Custom Standards How To

[J Lucas]

What is the best way for a small architectural office to create an office standard for layers, classes, and viewports based on the VW standards and adding custom standards?

Would it be best to just set up and save a file with VW standards created w/ standard viewports and naming w/ custom layers, classes and viewports added?

or

Is there a reasonably sane way to customize layermap.g and associated class standards? I have read the manuals and searced the forum in this regard; but have not found clear and complete instructions on how to do this.

[J Lucas]

Robert,

Any advice on this?

[Robert Anderson]

J, you're asking about "best practices" and frankly the "best" depends a lot on your practice, about which I know nothing. ("Small architectural office" doesn't narrow it down a lot.) What kind of projects do you do? How variable are they? What kind of technical expertise do you have in your office? What is your time/money budget for this standards project?

..etc. You get the picture. There is no one answer. I'm interested to hear the changes that you need, we're open to expanding our standards.

[brudgers]

My 2 cents:

If you're a small architectural office, don't.

It's not worth the effort in my opinion.

To customize the program, you've got to figure it all out so that you don't make dumb mistakes.

But once you've got it all figured out, why go through the trouble of changing it...And doing so again and again everytime the software changes.

If you read the technical information and didn't see how to change it, you're probably not cut out for that line of work.

I know I aint.

Honestly, I think it's usually easier and more productive to change the way you work than to atempt omnicient premptive software changes.

I sometimes wonder if customization is primarily a CAD Manager Full employment feature.

[Gerrit]

If, at times, several people inside your office are working on the same project (meaning using and editing eachother's VW files), a certain degree of standard is inevitable IMHO.

Hard to say what the best way is, indeed. Start from built-in standards perhaps, expand some depending on your present working methods?

With each new VW release, I've made it into a habit to directly make a new workspace in which I drag all the new toys (commands, tools, PIO's) to a separate menu and tool palette. That way, I can continu working with the familiar stuff and explore the upgrades in between. From there on, on many occasions, my method is changed along with my workspace and template. Guess I see it as a never ending growing process ;-)

[Jonathan Pickup]

you should customise VectorWorks. You should customise the workspace and the standards that come with VectorWorks. I know it can take a lot to figure out how to do all the editing, but it doesn?t need a full time CAD manager. I have done a lot of the figuring out and in my Architect Tutorial manual i show you where to store things to make VectorWorks work better for you.

[brudgers]

In my opinion, all office naming standards are 98% arbitrary that's why everyone is so set on changing them to something "logical."

In my experience, custom office standards are usually based on obsolete versions of the software and thus limit the ablitity to take advantage of productiity gains.

In offices which are committed to standards (which certainly ain't all of them), many issues reflect a lack of training not a lack of standards.

The biggest productivity gains will come from training. Development of standards is typically a drag on productivity. Don't confuse implimentation with development, implimentation of standards can benefit productivity.

And there's a set of standards already available.

The standard class, layer, and viewport names are reasonable for any US application...so changing them all around is just trading a professionally developed set of arbitrary standards which receive some measure of support for Nemetchek for a set of arbitrary standards developed by amatures which aren't supported by Nemetchek.

Nemetchek's standards are a consideration for future development and the addition of features, arbitrary office standards don't receive the same level of consideration.

Though I'm sure Jonathan's book is good and if it was available in PDF, I'd probably own one, I stand by my comments.

It's not worth the effort to develope your own custom standards.

Standards are not a substitute for training.

[mike m oz]

The standard class, layer, and viewport names are reasonable for any US application...so changing them all around is just trading a professionally developed set of arbitrary standards which receive some measure of support for Nemetchek for a set of arbitrary standards developed by amatures which aren't supported by Nemetchek.

Using the out of the box Standards isn't an option for some of us:

- Where compliance with other CAD standards is required.

- Where the 'out of the box' standards don't suit our needs.

- Where the language is not English.

[Jonathan Pickup]

Standards are not a substitute for training.

I like your last comment. Many people want a suitable standard out of the box, but standards have to work with your drawing philosophy. Many architects have their own drawing style and that?s why I believe you need to develop your own standards.

Of course training could be used to help develop your standards

[brudgers]

Using the out of the box Standards isn't an option for some of us:

- Where compliance with other CAD standards is required.

- Where the 'out of the box' standards don't suit our needs.

- Where the language is not English.

I understand.

That's why I said they were suitable for the US...the poster is in North Carolina.

I wouldn't expect them to be suitable in other countries.

[brudgers]

Deep knowledge of the software is a prerequisite for developing good standards, though not for implimenting them.

Personally, I'm not such a big fan of standards. I prefer best practices.

Standards are minimums and best practices are best.

Best practices provide a rational for their existence and must be justified through experience.

And most importantly they offer an increased likelihood of evolution.

[mike m oz]

How do you define best practice? And more importantly how do you determine what best practice is? More often than not it is a piece of jargon used by a person to justify their decision to do something in a particular way (often because it gives it a sense of authority that it would otherwise not have).

It is not possible to have one standard that will work for all projects, organisations or contexts. Having a standard though is better than working in an ad hoc manner. That is a recipe for disorganisation.

Standards provide a consistant structure for the project and a framework that multiple people working on a project can use to ensure that they are working in a unified manner. Being able to vary those standards insightfully to suit the particular project context is essential.

