Legend vs Note Block vs Keynote

[jcoe]

Currently our office uses legend views I had initially set up for demolition and reconstruction notes (attached). I would like to transition to either a Note Block or a Keynote Legend.

The legend views were great for this initially because they can be place onto multiple sheets and can be accompanied with a graphic. Seeing as how the graphic shows up on our title page in our symbols legend, I find that using it again in the legend becomes redundant. Also, During the course of a project notes get longer and sometimes run off the sheet or run into a drawing. It seems to me that a schedule format is the way to go. It allows for more flexibility on sheets because of the split schedule feature and the ease of manipulating the column widths.

The keynote legend seems the way to go because you can filter them by sheet but this does not seem to be something that is easily editable. I will have to experiment with this feature a little more.

How are others handling notes and what do you recommend?

[Zoltan]

I have set up a note block that is a Generic Annotation family with instance parameters for Tag, Text, and Sheet. You can place them in any view and fill out the parameters for the notes and give a unique value to the Sheet parameter. When you create a noteblock schedule, have the schedule filter by the sheet parameter, which is hidden, and sort the schedule by Tag and then by Text without itemizing every instance. You can have the sheet parameter be a view name, a sheet name, or anything and set up notes that are numbered per view, by sheet, or globally.

The advantage to this method is that if you accidentally have different Text values for the same Tag, it will show two line items in the schedule. Renumbering the schedule changes all of the note blocks. There are different types for the families which let you display the Text and Sheet parameters to make editing easy. When the Keynotes are set to number by sheet, their tags do not turn blue when you select them, so you have to access the properties of the element.

The disadvantage is that you have to set up a Note Block schedule for each sheet; it does not filter automatically, like the Keynotes. Also, you have to place it with the Symbol command and than add a leader to it later. It is not as fast as "tagging" elements.