BIM Workflow: Elevations

[Chris D]

I've seen the recent discussions about the merits of section viewports versus elevation viewports. What I'm interested in is how users are dealing with any 2D overlays.

We'd prefer not to have to draw in the annotations part of a sheet layer, as that should be reserved for notes. There doesn't seem to be a way to set up a design layer section viewport that remains static and rendered so that you can draw over it though.

2D overlays will be required for things that aren't worth modelling or you have insufficient 3D data for, such as adjacent or distant buildings, or for shadows that can't be cast by ghosted buildings etc. Surely you want these assembled in the design layer?

[Chris D]

I'm also interested in how people are coping with brickwork.

In our 2D workflow we use hatches that are correctly scaled and coursed, so a window head and cill will always coincide with a bed joint on the brickwork. We're struggling to do this with textures for the BIM workflow, as for one thing we're having to render sheet layers at ridiculous DPI just to get bed joints to show consistently at 1:100

[Christiaan]

It would be great to have a design layer viewport that acted in a similar way to sheet layer viewports in the way you note but I think the annotations layer is incorrectly named. We put anything in there, not just notes. Can't see any reason to restrict it to notes.

I haven't had a problem with brickwork coursing and textures. Although I haven't started on construction documents yet. I post something tomorrow.

[Christiaan]

One thing that is a second-class citizen under the annotations layer is dimensions. They don't associate.

[ionw]

One way around this that I have done a couple times, is to use the Extract Face on the exterior faces (In the Design layers) I want to hatch/pattern/fill and make an Exterior Elevation-Material x, class and apply that to the generated faces. I can use the Attribute Mapping to adjust the origin to match my desires.

That way they are uniquely classed items so I can override the fills in all my viewports.

You obviously have to update them if the design changes, but if you do it at the same time you would have drawn it as detailed above, it is about the same amount of work.

Cheers,

Ion