Standard Notes on Drawings

[RockyBrown4134]

A question was today about how to handle standard notes on a drawing.
Do they need to be blocks that are on a pull down menu?
Do they need to be MText that is type or Copied in?
Saved in a template or drawing, then and copied out?
Saved in a text file, or Excel Spread sheet?
We currently use several of these methods. I was wondering how others handled standard notes? is there another or better way to handle them?
All comments are welcome.

Thanks.

[3wood]

Make it a separate drawing. All other drawings only refer to this drawing number.

[3wood]

Make it a separate drawing. All other drawings only refer to this drawing number.

[Kent1Cooper]

That depends on what you mean by "standard."

For example, you could have, say, a batch of typical sheet notes in a .txt file, and you could put them into any drawing you want as RTEXT.  Or they could be in a .dwg file and put into any drawing as an XREF.  In either case, you would be able to change the content in the source file, and that change would be reflected in every drawing it's referenced into, the next time it's opened.  That's a nice capability, but it could present problems.  Say you've issued a set of drawings that include some of those standard notes.  Something about them gets adjusted, for good reason, in the source file(s).  Later you open up one of those drawings, and the notes in it are no longer what they were when the drawing was issued, but you may not know that [there certainly won't be any kind of warning in the drawing itself].  If your purpose in opening the drawing is to see what it says about something in the standard notes, you'll get the wrong answer.

Because of that kind of thing, my inclination would be to have them in .dwg files and Insert them as Blocks, or even as exploded Blocks so they're not carrying Block definitions in the target drawing and can easily be edited there as needed to meet the specific needs of the job or the drawing.  That way, their content won't be affected by any changes in the source file.

But you might want to have their content able to be changed in one source file and updated in any and all drawings it's referenced in.  In that case you can use the RTEXT/XREF route, as long as you Bind them into versions of the drawings that get issued so the record will be reliable, or issue drawings as something like PDFs and look only at those when you want to see what's in the drawings as issued.

[jggerth]

While many of my notes are 'sorta' standard - they are invariably modified to be job specific.  As a rule, I'll copy and update from an earlier, similar job, and then modify as required for the permitting agency and reviewers, as well as contractor needs.

NCS and the Uniform Drawing System approach is probably worth exploring, at least for AEC type work.

[RockyBrown4134]

Thanks everyone. I have gotten some good ideas along with some good in company suggestions.

I'm not going to check this as an accepted solution just yet. I will try to post the suggestions and or the resolution before I do so.

[Anonymous]

• Thanks to fields and data extraction, I generally stick to mtext and tables set up in DWT's just because they're a little easier to manipulate than blocks and attributes.
• I also use pulldowns if there are choices of standard notes to choose from.
• If I do need to use general text, I prefer MTEXT and hate dealing with drawings that use TEXT becasue MTEXT has more options and flexibility.