Use of Layouts for plotting questions

[haworth_christina106843]

Q1: When do you use CAD in the production process (e.g. preliminary design, design development, etc.)?

Q2: What types of standardization do you use?

Q3: What are the advantages or disadvantages that CAD brings to your practice?

Q4: Can AutoCAD be used as effectively for designing as it is used for reading construction documents?

Q5: Do you use Modelspace and Paperspace? If so what are the advantages of doing this? If you did not use model space and paper space, what changes would have to be made to your drawings and what problems do you foresee if you have to go back and edit these?

Q6: Since every AutoCAD drawing is usually created on a scale of 1:1, won't the scale hinder you as a designer in terms of sheet layout? Why or why not?

Q7: How many layers does your most intricate design have and how many people did it take to create?

[david_peterson]

Q1: When do you use CAD in the production process (e.g. preliminary design, design development, etc.)?

Q2: What types of standardization do you use?

Q3: What are the advantages or disadvantages that CAD brings to your practice?

Q4: Can AutoCAD be used as effectively for designing as it is used for reading construction documents?

Q5: Do you use Modelspace and Paperspace? If so what are the advantages of doing this? If you did not use model space and paper space, what changes would have to be made to your drawings and what problems do you foresee if you have to go back and edit these?

Q6: Since every AutoCAD drawing is usually created on a scale of 1:1, won't the scale hinder you as a designer in terms of sheet layout? Why or why not?

Q7: How many layers does your most intricate design have and how many people did it take to create?

Q1 - As soon as possible, but these days it's being done in Revit and Sketch-up
Q2 - Either our in-house standard (which closely matches the NCS and AIA guidelines) or what ever standard the client is paying us for.
Q3 - Changes can be made easily - that's both an advantage and a disadvantage.
Q4 - Not sure I understand that question, since we use Acad to produce the paper or electronic drawings that are used for construction......I guess it's both. Now if you start to get into 3d dwf files or Design Review documents.... that's another conversation.
Q5 - We model and document in Model space (that's what it's there for) and print from Paper Space. Well you need both (well you should need both) Again not sure I'm understanding the question. If you have to go back and edit something, you have to edit it. There's no real difference between editing something that's in model space vs paper space.
Q6 - Nope. You always draw full scale and then scale down your x-ref to make 3/4"=1'-0" or place in model space and use the viewport. Sheet layout is it's own thing. It either fits or it doesn't. Once you know your scale factors, it all works out in the end.
Q7 - Depends on how it's being delivered and size of the project. I've had drawings with 1000+ layers and I had drawings with 4 layers. It also depends on the standard. Rule of thumb is that it takes as many layers as required to get the job done. Layers are not only used for your convenience but the other trades that your going to interface with. That's part of the issue with Client driven standards. I've seen some where all my structural content fits into 6 layers. That's all I got to work with. So we'd use our in-house standard until record drawings and then use a layer translator to slam everything into those 6 layers. Set up a script, run it, purge it, done.
I've worked on project with 2 people and I've worked on a project with 60 people (just from the arch side), full team with all disciplines was closer 300 split in 12 different offices. I've seen projects that have a total combined sheet set of 50 all the way up to 5000+. All depends on the size of the project. My next project I'm anticipating about 1000 sheets just for the structural portions. Closer to 10,000 for combined.