2D Drawing

[firealarmdesigner]

Hi everyone,

      I am a fire alarm designer and I am running a trial of MEP to see if it will suit my needs. Sometimes I am required to generate a plan

without having any prints or pdfs or existing drawings available so I need to draw 2D floor plans fast based on my notes and site survey from some hand mockups I did. Make a long story short, I really enjoy the Architecture design tool palette and I noticed by going into 2d wire frame mode top view I can lay walls doors etc extremely fast but my question is, is there any way to make these objects and plan strictly 2d? In otherwords, not create any 3d objects because I want to use that library of helpful tools. I have no need to bog anything down with 3d so basically I am trying to create a fast floor plan with architecture palette so I do not have to hand draw each door, line, create blocks and make offsets on a rectangle to make a wall perimeter. Any help is greatly appreciated! Many thanks in advance.

[Tom_Eitelbach]

While in plan view type EXPORTTOAUTOCAD. Or go to the big A<export<autocad<pick your year. That will turn everything into 2-D linework and blocks. it will retain layer names and any screened lines, so it will look exatcly the same just flattened.

If you export in an iso view it will stay 3-D, but all AEC objects will be changed to blocks.

[Tom_Eitelbach]

Also,

If you sketch the floor plan with a simple single line layout, you can right click on the "wall" tool pallet tool and choose Apply tool properties to < linework. That will generate all your walls at once using the linework to justify location.

[firealarmdesigner]

Thank you very much, this is incredibly helpful. I really appreciate it!