Silvio,
I was going to pass this one by but was looking at a structural drawing
(electronic not hard copy) and it made me angry.
It is a two story school and is a addition in two separate areas. The structural
engineer will have a foundation drawing, a mezzanine level and a roof level for
one area and for the second area a foundation only.
What he did (the structural engineer) was to take a copy of the architectural
drawing and put his structural either on top of the architectural or in a
separate plan pulled off the side. Now granted, that the architectural drawing
is not well organized with some partial plans of different levels off to the
side, the engineer copied the architectural floor plan six times, almost making
a 3 column, 2 row array.
Now my big beef about this is that the whole reason for this is his layer naming
system which supports or rather limits his drawing organization. Some of the
layer names make sense, 03311-exist, 03hatch-conc, but most are 00fine, 00thin,
03med, and these don't.
If he would thinking in terms of the whole building structure, foundation on the
bottom, the mezzanine on top of that and then the roof sturcture on top of that,
then he would be doing fine. At this point, he is drawing lines, thin ones for
this element of his plotted drawing and heavier ones for that part. He should be
drawing a foundation which is represented in hard copy by a heavier line than
the text which dimensions it. Stuctural elements that rest on the foundation
should be located on the foundation, not on a separate area pulled off to the
side.
The layer names should faciliate whatever you are designing and if it is
building systems then you should be designing the whole building. 3d would be
nice but you can do the same thing in 2d very nicely.
(Did you ever notice that in the AIA layering scheme that the first portion of a
layer name is ARCH- as if the most important thing about the layer is who made
it.)
We do plumbing, hvac and fire sprinkler systems for buildings and learned early
on that your layer system can allow you to do anything if you set it up right.
For instance. Plumbing systems are vertical. You are always designing a piping
system between levels. The second floor drains into the first floor and the
first floor drains into the basement, etc, etc. A riser on the second floor has
to be in the same location as the riser on the first floor. How do you do this?
With layer names that have levels built into them. Level 1 something. Level 2
something. When you want to work on Level 1, turn everything off and turn on all
the Level 1 layers. (layer on level 1*). Now, the piping. You have sanitary
drainage piping, storm water drainage piping, acid waste drainage piping. How do
you tell the difference between drainage piping and cold water piping? The
drainage piping is shown with a wider linetype than the cold water piping.
All drainage piping with a layer color of say cyan. Layer name level 1 drainage
sanitary, level 1 drainage storm water, etc. Layer name level 1 pipe cold water,
level 1 pipe hot water, etc, etc.
Except for being too long, very easy. Now, sometimes, you are doing a renovation
so have new piping, and existing piping. The standard is that new piping is
shown (on hard copy) bolder than the same type of piping that is existing. Put
it on a separate layer. So, layer name level 1 drainage new sanitary, level 1
drainage existing sanitary. Etc, etc, etc.
Now you have something that will faciliate your design. Locate your drain riser
for the first floor wc in the appropiate location relative to the fixture. With
the level 1 drainge new sanitary as current, layer off *, current layer on,
layer on level 0 (basement) *. Change current layer to level 0 drainage new
sanitary and put in the riser for the first floor wc directly over the first
floor riser. Now, you can layer off *, current layer on, layer on level 0 *, and
run your basement sanitary drain piping from the previously located riser.
The whole key is grouping the layer name parts by common things. Levels, status
(new, existing, demolation, future). Menu macros will do it all at the pick of a
button. One button for each level. One button for each status. A previously new
system is being added to. Rename all the * new * layers to * existing *. What
could be simpler? Once you accept the concept, anything is possible.
For instance. Our layer names are level, area, dicipline (because we mix
plumbing and hvac in the same drawing), sub-level, status, graphic, component,
and location. You may not need all these but if you had them, you would use
them. 1APHNPDA is level 1, area A (mechanical rooms at 1:50 are drawn in the
1:100 plan so the piping leaving lines up with the piping outside the mechanical
room), sub-level H ( high for high level piping, L for low level piping in the
mechanical room), status new, graphic P for plumbing, component D for drainage
(sanitary is the default, storm has ST in the line type, acid waste has AW in
the line type) and A for location (a is for above with continuous linetype and b
is for below with dashed linetype. Pipe sizes for this layer would be 1APHNPXA,
cold water piping would be 1APHNPCA, and so on. We have progressed to using a
lisp program to changing areas of a drawing where you new and existing layers of
the same systems (so rename doesn't work) by entity selection that lists all the
entities, and changes with change property of each entity, its layer from
1APHNPCA to 1APHEPCA or 1APHNPDA to 1APHEPDA as it applies. The different areas
and sub-levels allow text at different heights for different plotted scales to
apply to the same entity. The different layer colors define the system on the
monitor as well as set the linewidths. If you want the drainage risers a
different pen width, new layer 1APHNPUA for plumbing riser up and 1APHNPZA for
plumbing riser down. You can develope excatly the same layer tools with less
criptic names. FLR-1-NEW-DRAIN or FLR1-DRN-NEW can work just as easily. 00FINE
doesn't quite cut it.
Frustrated again
Dave Alexander
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