New 2012 users

[clithgow]

My 3 user space planning company has just purchased licenses of Architecture 2012 and will be begining the process of upgrading from ADT2007 in the next few weeks. We currently have very few customizations (and those that we do have are messy and poorly implemented) so I'm thinking we almost want to start from scratch in terms of layer usage/block libraries/lisp routines/drawing templates/routines, etc.

Any thoughts on a good starting point? Considering the Acessing Architecture 2012 text book but I'm afraid that some of the improvements maybe glossed over since from 2007-2012 is not exactly an incremental increase.

I appreciate any and all thoughts.

Thanks!

[David_W_Koch]

I am not familiar with Mr. Wyatt's books, but I would imagine that when the 2012 version is published, it would not eliminate coverage of features that were new in ACA 2008-ACA2011.  It is unlikely to call out what year each feature was first introduced, so you would need to know what features are new since the 2007 release.

I was going to suggest using the New Features Workshop as a means of determining those new features, but that no longer appears to be part of the 2012 Help.  You can access the 2011 New Features Workshop here:

http://docs.autodesk.com/ARCHDESK/2011/ENU/NFW/nfw.htm

That will give you an overview of the new features in AutoCAD Architecture and AutCAD, for the 2009-2011 releases.  If you know someone running ACA 2010, the New Features Workshop for that release includes the new features for ACA and AutoCAD 2008.

[ntellery]

personally I abandoned using custom .ctb files (common plague here in Aus) and started using the OOTB aec standard.stb plot style - excellant for doing 3d work as well as 2d.  simple to use and very flexible.

Don't build layers, into blocks or styles. allow ACA to automate thru layer standard .

Most styles & blocks should be ByBlock setting.  allow layers to control. most flexible.

Learn the layer key style well to do what you need.