Where Did You Get Your Layers?

[James Murray]

Do you use NCS layers? Did you (or your office) make your layers up? Did a consultant or training person help you set them up?

Have you had life-saving experiences connected with the use of NCS? Have you had near-death experiences associated with not using NCS?

We use a consultant-started (hi Matt), home grown system, whose general scheme has not changed since 5.1. It works very well for us, we're used to it, it's flexible, and we haven't had big problems with other disciplines.

The look and feel of NCS layers bugs me quite a bit, if it's still permitted to have an opinion about such things. Why can't ACAD accept spaces and lowercase instead of us having to accept not accepting spaces and lowercase? Never mind.

Still, I'm generally in favor of standards, willing to sacrifice some freedom and individuality in order to be clear, consistent, and easy to work with. I also think that AC users need to work harder to get along precisely because we're not part of the monoculture, not unlike a certain long-in-single-digit-market-share personal computer company.

Looking very far ahead, I am considering moving to NCS when we revise our standards for AC9. As with any standards change, the benefits have to outweigh the transition costs. Right now overhauling layers is prohibitive because of the limitations of the layer management interface. Any overhaul would be contingent on the layer tools being vastly improved in AC9.

Unless somebody out there can convince me it's worth it even at the prohibitive cost level. What's your experience with this issue? Are the standards truly standard yet?

PS, You can have my pen settings when you pry them from my cold dead fingers.

[Dave Jochum]

What's missing from this discussion is reference to building type, project size, project team size, and required degree of compatibility with consultants. These will all have a bearing on what layer system will work best. I consider myself fortunate in this regard, as I deal mostly with residential projects, only a few consultants (typically), and am the entire project team in my office. A slightly adapted version of the MaxATS templates works well for me. NCS reminds me of my former corporate architecture years (the bad parts), but they are a near necessity for larger commercial offices to work easily with others.

The only aspect of MaxATS that I'm second guessing now (after Matthew's mild rant at ACUW ) is the Pens & Colors setup. I'm going to have another look at that.

[tsturm]

You can get the NCS standards at the following addresses

http://www.nationalcadstandard.org

http://www.csinet.org/s_csi/doc_bookstore.asp?TRACKID=&CID=333&DID=6628

Hope this helps out.

Members to CSI get a reduced cost on the purchase of the standards.

Also look at the Uniform Drawing Standards.

http://www.csinet.org/s_csi/sec_expand.asp?CID=126&DID=4232

HTH

[tsturm]

David

My opinion on Pen and Colors is very simple. I hate the standards which have been published.

I find them to very hard for any entry drafter to deal with. I find CAD systems like Vectorworks and Microstation where they assign pens based on the layer. Therefore making the drafter just put the information on the correct layer makes the drawing read right. However in AC the layers do not have this option. I like that. I have chosen after much discussion to use my drafting pens as a standard. After all, they were the standard for sooo many years. I set the first ten pens to be the equivalent of the rapidio pens. They start small and get bigger. Thats it. None of this get smaller and bigger and smaller of pen sizes.

My coworkers like the system. Every color on the screen tells them the thickness of the pen when plotted. Now we forget the pens we use and concentrate on where we are putting our information and the drawing contents.

[Dave Jochum]

tsturm wrote:
David

My opinion on Pen and Colors is very simple. I set the first ten pens to be the equivalent of the rapidio pens. They start small and get bigger. Thats it. Every color on the screen tells them the thickness of the pen when plotted.

I also like the idea of colors representing line weights. Colors representing layers makes little sense to me. I am (almost?) never unsure of an item's layer when viewing on screen. Its line weight, however can not be determined without displaying true weights and zooming in. A real pain.

A case was made at ACUW for not changing the first 9 or 10 pens from the GS set, as they are supposedly set to match typical ACAD settings for ease in importing DWG/DXF files. And of course you don't want to change pen 91.