion. It would be awesome if Vectorworks had some integration with version control systems (like co/ci functionality from within VW, mergable files, and smart revision clouds).

Maybe I should just put this in the wish list.

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In the Old Days, pin-bar overlay drafting, we used a separate layer for the revision clouds, with a triangle and number corresponding to the date in title block revision box. When things changed again, we pulled out that layer and put in a new one. We also kept a reproducible hard copy of each revised version.

Corresponding technique would probably be a separate design layer with the revision date (Rev A-6-20-07), use the clouds and a revision version icon on that layer, and save each revised version separately. This would be because after several revisions, the old clounds are meaningless. Paper record saets may be adequate for some project types or sizes.

That said, as a single person firm, I tend to do it all in the annotations, but should probably switch to the above.

Edited by blackdogarch
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  • 2 months later...

For now we've resolved to put revision clouds directly on the relevant Sheet Layer.

This has two advantages over putting them in Viewport Annotations:

1) less clicks between making your changes on the Design Layer and getting to the Viewport Annotations to add a cloud; you simply switch to the Sheet Layer and add your cloud, then switch back again

2) with all Class attributes in the Viewport overridden to be black the revision clouds drawn straight onto the Sheet Layer (and on None class) are coloured (dark red in our case), which helps keep track of them.

Come the next revision we'll delete all clouds and start again.

Can anyone think of a disadvantage in doing it this way?

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  • 2 years later...

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