National CAD Standard - Sheet layout

[noah]

Are others using NCS? We are just beginning to adopt NCS at my firm. So far I see no reason why we can't implement all of it - even keynotes seem to be working just fine for our purposes (although I think Revit could be improved and made more consistent with NCS out of the box, e.g. generate noteblock per sheets automatically).

However, I'm struggling with determining the best sheet module. We use mostly 24x36 sheets with 11x17 and 8.5x11 as well. I want to create a system that works well for all 3 sizes and it's obvious we need to determine this now or our detail libraries will be useless if we make a major module change in the future.

In terms of 24x36 (using NCS guidelines for margins and titleblock size) I think a module with 5 blocks across and 4 down is too large (especially for the note block). But a 6 across by 5 down is too small for making good details. Should I use a smaller noteblock and then a larger module in the drawing area? Should we buy a plotter that prints 30x42? is that a better size for NCS?

Any recommendations? Anybody willing to post an example of sheet they've drawn with NCS to show how well it can work (or how bad it works).

Thanks!

[patricks]

Hmm I don't know too much about this NCS, but at my firm we use 5 x 4 blocks on 24x36 sheets and 6 x 5 blocks on 30x42 sheets, and it seems to work just fine.

[phyllisr]

Any recommendations? Anybody willing to post an example of sheet they've drawn with NCS to show how well it can work (or how bad it works).

My specialty is rambling on and on, but if any of this helps and makes sense, I can post the Titleblock families I made using the NCS grid system. I did attach a PDF with screen shots of a Revit sheet - the second clip shows my issue noted below. There is a caveat that we are still in pilot/early migration phase and are debating a bunch of parameter issues... I am still changing/adding/modifying in coordination with the QC team. Like everyone in the field, we all care deeply about the most minor things and can argue for hours about what should go where.

Anyway, our firm bases our entire graphic interface (AutoCAD, ADT, and now Revit) on National CAD Standards. If you think about it, the grid concept is designed to be flexible and not force a sheet size on any firm. We use multiple sheet sizes and our details consistently fit in a single "box" or combination of boxes. Ours is 5" x 5-5/8" but only because I needed something to work on all the plotters in both office locations, including the specialized color plotters and the printers. When we drew by hand, it was a bit bigger. This grid size remains constant. For bigger details, use two boxes or a box and a half. We have the following but generally use 24X36 and 30x42 for most projects:

18" x 24", 3x4 Grid
24" x 36", 4x6 Grid
30" x 42", 5x7 Grid
36" x 48", 6x8 Grid

We have separate 8 1/2" x 11" (portrait and landscape) and 11" x 17" for RFIs, CBs, etc. If the detail is too big for those, it likely means re-issuing the whole sheet anyway.

I have two problems with Revit and sheets. First, I have been unable to create a grid as part of the family itself that you can "see" in the sheet but will not plot. If you select the titleblock, you can see the invisible lines but only if selected - not ideal but also not worth back-pedaling to ADT. I anticipate some objection about "perfect" alignment and snapping to the grid in the sheet but that is one of my very few "get over it" things. At least you can align things to each other and it's good enough for a sheet. It would just be easier when doing a sheet layout to see the invisible grid numbers.

Second, because the project information in the sheets is either a system or shared parameter, I had difficulty with some size and wrapping issues for things like a Project Name. I wanted to use that parameter for the cover sheet (big and bold), the index sheet (different text), the typical title block (with wrapped text) and the small sheets for CBs (small text, aligned differently). Frankly, I want to re-design the small sheets just to make it easier. As a new user, I had problems deciding how to do it and determining the best strategy. Now that I have it solved, it's not a problem but I wish it had been easier.

NCS is important for oh, so many reasons, not just the grid. Establishing your import and export options for sending things to consultants is only one of many. We use the whole integrated concept as a starting point and weigh very carefully any modifications. We do deviate for some things but not many - we consider quibbling over fractions of inches for margins an acceptable deviation. Sort of like the OOTB philosophy in general CAD use - why reinvent the wheel?

