Xref & Sheet Series: Best Practice?

Britton,

In short, option 3.
I like a single dwg per sheet, because it can scale up to any size, and as a consistent standard, is easy to understand and work with.
You are of course welcome to do any of the above options.

--J

Thanks Jeremiah. I'm probably not as experienced in all things CAD, so I have a follow up question: Would option 2 not allow you to scale up to any size?

-Britton

What do you guys have against layout tabs?

Britton,

The reason I would say option 2 does not scale up to any size, is what happens when you have 100 sheets? Surely there is a limit to the usable number of layout tabs in a file, I would say on the order of about a dozen. That is why I say that it can’t scale up for a large project.

And to answer Mercury’s question — it’s not that we have anything against layout tabs. As the above answer shows, it’s about a logical standard. But where the issue comes to the forefront is in regards to drawing corruption and cleanup. With just a single sheet per file, you are minimizing the damage and downtime should you need to rebuild the file. Our recommendation of one sheet per drawing came from trying to help users who had 30 or more detail sheets wiped out by drawing corruption.

—J

Ok, I see what you mean by scaling. That makes perfect sense.
Thanks Jeremiah!

Gotcha,

I have had a lot of layout tabs in one drawing, maybe as many as 30, probably not over that though and never any issues as long as I clean up the base files first.

Thanks!

A little late to the conversation (sorry). A few other thoughts to consider the third option mentioned:
the individual drawing files per sheet seem to work better when using the sheet set manager in CAD.
easier to divide work with others working on separate sheets and not tripping on each other.
depending on your computer hardware, CAD seems to struggle with multiple layout tabs in one drawing unless you have a robust system
I am sure there are plenty other things to consider but here are just a few to add to what Jeremiah mentioned.

My vote is for number 3 too.
1. Multiple people can work on the paper sheets at he same time (if necessary).
2. I sure wouldn't want to reference model drawings into a drawing with multiple layout tabs some of which are detail sheets that have nothing to do with the model (base) drawings.
3. Have you ever tried to detach references from a drawing with multiple layout tabs?
4. Simply, why? Why would a team want multiple tabs? I'm sure that there are reasons, but I think that only a one-person shop could benefit and even then the person would have to manage it properly to be efficient.

Again, I'm sure that there are reasons, so please don't hate on me so fast (Mercury69). It's not personal. Please just share your reasons (one-person shops excepted). I really am interested.

Next lets discuss overlays versus attachments. Okay? Ha, ha.

Seaweed

No hate Seaweed! I think whatever works best for the particular situation.

I am indeed a one man shop, always with a very current and robust pc build and the tabs have always worked great for me. I do have sole total control over all my files and data. 99.9% of the time, the only files that leave my office are PDF's. Personally, I'd go nuts if I had to create a separate drawing file for every sheet.

I have no frame of reference for how that would work in a multi networked team design type environment as I have never been there to have to figure it out and work that way - but I can see how my methods could be problematic in that situation. I guess my initial comment should have read "what are the benefits and downsides of layout tabs?" - really I was just curious.

Oh, and I am also an attachment guy vs. overlays. I probably spend a couple hours cleaning up base files I receive for every large Project, to include converting all those pesky overlays into attachments and then breaking any resulting circulars, because inevitably I will need at least some parts of the overlays to show up in my plan background when printed. Blows my mind how convoluted some of the base files I receive can be! Again, probably only practical for a one man shop and quite possibly also a result of my lack of understanding of every nuance and capability of ACAD.

Mercury69

Mercury69,

Sounds good. You no doubt have more freedom and more control as a one person shop. Being efficient is the key. AutoCAD allows for variable workflows. And we all use LandFX to gain efficiencies.

Good luck Mercury69.

Seaweed

in all the small firms I have worked with it has always been basically each drawing is its own sheet (construction, grading, planting, irrigation, lighting etc.) and all the sheets are tabs in model space. Details were always on separate drawings with multiple tabs. This allowed an individual project leader to control the base and the changes, then direct work to the irrigation person on the project to make adjustments to the irrigation plans if things needed to be moved from sheet to sheet or adjusted the one or two people would be responsible for those changes and they could do them without interfering with anyone else. I can see the corruption issue but we typically have/had a backup system that would allow for recovery of work. the major benefit of this system was it was easy for the project Manager and/or principle (who may or may not be intimately knowledgable of the project) to open a single file and know what they were looking at "irrigation" or "grading" or "construction details" they could tab through the layouts to find the sheet they needed and review or answer questions.

it worked really well and keep our files down to 4-10 files each with 2-20 tabs (sheets).

Just 2 more cents worth!

Bob

Along the lines of file setup..How does everyone handle their plant labels when using model drawings xref'd into the sheet files? Do you label right inside of your planting model drawing?

Our firm is working on updating file/project setup standards and this is one area we are trying to streamline. I'll do my best to describe our situation.  Our current system is based on Option 3 as described by the OP. We have separate model drawings that are xref'd into the sheet files and each sheet file contains one layout tab.

Here is where we are running into some complications. We have 2 planting model drawings, one for trees and one for shrubs/groundcovers. The tree model drawing (and less often the shrub model drawing) ends up being used for 2 different drawing sets, our compliance planting plan and construction planting plan. The issue is that our compliance planting plan and construction planting plans show different levels of detail and typically display the planting information at different scales. We want to have different sets of labels for the different drawings sets.

What is the best way to handle labels for a situation like this? Work Areas with a layer suffix? We could split into 2 separate Land F/X projects (one for compliance plans and one for CD's) but we would like to avoid doing that if we can find a good solution.

 

-Chris

Chris,

 

Currently, and for the foreseeable future, plant labels must be within the design file.

For your other issue, it sounds like a case where it might be best to use Annotative scaling.  Plant Labels will sport an MLeader option within a month, which will work much better with annotative scaling.

As for a method without resorting to annotative scaling... my first thought is why the compliance plan is a different scale than the construction plans -- if it could be the same, there's suddenly no issues.  Beyond that, it sounds like it would require some method of making a copy of the latest tree plan, then changing the scale of the callouts, and then saving that to be updated in the Compliance set.

 

--J

chris - are your compliant and working drawings don concurrently? could you treat the compliant plans as a step between a DD and CD set and work with unique symbols (maybe alphanumeric) and then in the working drawings convert them to simpler symbols with callouts?

 

Just a thought.

Bob

Very good questions Chris!

Like you, our compliance (entitlement) drawings are done at a larger scale and quite often on another sheet size. For instance, we may produce plans for a condo project at 1"=40" and fit on a single 36" x 48" sheet. But for CD's we'll go to 20 scale on 24"x36" sheets. The detail shown for the two are just not the same. We usually follow the Civil Engineer's or Building Architect's lead on this. For instance, if the Civil is producing their tentative map at 30,  40, 50 or 60 scale, we'll do the same. Whichever it is.

We're using different base (or design) files. We use the LandFX "Concept" plants for compliance (entitlement) drawings since one symbol can represent a multitude of species.

Thanks for the question. I'm also interested in efficient ways that others use LandFX.

Very intersting discussion..

For me, actually am more comfortable with using single drawing per sheet.

and i tend to clean base drawing and the xrefs as well for a safe start.

in our company we use overlays..

 

Nibal