Detail Management

[Anonymous]

Is there a clean way to manage details in Archicad so that Plotmaker isn't an assemblage of 12 different drawings/sheet. Also seems clunky to have 12 view sets in Archicad for what ends up being one sheet in Plotmaker. I find I'm spending more time navigating than drawing on the details themselves. I draw it all in 2D in one spot/one viewset in Archidad but I fear I'm missing some advantage of auto this, or speedy that. What is the intention, what do you guys do?

[Anonymous]

At first I was going to write, 'What's the problem? If its the same scale, draw it in one view. If its a different scale, you need another view'."

As usual, I thought too fast. I too am frustrated when I break up details of the same scale destined for the same sheet simply in order that Plotmaker can put a title on the drawing (I know there may be other powerful advantages to seperating the details, but often there are not).

One thing that would help is if in Plotmaker I could arbitrarily place a Title Type somewhere on a drawing. This would let me title a number of drawings within a single view, and not have to worry about the Plotmaker Title Type being coordinated graphically with whatever object I might use to title in ArchiCAD. Is there a way to title something manually in Plotmaker, besides simply using primitive drawing elements?

[Anonymous]

"RobertNichols" I too am frustrated when I break up details of the same scale destined for the same sheet simply in order that Plotmaker can put a title on the drawing (I know there may be other powerful advantages to seperating the details, but often there are not).[/quote wrote:


I know what you mean, similarly frustrated.

You may not like my unorthodox response. With several related details I number them in ac as 'a', 'b','c' etc so they just get a single pm title and become effectively for eg. 32a, 32b,32c. Not a drafting standard but it hasn't caused any confusion yet.

It might be nice if pm automatically added an 'a', 'b' or 'c' to successive instances of the same drawing on the same sheet.

[Anonymous]

I've made the office a library part for a drawing title that uses autotext for the drawing name number and scale. Place it in a plan elevation or detail, save a view and it fills itself in nicely.

With PM9's ability to crop the window to a saved view's extent, it's relatively easy to draw an entire sheet of details or elevations in AC immediately next to each other and simply have saved views of each (I'd want these anyway in my navigator so someone else working on the job doesn't have to scroll around through a window of 25 details to find the one they want to work on). I use hotspots to control the alignment of the objects in PM and align objects in relation to the title (e.g. floor in a series of elevations). Of course, unless you draw these details and elevations in separate windows, you can't have your markers linked to the detail views and fill themselves in with the proper numbers... right?

My only problem is that PM doesn't understand gdl objects in their own right, so I can't use the part as a title in PM on its own. For that I just have to draw it separately.

wes