Architect Special Interest Group March 2016 (am)

Topics covered:

• Using a worksheet to control title blocks
• Drawing numbering philosophy
• Worksheets to control title block and drawing labels
• Reflected ceiling plans
• Creating a door symbol
• Section viewport
• Hatches

Creating a Worksheet to Control Title Blocks
In this session we looked at using a worksheet to control title block numbering and stacking order. We started by looking at creating a report to control a title block. The reason for this report was to allow easy editing of the drawing numbers and stacking orders of the drawings. There is no easy way to add additional drawings to the middle of a set if you sequentially number the drawings, so a worksheet would be required to renumber all of the drawings and change their stacking order. It is possible to use a worksheet to control the drawing number on title blocks, but this will not change the stacking order of the sheets nor will it change the sheet number.
Drawing Numbering Philosophy
Several users use a drawing numbering system that does allow for the easy insertion of additional sheets. These systems usually use a prefix to the drawing numbers (often two numbers) separated by “-“, “.”  or brackets. An example of this would be (10) 01, or 10.01, or 10-01.
Many systems use this prefix numbering where 10 might relate to plans, 20 might relate to sections, 30 might relate to elevations, and so on this makes it easy to add an extra plan, and extra elevation, or an extra section without affecting any of the other drawings. This is not a problem with Vectorworks; this is a problem with the drawing numbering philosophy. We did look at the AIA numbering system which uses the prefix. For simple jobs the prefix might be one number (1.01), for large commercial projects the prefix and it might be three numbers (100.01).
Creating a Worksheet to Control Title Block or Drawing Number Information
It is possible to create a report using the Tools > Reports > Create Report… Command to create a report that will allow you to control drawing label information or title block information. This technique makes a very quick to go through an entire project and control title blocks, revisions, or drawing labels. We also looked at some of the drawing label techniques, in particular, the ability to link a detailed reference to a viewport.
Reflected Ceiling Plans
We looked at the concept of a Reflected Ceiling Plan and what they are used for. The challenge we have is that we want our doors to appear differently on a floor plan than on a reflected ceiling plan. The answer is to use classes. Classes control not only the visibility of the RCP items, but they also control the graphic style of them. We looked at using simple objects and then we looked at creating a door symbol that could be used to create floorplans and RCP’s.
Creating a Door Symbol
The door symbol can be created to control the RCP, door numbering, leaf size, and elevation of the door type. Creating a door symbol works extremely well the larger commercial projects. The advantage is that allows you to add additional text and record for made information to the door as well as using the door to create the door elevations.
Creating a Section Viewport
One of the users has a challenge where the wall has a different height above the normal plan cut elevation. If you use a standard top plan view of this wall you will see all of the wall information, regardless of the cut plan elevation. If you want to control where your plans are sectioned, you can use a clip cube, adjusted to the correct height, then use this to create a plan section viewport. This section viewport will be cut at the required elevation which means that you can control what is visible above.
Hatches
Finally, we looked at hatches. We looked at adjusting the hatch using the Attribute Mapping tool to adjust the hatch then use this hatch to create a brand-new hatch, which you can do easily by right-clicking on the locally mapped hatch. Once you’ve created this new hatch, you should use the Resource Browser to export this to your library (your default content).
Architect March 2016 am
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