goodbye to Project Navigator.

[croc49]

I'm preparing my own Happy New Year and saying goodbye to Project Navigator.
And all it's quirks of drawing crashes, Xrefs that don't reflect materials properly, etc.
Have developed an all in one drawing (a la Revit) along the lines of what Ntellery has been promoting.
Attached is a 12 level building that was thrown together from A PN job I recently did - it's a bit ratty because the source was a BS1192 256 colour and target was a clone of "Multi-Level".
Total drawing size is 3.24MB and would be around 4MB if all the details were included in same drawing for printing - in this case about 32 sheets at A1 - Note no Xrefs..

Working in model space, each level plan is accessed by keystroke 10 ground, 11 first, 12 second....  112 for 12th.
The amount of layers is minimised so a lisp routine 112 freezes all other levels, opens 12-floor, 12-wall, 12-Tx, 12-Tx-Tag, 0-spanning
The last layer is for anything to be shown on all levels (i.e. an object with no cut plane override so that it shows a true cut at the set level.
Level 11-wall is locked but visible under and faded for reference.
AECdisplay is set - in this case (COMMAND "-AECDisplayConfigSetCurrent" "F12") - essentially "medium detail" with different cut planes.
The floor level is added via custom in drawing properties (see attached)
(command "elevation" FL-12) sets the level in drawing and (AecSetLayerKeyOverride "Level" "12")

This last bit is Nathan's idea and sets Layer Key Override so that anything that is dragged off Tool Palette has it's layer set to the current level (and not the one of it's origin)
All new objects come in - 0-wall becomes 12-wall, 0-floor becomes 12-floor, etc.
Text and dimensions also derive from Tool Palette through a Stock Catalogue "command" tool with LKO (set ANNOOBJ) and macro (e.g. ^c^c-style;dream100;iso ;230 1 0 N N;^C^C-COLOR 7;-LINETYPE S BYLAYER;;-plotstyle c "Black";;-Lweight 0.25;^c^cDT / 0;)
So at 1:100 I have 4 palletes for different text heights, one for dims, one for dimaligned and a leader.
Same for 1:200 site plans, and again for 1:20 details, etc
This is why I'm keeping layers and styles to a minimum to keep the lisp code easily readible.
Still debating whether to seperate furniture from text layer - 12-Furn
For viewports in sheet layouts, I also have similar keystrokes to set up 12th floor plans - just add "v" for viewports as in 112v.
1M is the keystroke to opening all the object layers in Model View, and leaving text and dims locked.
1MV similarly sets up the layers on Layout viewport.

Everything in the project is a couple of keystrokes away and the speed of access is less than one second - as computers get faster, this will become lightning.
Beats opening and shutting drawings, not remembering which ones are open, refedit, blah,blah, and the all the other quirks.
I am not a high level programmer so the code is pretty basic and easy to understand.
The limit of upload size prevents me adding the .dwg file.
I said in a prior post that I do lots of single level houses with a number of Display configs to represent various disciplines - http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/AutoCAD-Architecture/Learning-ACA-for-residential-work/m-p/3695278/hig...
I still maintain this system in the code so that I can be consistent with object development.
Also having 2 systems with different layer standards was a real brainstrain.
If anyone is interested I will reveal more.
 

[leothebuilder]

Hey Croc....Merry Christmas.

I am impressed with what you've done with a "all in one" file setup.

Could you post the .dwg file in the File Attachments forum. That forum will allow you to post larger file sizes.

I'd like to see how put this together.

Thx

Leo

[croc49]

Looks like file attachments board has been archived with no provision to upload.

Send me an email and I'll send drawing with code and explanation.

Email is on RON-2444.pdf title block.

I will attempt to get a smaller drawing to post that demonstrates the range of uses I have set up.