Architect Special Interest Group December 2016 (pm)

In this session we looked at detailing and classes. When you import a detail from a manufacturer (which is often important) you often end up with several classes that you do not want, and they often don’t suit your naming convention anyway. So we looked at how we can import these details how we could manage the layers and classes and how we could change the details to suit our graphic style.

Topics covered:

• 00:13    we started out by visiting a manufacturer of cladding materials and downloading a DWG file. We then imported that file into a Vectorworks drawing. When we check the Navigation palette, we notice that there are several classes that were unexpected. You can remove a class using the Navigation palette, if you right click on the class and choose Delete. If the class has been used in the document you will get a dialogue box asking you if you want to reassign the information to another class or delete that information. If the information has not been used in the document, the class will just be deleted.
• 05:22    once you have imported the detail and you have checked it for accuracy (especially making sure it’s the right size) you then might use some symbols from your library to replace the information in the detail. Often these details do not use symbols, rectangles, or poly lines. Quite often these details just use a series of lines which makes it difficult to give the detail solid fill to make it more readable. One method would be to substitute the lines that represent timber studs or blocking with plug in objects or symbols that do the same job. Using solid objects would allow you to use colours to help make the detail more readable. Changing line weights will also help to make the drawing more readable. Often when you import drawings all the line weights are the same. In one case we had a flashing that was represented by a series of individual lines. Selecting all these lines and then composing them together to create the flashing makes it easier to the line weight.
• 27:34    one of the strategies with details might be to use classes on your details so that you can hide certain cladding materials. For example the detail between the wall cladding and the foundation might be similar for weatherboard (siding), sheet material, or vertical board and batten. The only difference is the actual cladding material. What if you were to put each cladding material on a separate class, that would allow you to have the same single detail but use it on many different projects.
  31:21 with detailing it’s very useful to use colours to represent line weights if you going to print your drawings in black and white. Using colours to represent line weights allows you to check your drawings to ensure that you have the correct line weights on different parts of the detail. If you print your drawings in colour, then this is not suitable.
• 42:01    we also looked at a method called Layer and Class Mapping that allows us to map several classes from the imported file into a single class of our choosing. There is a manual on layer and class mapping that is still useful (0806 Layer and Class Mapping) which goes into detail about how to use this technique. For these imported details, this technique makes it very quick to move all of the objects to the correct classes.

Architect December 2016 pm
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