Jump to content

Apartment building unit plan xref's


FloridaCAD

Recommended Posts

I am working on a new project that is a multi-story apartment building. I am familiar with xref's and use them for most of my projects. However, I have not done an apartment building yet and am unsure as to how to set up the base sheets/plans.

 

We have designed all of the apartment units, maybe 15 in total. Now I need to decided how to get these xref'ed into the base sheets. My thought is to create a new dwg file for each floor as a base drawing. Then, in each one of these floors, xref all of the unit plans that apply to that floor. Then I can use that overall base plan of each floor as an xref for all the architectural sheets. But can I xref a dwg, that already has xref's attached, to start a new dwg for the architectural drawings ie. RCP, Finish Plans, Schedules, Life Safety?

 

Am I looking at this the right way, or should I be considering another way.

 

Any help would e greatly appreciated.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hello, I will try my best to help, I am assuming that you are doing the architectural drawings. Where I work we do MEP so we get peoples apartment plans and put all the MEP items on the plans. You can have xrefs inside of xrefs, and it seems that the architects we work with make one drawing of each unit type and then they just xref the units into where they need to be for each floor plan. For example, if you have a unit called B1, and you have 10 of them on the second floor, than you can xref the B1 drawing into the second floor plan 10 times and put them where they need to be. So set up each floor as it needs to be in a drawing. So if you have a building with four levels, you should have four separate DWG files for each floor. Those files will be your base drawings that will be xref'd for your sheets. I apologize if you find this confusing, it was the best way I could think to explain the process. The first thing you should do however, is if you are working for a company that has been doing this work before you need to ask someone there how it has been done at your firm because that is who you are doing this for.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not confusing at all. Thank you for taking the time to answer this. I am pretty sure we are both saying the same thing and that my thought process was correct. And yes, we are the architects and we'll be sending these files to our MEP and structural consultants as well. This is our first multi-story project, so there is no one to ask; just me and my partner.

 

When you receive your architects base sheets are the xref's "bound" (bind) together, or do they send you all the dwg's? My guess is to bind them.

 

Thanks again for your help!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No problem, I am glad I could be of assistance. I believe that they are bound together I am not sure on that one. As long as we have the base for the levels and the separate unit drawings we can begin to add lights and other items. I normally don't do any work on the AutoCAD apartments here until the sheets have been fully set up and are ready for MEP items to be added. I have started to put quite a bit of set-up work in on the apartment projects that we have received in Revit which is a bit of a different process to say the least.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1. XREFs within XREFs are called nested. Look into the OVERLAY vs ATTACHed settings for the XREFs. If they are set to ATTACH, they will be included when the referencing file is XREFd into another file.

 

2. A bound XREF is no longer an XREF, it is a block and loses all the advantages of being an XREF.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thank you for the clarification. When we get the xref's they have nested xref's inside of them and they must be set to be Attached. I imagine whenever we are sent the architects drawings they just use etransmit to send us all the needed files, the engineers are the ones who actually receive the drawings here.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hello, I will try my best to help, I am assuming that you are doing the architectural drawings. Where I work we do MEP so we get peoples apartment plans and put all the MEP items on the plans. You can have xrefs inside of xrefs, and it seems that the architects we work with make one drawing of each unit type and then they just xref the units into where they need to be for each floor plan. For example, if you have a unit called B1, and you have 10 of them on the second floor, than you can xref the B1 drawing into the second floor plan 10 times and put them where they need to be. So set up each floor as it needs to be in a drawing. So if you have a building with four levels, you should have four separate DWG files for each floor. Those files will be your base drawings that will be xref'd for your sheets. I apologize if you find this confusing, it was the best way I could think to explain the process. The first thing you should do however, is if you are working for a company that has been doing this work before you need to ask someone there how it has been done at your firm because that is who you are doing this for.

 

This is how most architects I deal with do it :); personally I think it works well and makes things easier for everyone. Certainly far easier than the architects who don't know how to use xrefs or blocks and you then get 10 individual copies of an apartment/house that are the same...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...