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Suggestions for Organizing Detail Sheets


Sky

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Create a design layer and draw your details there.

A good rule of thumb is to set the Design Layer scale to be either the same

or very close to the scale of the Viewports you are making. (This mainly has

to do with text sizes and line weights.) If your viewports are all going to be

fairly close in scale (say 1"=1'-0" and 1 1/2"=1'-0") then you would probably

just want to draw all of the details on the same Design Layer. If you are showing

some details at very different scales (say some at 1/2"=1'-0" and 3"=1'-0") then

you should consider drawing these on separate design layers with more appropriate

design layer scales.

That is pretty much it, just draw, create your viewports, and put 'em where you

want 'em on your sheet layers.

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You could but you don't have to.

For example you can have all the 1-1/2"=1'-0" details in one viewport as long as they are positioned as you want them on the DL. Different scales will need their own VP's.

However if you do gang up similar scale details, it'll make it easier to select the different scale VPs if their VP windows don't overlap.

Regards,

Tim

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So I need to put together some detail sheets with different scales on the same sheet.

Any suggestions on how to organize sheets, layers and viewports to make this as easy and flexible as possible?

Thank you for any suggestions you have.

In my opinion, there's no easy and flexible way to organize sheets, layers, and viewports for detailing in vectorworks.

In my opinion, it is one of the least flexible aspects of the software.

It's an area where everything is a workaround and a compromise because of the software's limitations.

So you'll just have to kludge your way through it.

Edited by brudgers
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I just create empty viewports on my sheet layers and place the details in them. You can retrospectively adjust the scale of the detail viewports without creating text, dimensioning or hatching issues (usually). You can also rearrange your details around other viewport easily.

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What would you suggest? I find it easy enough.

Several things...mentioned previously elsewhere.

Scalable symbols (text and dimensions would need intelligence as well).

The ablity to reference external files in a sheet layer viewport.

A detail object.

There is no way, currently, to create details of different scales on a sheet layer and to have each detail independent of the others and easily composable, editable and annotated.

I'm not denying that there are workarounds for shortcomings of Vectorworks' underlying architecture.

But I'm not ignoring the fact that there are fundimental shortcomings, and that the solutions are kludges either.

Why can't an external file be referenced directly onto a sheet layer?

Why can't a symbol (or a symbol like object) be scaled?

Edited by brudgers
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I would have to say I don't agree.

Sheet layers are not for drawing, they are a container for viewports.

Details should be on a design layer and scaled in viewports on a sheet layer. Navigation from viewports to design layer is very simple.

I was in on the discussion of scaling symbols and I don't agree that symbols should scale.

Reference an external file to a design layer and create a viewport of it on a sheet layer.

I don't consider any of these to be workarounds or shortcomings.

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I would have to say I don't agree.

Sheet layers are not for drawing, they are a container for viewports.

Details should be on a design layer and scaled in viewports on a sheet layer. Navigation from viewports to design layer is very simple.

I was in on the discussion of scaling symbols and I don't agree that symbols should scale.

Reference an external file to a design layer and create a viewport of it on a sheet layer.

I don't consider any of these to be workarounds or shortcomings.

Sorry, Ray, but I have to disagree with YOU. I complely agree with Brudgers - VW has significant shortcomings when it comes to organizing details.

The easiest solution, in my opinion, would be to allow symbols to be scaled.

Ray, If you don't think that symbols should be scaled, don't scale them. I completely disagree and think that they should be scalable, for reasons described elsewhere on this forum.

Ray, where are you doing the annotations for your details - DL or VP? Annotations in the VP make it impossible to easily reuse your detail. Annotation in DL really requires a separate DL for each scale used in order to easily see and control line-weight and text spacing. This gets to be cumbersome if you have more than a couple different scales and REALLY cumbersome if you have more than one detail sheet with more than a couple of different scales.

If we were able to scale symbols, I would make my details into symbols and place them directly on a sheet layer. This would make organizing and reusing my details MUCH easier. I could create a detail file that could be accessed using the Resource Browser. I could easily push new details into the file using export making it easy to grow my detail file over time.

The other solution would be to allow us to create SLVPs of external files. Then I could make individual files for each detail and reference them as needed onto sheet layers.

I'd love it if VW allowed me to BOTH scale symbols and create SLVPs of external files. I'd probably still use symbols for details but I'd use the externally referenced SLVPs for other things.

Please NNA, help us.

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Sheet layers are not for drawing, they are a container for viewports.

My point exactly.

A sheet layer is not a container for details.

There is no way to containerize them.

Reference an external file to a design layer and create a viewport of it on a sheet layer.

That's one way of working around Vectorworks limitations...(quacks like a duck).

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Umm... hello - I wasn't asking anyone to highlight the shortcoming of VectorWorks. That is of no use for me at all.

I was simply asking for suggestions and help for what VectorWork can do, not what it should do.

Thank you to gmm18 and rDesign for your helpful suggestions.

As for the rest of you, if you have complaints about the software, please take it up with the software company directly. You want to complain - start your own topic.