Like I said, I can ramble on. Just another opinion...
PBR

[noah]

Thanks PBR for the thoughtful response - seems like you have a little more experience with NCS than me. I totally agree with all your comments about how important it is to adhere to a standard - it saves a lot of time quibbling.

However, it seems like your example is not adhering to the module - am I missing something? I thought the whole point of the module is that your drawings "fit" within a module so you can easily place drawings on a sheet without disrupting other drawings.

Do you find that the 5" wide module is large enough for most common details like roof eaves with a 3 foot overhang? Especially when drawing 1-1/2" details? I was seriously considering going with a 6x5 module on 24x36 sheets. But others at the firm are skeptical of how well that will work for many details. And I'm worried that using a 1.5x module will throw everything off.

FYI, I setup my Titileblocks to have light cyan lines for the grid. It shows up on color plots but it is so faint on bw plots that it isn't noticeable. And repros lose the lines all together. I can also turn them off with instance parameter and/or visibility graphics.

I also setup a drawing guide that scales to the right module size for each scale. This gives you something to draw your details within and be sure that it fits on the sheet when it comes time. I wish Revit had something like this built in - specify a fixed size for the crop region relative to your module (1x1, 2x2, etc.). And allow you to specify where the view tag is placed relative to view so when you drop your views on your sheet they snap into place without adjustments.

Thanks!

[khomburg]

We have moved a long way toward implementing portions of the NCS here. For our title blocks we use a grid box that is 6"W X 5.75"H. This is the case for D and E size sheets. We haven't quite figured out what we are doing with 11x17 or 8.5x11 yet. It took a while to find a size that would work correctly with the majority of our plotters. Some of our plotters chop off the tick marks on the outside of the border but our production plotters can get it all in.

I agree that a 6" wide note block is a bit wide but we figure that not all of our sheets have notes so we would rather have all the modules on the sheet the same size.

[dstokes]

We use the same grid layout as phyllisr, but our module is 5-1/4" wide by 5-3/4" high. The first column of modules starts 3-3/8" from the right edge of the paper to allow for the title block. This leaves an 1-1/8" binding margin on the D-size (24x36) and 1-7/8" on the E1-size (30x42).

When there is a title in the module, it takes the bottom 1/2", so the drawing space ends up as a square 5-1/2" on a side. Even though this might seem a bit small, it has worked fairly well - for both note blocks and graphics - for larger details, an eave detail with an overhang is two modules wide, for example. Sometimes there is too much text in a detail to fit into one module even though the graphic part of the detail fits fine - we use that as a cue that the "subject" of the detail is too broad, and needs to be broken into two details.

Our problem is maintaining a consistent look on a Revit sheet of details vs. an Autocad sheet of details.

In Autocad, the linework on our details extends to the edge of the grid on all sides except the left, The text is almost always aligned 1/8" inch from the left edge of the module and dimensions are placed only at the right, top, bottom.

In Revit, we are still struggling with several problems. We have defined a Generic Annotation family use in the Drafting or Detail view to help maintain consistent alignment from detail to detail. Then, we have defined a "detail" type in the Viewport family to use when the detail is placed on the a sheet. Nothing snaps to these modules, so it's still just eyeballing. Also, since the crop box of the detail is what seems to control the extent of the linework, and this almost never is the same size as the drawing module we can't maintain the organized look of our Autocad details, where even the text lines up from detail to detail. We'll have to back to details "floating" on the sheet, I guess.

[noah]

Thanks everyone for the thoughts.

Here's what I ended up doing. 5x4 module. I'm using a 1 1/2" binding edge on the left, 3/4" margin on the right, 3/8" margin top and bottom. I then have a 2 1/2" titleblock on the right side. Then the drawing area is divided into 4 rows and 5 columns.

This seems to work great and gives us a very organized sheet. Granted everything has to be placed and adjusted manually on the sheet but once you place a bunch of details the others snap into place.

I hope Revit really takes a close look at NCS for future releases. There are a number of things they could do to make it easier for us to implement NCS without having to develop our own work arounds (like symbols).

Anybody know if Revit has officially adopted NCS? perhaps 9.0 will have some more NCS compliant features.