Alright, let me give a better example:
Let’s say your project is to install a machine in a warehouse. This project will have the normal set of drawings:
Foundation Plan
Electrical Plan
Equipment Layout
General Plan
Plan & Elevation (close up)
Mechanical & Piping plan
Civil Plan
Idea is to draw xrefs which would be referenced into each plan and eliminate the number of changes that would have to be done during a change. So, you draw
Foundation XREF
Electrical XREF
Equipment XREF
Mechanical XREF
Civil XREF
Now when you put this together you run into problems…
For Foundation Plan, it works good, you just put in your Foundation Plan & Civil XREF.
For Electrical Plan you need Foundation, Equipment & Electrical:
Now, your equipment will be overlapping foundation xref, (so will look messy). If you have panels or boxes for electrical, it will overlap with equipment, to make it look clean you have to trim equipment around panels or boxes, trim the foundation around equipment. Etc.
Same goes with piping, piping will have to be trimmed as it is added to the equipment.
But if you trim you will affect the original general plan which does not show electrical or piping, it will mess with foundation plan which does not show the equipment.
How do people work around this?
As I said, I know that wipeout works, but it sure gets messy when you have wipeout on top of wipeout and so on. I just wish that AutoCad creates an option for these dynamic blocks, to be able to set draworder on them, and set a boundary.
If everything is done in 3D, it eliminates this, but since not the whole industry is 3D, there should be some solution for 2D.
Thanks,
Viktor.