Topic: Wow, a new one today!!!

[craigr]

We use the simple floor plans of a building and add our equipment to that floor plan.

We always get our floor plans from outside engineers.

After 15 years of this, I ran into something I have never seen. -

FIVE floors in ONE drawing!! This includes typical building equipment, HVAC, plumbing, etc....

The file size is only 571kb.

Just another example of learning something new every day.

craigr

[Matt__W]

I hope they aren't stacked on top of each other.

[craigr]

Yes, they are.

It's really different.

[Matt__W]

Yes, they are.

It's really different.

It's a NIGHTMARE to have to deal with that when you aren't familiar with their work process.  We've seen that before.  Trying to strip out the various floors to use as backgrounds is tedious & time-consuming at best.

[craigr]

Most, but not all of the layers had something similar to '5th' at the end of the layer names, which helped a lot.

Though, I think I would have put the '5th' at the begining of the name, to group that layers together.

It wasn't HORRIBLE to pull everything apart, and I'm not complaining. It was just so radically different from what I typically see.

craigr

[CAB]

That's exactly the way I work. You need a layer filter from them to easily switch from floor to floor and discipline to discipline.
Once you understand the technique it simple enough.


F1_ = Floor Plan 1st Floor
F2_ = Floor Plan 2nd Floor
FJ1_ = Floor Joist

You get the picture. 

[mjfarrell]

As long as they were NOT all on layer ZERO with color and linetype set to BY OBJECT you should be golden.   

[craigr]

As long as they were NOT all on layer ZERO with color and linetype set to BY OBJECT you should be golden.   

THAT would be HORRIBLE -- LOL!!

[Jeff H]

That just seems to make it more complicated and open for more errors

[craigr]

I went back and looked at the original and there were no layer filters.

The filter thingy would make it much easier.

[CAB]

I use the Express Tools layer manager just because I started that way but you need to have them sent you the layer filters as an exported file. Although not too difficult to recreate.
I thought that the Layer Filter was saved in the drawing for both types of layer filters. Did you check for Express Tools layer filters?

[craigr]

I don't have 'Express Tools'.

A coworker is the one that dealt with this original file. She told me about it.

She just deleted the floors, (layers), we don't need. - Of course, keeping the original file.

[CAB]

Sounds like you have this one under control but I would be glad to look for the Express Tools Layer Filters if you like.

[craigr]

That's okay, but thanks for the offer.

[Greg B]

DataCAD does it that way.  Pretty slick really.  Lot's of managing of layers built into the program.

Allows you to make sure the walls line up from floor to floor easier.

If you make sure you have the right layers on and off when exporting the receiving party should have had no problems!

[craigr]

I can see the advantages of doing it that way - as long as file size doesn't become an issue.

I just haven't run into it before.

BTW, is it REALLY that difficult to make sure they line up doing it the traditional way?

[Greg B]

Sorry...it's only traditional to you.

[Krushert]

Depends on what you mean "doing it the traditional way"?

I have a couple of luddites (M.H.O.) that want to set all floors in one file but next to each other usually align either horizontally or vertically.  But most of us create a separate file for each floor and xref on top of each other when we need to an alignment check.   If you floor plan is simple and small with the number of layers, it is no problem to set up the former or the method you found.    But with large complex drawing it gets very cumbersome and it seems the layer state or filters get unwieldy too.   YMMV

[Draftek]

I could see this being very beneficial if the floor plans are drawn on their correct elevation respectively - With a few tools to manipulate the views and paper space layouts.

Its basically how I do 3D piping modeling.

[craigr]

I would LOVE to be in an Industry that does that!!!

I would think it is pretty cool.

We use LT so everything we do is 2D.

[danallen]

I bet they might be using scripts. Back in R12 days, that was how we set all our layer states. While not combining all floors in one, for architecture we would combine existing, demo, new, ceilings, finish, power, furniture, etc all into one file. About 100 layers which get sorted out into at least 6 separate printed drawings, 7 if you count presentation. We would use scripts to quickly change layers states and the scripts used wild cards to say turn off partial height walls in the ceiling plan by example: -layer > off > *prht*

the main downside was that it limited the number of people that could work on the drawings at one time. for that reason I now separate most information into separate files and xref for ceiling, furniture, power, etc.

Dan