Dimension in Paper Space or Model?

[Borgster]

Actually, it works quite well... Better than putting all annotation in paperspace.

To clarify further. We use Vanilla AutoCAD for all disciplines.

[cadtag]

Yeah, religious war is right LOL!!!

...
Again, this is MY opinion, and I've been doing this since R9, but this is the way I choose to teach newbies. Let the war rage on!

youngsters.... you need to remember the "v"s

'Course, those who are not familiar with Annotative Scaling tend to muck up what has been set, but that's a discussion for another thread

'Course, those who are not familiar with PaperSpace tend to muck up what has been set, but that's a discussion for another thread

fixed that for ya. It goes both ways


My take is based not just on the active drawing, nor on the discipline, nor even necessarily on the current project phase. But considering the way Adesk products handle reference files, putting things in model space other than what's actually part of the model creates extra work for the next person down the road. I don't want to edit the surveyors' topo drawing when I use it as an existing conditions design base, but I dang sure don't want to deal with all his notes, callouts, labels. When that info is in Paperspace, I don't have to.

Same for the architects using a civil site plan as their background, or a structual plan used as a hvac base. anything in paperspace just does not show up when referenced in. If (big if there...) the previous worker is diligent about layering and uses a layering system that works.,, then it's less of a problem. but lot's of drafties are more concerned about getting their part of the job done than how easy it is for the next guy. That's perfectly reqasonable of course, but setting up a process that encourages collaboration and sharing is IMO preferable to one that just slams things out the door as expeditiously as possible.

If all i'm going to care about is "this drawing", then notes and labels in model space are no big deal. Dimensions however, I'll argue are different. Things should only be dimensioned once in a set of drawings, basic qa/qc. And the easiest way to do that, is to do all dimensioning in paperspace, and then only in the sheet that it's relevant to.

Remember, if you draw the things right, then you don't need any dimensions in CAD, just on the hardcopy going to the reviewers/contractors.

If you're talking about cad for widgets, then damifino -- i don't do manufacturing and don't have an opinion one way or the other

[sinc]

My take is based not just on the active drawing, nor on the discipline, nor even necessarily on the current project phase...

I would largely disagree with much of what you're saying. We often need to pull drawings with dimensions, callouts, and labels into other drawings, and we often need all that text in the other drawing.

When annotation is placed in paperspace, it can't be referenced into other drawings, and it's pretty much useless for anything but the one page.

Most of the problems you're talking about can be solved by wise use of layers, and/or by splitting things into model and sheet drawings.

True, there are notes that belong in paperspace. Title blocks belong in paperspace. Sundry other things. But the majority of model annotations are far more useful if they're in modelspace somewhere. The annotations don't necessarily need to be in the same drawing as the model, but having the annotations in modelspace is far more useful in most circumstances.

I strongly disagree with your statement that CAD drawings don't need to be dimensioned. We often print reduced versions of plans, and those are worthless if they aren't dimensioned.

And we LOVE Annotative MText, MLeaders, and Dimensions. They are incredibly useful, and I couldn't imagine avoiding them.

[dgorsman]

Seeing that the OP is likely a piping industry EPCM, well we do things differently than either civil or architectural projects. You guys would probably consider our designs and work processes rather brutal in their simplicity; not a whole lot of elegance here. "Get it done and out the door" is the order of the day more often than not. I think we also have a larger number of legacy drawings to deal with.

For the OP, annotative AND model space may be a good option for you provided you are doing your drawings in 2D. Just remember that clients may not be expecting this and may have problems dealing with annotative-style drawings. Check with them to see if they are OK with it *first* before you start down that road. If you are doing 3D design then annotations in paper space are the way to go. The person who brought this up may not have had actual experience within the industry or with 3D piping design practices.

[cadtag]

I strongly disagree with your statement that CAD drawings don't need to be dimensioned. We often print reduced versions of plans, and those are worthless if they aren't dimensioned.....

my apolgies for not being clear. the hardcopies have to show proper dimensioning, 100% agreement on that. Whether half-size, full-size, or reduced (ArchD to ANSI B), proper dimensions are needed.

What I intended to state was that the model dwg file itself does not need dimensions to be useful -- as long as it's drawn to the correct size, dimensions are redundant in that the distances in the dwg file are correct.

[Borgster]

Ok. While more replies to my question are welcome. At least I can say I have heard pros and cons to both philosophies. I greatly appreciate everyone's input.

[jaberwok]

I think you were right in saying that it was expected that everything that does not represent an object would be placed in paperspace. I also think that the introduction of annotative this-and-that was an acknowledgement that many organisations simply were not moving in that direction.
Different businesses in different industries find different methods work best for them.
Personally, I like paperspace dimensioning but I've also worked on projects where it just wasn't practical.

£0.02

[BlackBox]

Ok. While more replies to my question are welcome. At least I can say I have heard pros and cons to both philosophies. I greatly appreciate everyone's input.

No, no... you're not getting off *that* easy; so which method have you chosen!? C'mon... pick a side!

@ All -

Take from this what you want...

In my vast years of experience (<- been using AutoCAD since 2004 LT LoL), I've always had a master / model drawing drawn correctly to scale, then had sheet drawings which XREF said master(s) and placed all sheet text in Model Space, ** leaving only the Title Block and Viewport(s) in Paper Space.

** For sheet drawings without XREFs (i.e., general notes, etc.) there are no viewports, and all annotation is placed within the Title Block in Paper Space.

This 'method', combined with thoughtful layer naming (it's not perfect), has allows our clients, and contractors alike to reference our master alone, both our master and the sheet text (two separate drawings), or the sheet text alone as they see fit.

Here's to diversity, and the perpetual war - Cheers!

[sinc]

Sounds like you operate along the same lines as we do, RenderMan.

Although we often don't do large plan sets, so most of the time, we don't split out drawings into model and sheet drawings. We do that on some projects, but more often (since the majority of our drawings involve only 1 or 2 printed pages), we just put all our annotation on layers that start with V-ANNO. These layers are easily frozen, eliminating any unwanted text and allowing just the base linework to be easily referenced.

We pretty much never label modelspace objects from paperspace. The only things we include in paperspace are title blocks, general note blocks, signature blocks, viewport labels, etc.

[sinc]

my apolgies for not being clear. the hardcopies have to show proper dimensioning, 100% agreement on that. Whether half-size, full-size, or reduced (ArchD to ANSI B), proper dimensions are needed.

What I intended to state was that the model dwg file itself does not need dimensions to be useful -- as long as it's drawn to the correct size, dimensions are redundant in that the distances in the dwg file are correct.

Noted...

But from our perspective, as Surveyors, we'll often pull in a bunch of the Engineering data, do our survey calcs (generating Alignments/Profiles, setting Cogo Points, etc.), then do a printout of the result for the field surveyor. When we do this, it's often desirable to have at least some of the Engineer's labels and dimensions also in our survey plot. If the Engineer does labeling in paperspace, it makes it more difficult to create a survey plot that includes the Engineer's dimensions. Sure we can do it, it just takes more effort (sometimes, quite a bit more effort).

So in general, we don't really like having modelspace objects annotated from paperspace.