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Hi Sky

I'm reasonably new to Vectorworks myself (X Autocad User) and am wondering if the method I suggested above has some major drawbacks given the discussion happening in this thread. It seams relatively convenient but may have problems I'm not aware of yet. I didn't explain it fully above so I'll lay it out in more detail and see if it doesn't get pulled apart by some of the more experienced users in this forum.

Most details get reused so I convert them into symbols & libraries that become groups when imported into a drawing so they can be easily edited. When I need to add a detail to a Sheet Layer that already has one or more major VPs referencing the model, I add a new empty VP with no Design Layers referenced at the scale of the detail to be imported. I open the VP and drop or draw the detail in it. After this the detail VP can have the scale adjusted retrospectively without causing Text, Dimensioning or Hatching problems. The Text, Dimensioning & Hatching all adjust to maintain the correct size on the sheet this way. That means if you have a 1:20 scale detail but decide it needs to be at 1:10 you can change the scale of the viewport from 1:20 to 1:10 and the Text, Dimensioning & Hatching don't end up double size. I think this is the problem that the others are discussing above regarding symbols. You can also move your Detail VPs around each other with great ease this way by placing each Detail in it's own VP. This 'seems' a decent way to handle details with some flexibility and is actually better than Autocad which has all text dimensioning and hatching fixed at the scale chosen for the detail. I actually think Vectorworks is better equipped in this way to handle details.

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Umm... hello - I wasn't asking anyone to highlight the shortcoming of VectorWorks. That is of no use for me at all.

I was simply asking for suggestions and help for what VectorWork can do, not what it should do.

Thank you to gmm18 and rDesign for your helpful suggestions.

As for the rest of you, if you have complaints about the software, please take it up with the software company directly. You want to complain - start your own topic.

Sorry, Sky, for hijacking your post. I have complained elsewhere but it doesn't appear that NNA is listening.

I currently draw details (including text) on dedicated design layers (one for each scale) and then create sheet layer viewports to assemble my detail sheets. This makes for easy editing of the details but it's pretty cumbersome when I have multiple scales and/or multiple detail sheets.

Hope that you find a method that works for you.

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Sky-

You're welcome. Additionally, I create all my details as separate files using detail templates that I created for each scale I might need.

In the detail sheet file I create DLs for each scale I need and WGR the details into each respective scaled DL. Then create viewports on the SL as needed.

This workflow is not as easy as it could be (as others have stated) but I find it works perfectly fine.

Regards,

Tim

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Sounds like everyone does it in a very similar way. So I will make a layer for each scale of details and use the viewports to put them into the detail sheets.

Good thing this is only a 10,000 sf office TI. If this were a large project, the detail sheets might become unwieldy!

Thank you!

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One other thing I've done (and also used to do in ACAD) is to reduce the number of detail references by ganging up related details into one detail file.

For example I would put the head, sill and jamb details for a window all in one file since they are all the same scale and are directly related to each other.

Then I am referencing one file instead of three, because as you said many references do slow things down.

Regards,

Tim

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  • 2 weeks later...

I just finished working on a few detail sheets and was told by others to use viewports but that just seemed like a lot of extra work and trouble. What I wound up doing is insert my border using the document setup routine. I inserted it in a 1/4 scale design layer just because all other sheets will be set up this way.

I created a design layer for every scale I will need. 1/4", 3"=1" and 1 1/2"=1". My border appears scaled in each design layer with the view settings for layers set to show all or gray others.

No view ports are needed and you draw your details, dims, text and sections in place where they need to go within the border on the appropriate design layer.

Edited by HOUCAD
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In my opinion, having details for the envelope mixed with stair, finish, and foundation details solely because they share a common display property is not good modeling practice. Nor is distributing roofing details accross multiple model layers a good organizational scheme.

It doesn't seem conducive to reuse of previously drawn objects either.

In my opinion, a workflow which organizes details by scale rather than content is a poor paradigm for practicing architecture and inconsistent with industry standards (such as CSI in the US).

In addition, combining modeling and annotation on a single layer is inconsistent with the approach documented in the National Cad Standard (in the US).

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So, HOUCAD, are you ONLY using design layers for your details and not using sheet layers at all? Are you using sheet layers for any of your drawing set?

Also, am I (and Brudgers) assuming correctly that you're organizing your detail sheets by scale and not by "topic" (roof, stairs, foundation, windows, etc.?)

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My response was meant to highlight M5d's post. This is what I would offer as advice to users for a "best practice" workflow for detailing.

I understand the concern that it makes "standard" details difficult to reuse. My own experience has proven that, for architects at least, there are very few "standard" details that can be shared on every project, unless you work on a limited set of building types/construction methods.

In that case, there is no need to worry collapsing detail linework and notation into a single symbol or using VPs and annotation space of the VP, because you've probably got a system where the scale is set for the same details every time. So, they can be dropped, whole, on a design layer and VP'ed to a sheet, where needed.

Again, the idea I mean to convey is a workflow of drawing/modeling data in one "space" and notation in another.

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