Jump to content

National CAD Standard


folinus

Recommended Posts

In 3rd Qtr 1999, the National Institute of Building Sciences published a National CAD Standard (NCS), a consensus document of AIA, CSI, and other organizations. This Standard includes the AIA CAD Layer Guidelines included in VectorWorks. It also includes CSI's Uniform Drawing System (organization of drawing sets and sheets).

Does anyone know of a way to use the CSI sheet layout or an office standard titleblock in VW Architect, rather than the ConDoc sheet layout?

Link to comment

quote:

Originally posted by Brian O:

Unfortunately, the only way to accomplish this is to manually set up your title blocks. Once you do this save it as a template and open it up for future drawings. The reason we do not have a ?template? already designed within Vector Works is that the only information available for this is a guideline without any specifics on dimensions.

Creating your own template does unfortunately prevent you from being able to use the issue manager. This would hold true if you wished to have your own standards for the Con Doc title blocks that are not the industry specific dimensions.

Due to Vector Works using a class and layer system, rather than simply a layer system, it is not happily married to the AIA/CSI standards.


Link to comment

Brian:

There are specific dimensions for the National CAD standard titleblocks. Actual sheet templates for different sheet sizes are included on the CD that is part of CSI's Uniform Drawing System, which in turn is part of NCS 1.0 (Let me know if you would like to see a sample, and I could email it for your review).

It would be valuable for users to be able to designate their own office titleblock (vs ConDoc), assign that titleblock to the class/ layer normally used for titleblocks, and then to locate the fields used by the Issue Manager on that titleblock.

It is somewhat discouraging to hear that VW Architect does not "happily" support the National CAD Standard. The marketing literature says "based on established CAD standards" and "a variety of standard architectural title blocks". Our office has been quite satisfied with the National CAD Standard titleblocks (slightly tailored for our use).

Part of this is that a firm's titleblock is just a component of its overall identity program (stationery, etc.) and graphic look. So it does not easily change.

I really think this is one where the software needs to accommodate the user's standards, not the other way around.

Link to comment

Unfortunately, the only way to accomplish this is to manually set up your title blocks. Once you do this save it as a template and open it up for future drawings. The reason we do not have a ?template? already designed within Vector Works is that the only information available for this is a guideline without any specifics on dimensions.

Creating your own template does unfortunately prevent you from being able to use the issue manager. This would hold true if you wished to have your own standards for the Con Doc title blocks that are not the industry specific dimensions.

Due to Vector Works using a class and layer system, rather than simply a layer system, it is not happily married to the AIA/CSI standards.

Link to comment
  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

folinus, a few comments on the NCS:

First, while we were in early development for VA, we tried to get the info for NCS out of the constituent agencies. Unfortunately, as earlier stated, the NCS was not released until late in the year, too late in the ARCHITECT product cycle to include. We

someone stated that "There are specific dimensions for the National CAD standard titleblocks." This is not the case. If you read the spec, the NCS recommends a "standard drawing module size of -approximately- 5-3/4" high by 6" wide." I know they have an -example- on the CD that is a particular size, but it's not in the spec, so minor variations might be expected that still would meet the specification.

The titleblocks we generated for VA support the ConDoc standard (requested by some of our users) and the Tri-Services standards published in July, 1998. Now that the NCS is finalized, we will support its titleblock layout in a future version of VA.

Also stated earlier: "It is somewhat discouraging to hear that VW Architect does not "happily" support the National CAD Standard."

The layer/class structure of VectorWorks does not preclude us from supporting the NCS. VectorWorks classes correspond to AIA/NCS layernames, and VectorWorks layers correspond more to AIA/NCS filenames. So it's not difficult to set up a translation utility, and we expect to do so in a future version of VA.

"...a firm's titleblock is just a component of its overall identity program (stationery, etc.) and graphic look."

We agree, and that is why we address graphic customization of the titleblock in the VA manual.

Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...