[J Lucas]

Mike,

You have summed the motivation behind my original posting. Before starting my own practic, I worked at a 40 person firm and was in charge of (anong many other things) overseeing the development and flexible application of project delivery standards, including cad standards. Brugers, I am not an "amateur" and the standards I intend to develop for my own practice will be anything but "arbitrary". I am currently scoping out the strengths and weaknesses of my new tool VW 2008.

Jonathan P., I have your Architect Tutorial and undersand the approach to creating custom standards you outline. It seems that this is seperate from and unrelated to use of the create standad view ports tool and standard naming. I was trying to figure out if there is a reasonable way to encorporate office cad standards into the create stadnard view ports and standard naming tools.

Edited January 28, 2008 by J Lucas

[brudgers]

Mikemoz,

The key to avoid working ad hoc is not the existence of a standard, though it certainly helps.

The key is having people buy-into working together in a coordinated way.

Plenty of firms are disorganized, constantly in crisis, and always reactive. Many even have standards sitting in manuals that nobody follows. Often they were put together by a long departed CAD manager or the recent architectural graduate.

What are best practices? That depends on the organization and what it's leadership and team members value.

But best practices are easy to recognize, they are what works best (and they need not be written down). They are determined through experience (just paint me blue and call me "an empiricsit").

You won't overcome human nature by using best practices, and you won't by standards either. But one offers better flexibility than the other.

And that flexibility encourages their use.

Edited January 28, 2008 by brudgers

[brudgers]

Mike,

You have summed the motivation behind my original posting. Before starting my own practic, I worked at a 40 person firm and was in charge of (anong many other things) overseeing the development and flexible application of project delivery standards, including cad standards. Brugers, I am not an "amateur" and the standards I intend to develop for my own practice will be anything but "arbitrary". I am currently scoping out the strengths and weaknesses of my new tool VW 2008.

I used the term "amature" as a way of comparing the common skillset of an architect with the common skill set of a software developer as it relates to the development of software. Please understand it in that context.

God knows how many times the perfect logic of an ACAD color to pen mapping scheme has been explained to me. All CAD standards for naming are arbitrary, even AIA's (which incidentally is available in VW).

If your interest is in implimenting a standard, then you can do so today by using what's already in the box...in fact you can pick one today and convert it to another one later (even that majikal perfectly logical one). VW does that.

If your interest is in designing a standard, I still think that's a waste of time for a US firm...unless it's going to somehow win you commissions.

[J Lucas]

Robert, I have been using and like the VW Architect standard. I noticed, however, that the line weights, used in the standard and in the objects that have standard names, are many and varied, and many do not correspond to the standard line weights that come with VW. Graphic outcome is one of the main reasons for having cad standards and VWArch does not produce a consistent graphic outcome. Thus my desire modify and add a few classes to VWArch.

I also have used and like the create standard viewports command and the standard naming command.

From the manuals it appears that there is a limited number of layers, classes and viewports referenced by standard viewports and naming and that these are modified and mapped to new names in the std worksheets. Is it the case that the standard viwports and naming commands reference the names and atributes in the stds worksheets and will reference a new standard mapped and modified there? Also, is it the case that the standard viewports and naming comands do not reference the .sta files in the standards folder. I guess another way of putting these questions is: What is the relationship between layermap.g and the stds worksheets and the .sta files?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[billtheia]

I am also interested in the answer to J Lucas' question.

I too like Create Standard Viewports but would like to make some changes

The VWArch standard is OK but it's certainly not perfect. The fact that it doesn't account for new AND existing work seems like a pretty significant oversight and, for me, it could use more classes in some areas and fewer classes in others. I'm also not thrilled about some of the default line-weights.

I'd like the answer to this simple question:

What do I need to do to customize/change the sheets available in, layer and class creation of, and viewports created by, Create Standard Viewports?

[J Lucas]

Bill,

I called tech support to get some answers.

The background information that generated my questions is in the Design Series Manual under "Creating Additional Custom Standards" and "Using the Layermap Worksheet" and related pages.

I suspected and tech confirmed that layermap.g, which is the basis for the standard referenced by Create Standard Viewports and Standard Naming, references the layer, class and viewport/views worksheets described in Creating Additional Custom Standards. They are all contained together and can be modified in the file: VA Setup Data-Imperial.vwx in Vectorworks\plug-ins\Common\Data. The worksheets are there, as worksheets and as symbols. From what the tech said it looks like a modified worksheet needs to be made into a symbol to be referenced by Create Standard Viewports etc. I am sure I don't need to say this, but before doing any modifications, copy the VA Setup file to another folder and keep the origial in place and safe.

Edited January 29, 2008 by J Lucas

[billtheia]

How...intuitive.

Thanks, J, for doing the legwork on this.

The idea of manipulating (and coordinating) those worksheets is a bit daunting right now. I'll probably get in there at some point but I'm not in a big hot hurry to spend several hours messing around in there.

I have yet to do anything over 3 stories. I wonder if it wouldn't be easier to simply create a template set with all sheets for a 3 story building and then delete things I don't need for each project.

[J Lucas]

The template file seems like the easiest option (see my first post on this thread) and/or you can create all the layers and classes you want in a blank file and save it to the standards folder. See the third paragraph under Creating Classes and Layers from Standards in the manual and Appendix 1 in Jonathan Pickup's Architect Tutorial. These standards are then available in the Organization dialog.