Setting up engineering dwg workflow

[Organic]

I am interested to hear how others in the civil engineering field in particular setup their drawings.

 

How we do it currently (or at least how people should grr) is the model is at scale 1:1 on the correct coordinate system in model space. Then the long sections and cross sections for the alignments are at the scale exported from the design software packages (i.e. not 1:1 scale) and dropped into model space [i place boxes around all the different long sections, cross sections, model etc and make it look tidy as that is what I prefer, although most people jsut drop the sections anywhere and it becomes a huge mess).

 

Then each long section is referenced into a viewport (scale 1:1000) which then makes the section be to scale (as remember they are not 1:1 in modelspace). The text on the sections remains in modelspace. All other text added to the drawing is done in paperspace with the only text on the model in modelspace being the alignment chainages.

 

We don't use annotative scaling although I am thinking perhaps we should start using these for chainage labels and contour labels. Can anyone else offer any advice on how the workflow could be improved and what I could implement to make it better?

[BIGAL]

Probably only suggestion we use UCS to realign our layouts to fit the sheet better eg when road is say 5 degs off ortho else plan looks like road is crooked but maintain real world co-ords for set out. We leave our long and cross in paperspace rather than use a viewport. Our external software has a tick list what ch's for long and cross to be plotted comes in handy.

 

A little trick when doing real long roads we plot the long section at 10m interval but do the cross sections at say 50m all we do is resample at the different spacing and plot no need to yes/no cross sections.

[Organic]

I don't normally mess around with the UCS unless it has done something funny, although I rotate the viewport views so that the road would be parallel with the sheet border typically as you outlined above.

 

We could put the long/cross sections in paperspace easily although I do find it handy to be able to see all of them in modelspace if I need to quickly check something.

 

Yeah, we do the same re cross section spacing.

 

For setout coordinates of roads I generally export the alignment report, copy and paste that into Excel, then create a data link from Excel into AutoCad to bring it in as a table. For pits/other setout points I normally just do those manually.

[BIGAL]

Setouts done simply using CIV3d we have a point group called "Setout" you add points to this groups you can then just create a table of this point group all done

 

Another way is create points export them out to notepad edit comments etc then import points into a group so comments appear straight away a little simpler we found than editing the table.

 

Our pit setout is via a drainage schedule we populate the attributes by picking pts in model it can be one pt or two for true alignment it also enters size of pit from pick points.

 

I leave the table stuff to others but we have a few HOW TO's I will post after 2nd Jan.

[Murph_map]

I am interested to hear how others in the civil engineering field in particular setup their drawings.

 

How we do it currently (or at least how people should grr) is the model is at scale 1:1 on the correct coordinate system in model space. Then the long sections and cross sections for the alignments are at the scale exported from the design software packages (i.e. not 1:1 scale) and dropped into model space [i place boxes around all the different long sections, cross sections, model etc and make it look tidy as that is what I prefer, although most people jsut drop the sections anywhere and it becomes a huge mess).

 

Then each long section is referenced into a viewport (scale 1:1000) which then makes the section be to scale (as remember they are not 1:1 in modelspace). The text on the sections remains in modelspace. All other text added to the drawing is done in paperspace with the only text on the model in modelspace being the alignment chainages.

 

We don't use annotative scaling although I am thinking perhaps we should start using these for chainage labels and contour labels. Can anyone else offer any advice on how the workflow could be improved and what I could implement to make it better?

 

Have you looked at the Plan and Production tools in Civil3D?

[EMS_0525]

We do everything from civil to mechanical. Everything is in model space. Everything is 1:1. All text is in model, except for title block information, thats all in paper. I have begun using annotative text just to make my life easier. Alot of people see where it comes in handy is when changing scales. I think its great because all my objects and text is in model, all i have to do is tell it the correct scale, especially for mleaders and dimensions. Never have to change the dim style so the arrow heads are the correct size or any of the other settings. Just set up one Annotative dim style and go at it, just tell it the right scale. Takes a lot of "work" out of dim styles and mleaders. Previously i had a dim style for the different scales. Now i only use 1.

 

Personally i think sections in paper space and plans in model space would be very inefficient. Transferring info from plan to the section would be a pain. When i do alot of work with plan views and section views i split my model space up into 2 viewports and have one on the plan and one on the section. So you dont have to constantly pan around. I find that works the best for me.

[howitzer]

I am interested to hear how others in the civil engineering field in particular setup their drawings.

 

How we do it currently (or at least how people should grr) is the model is at scale 1:1 on the correct coordinate system in model space. Then the long sections and cross sections for the alignments are at the scale exported from the design software packages (i.e. not 1:1 scale) and dropped into model space [i place boxes around all the different long sections, cross sections, model etc and make it look tidy as that is what I prefer, although most people jsut drop the sections anywhere and it becomes a huge mess).[/color]

 

Then each long section is referenced into a viewport (scale 1:1000) which then makes the section be to scale (as remember they are not 1:1 in modelspace). The text on the sections remains in modelspace. All other text added to the drawing is done in paperspace with the only text on the model in modelspace being the alignment chainages.

 

We don't use annotative scaling although I am thinking perhaps we should start using these for chainage labels and contour labels. Can anyone else offer any advice on how the workflow could be improved and what I could implement to make it better?

This is big with me, as well.