Frustrated Revit user being tortured against will to do keynotes in Autocad

[jb785642]

Reference Keynotes and Sheet Keynotes: Can someone point me to a step by step tutorial on how to create reference and sheet keynotes in Autocad Architecture, and on how the keynotes, legends, and databases work interactively?

I have searched and searched for step-by-step tutorials, such as you might find for keynoting in Revit, but cannot find any step by step tutorials. Like literally from the first step. And then the second step. And by the way where do I find the staircase. And the railing.
I am trying to create reference keynotes and sheet keynotes in Autocad according to the NCS, and likewise to create the keynote legends.

Sheet Notes: I'm looking for a step by step tutorial for how to set up the keynote database for the sheet notes, so that the key marks in the keynotes read the way I would like (A1, A2, A3 instead of 1, 2, 3, 4...).

Organization: I'm also looking for a step by step tutorial for how to organize the keynote databases for an organization.. if this is stored somewhere common, and how to set up the path for the database.

Interactivity: I need help to understand if the keynotes and the legends are linked (similar to Revit), so that if I change it in one place it will update in another (?)…. or if I need to somehow update the database and then reload in the drawing, in order to update notes or key marks, or if the keynotes and legends are just dumb entities in Autocad that aren't linked, except the initial time when the legend is created.

Keynotes in Standard Autocad: Some people in my organization are using standard Autocad (not Architecture). Can someone clarify if keynoting is available in standard Autocad?

Thanks for any help to clarify this process.

[Ed Jobe]

Keynotes are not available in standard acad. Melinda Heavrin has written a lot of articles about ACA for AUGIWorld. You could search those magazines. I believe that was covered. You can find them under the Publications menu above.

Here's one article:
https://www.augi.com/articles/detail...tations-in-aca

[CAtDiva]

Is this a one-off type of thing, or are you setting up a system for use on future projects?

If it's a one-off, I'd use a table for the keynote legend and blocks + leaders for the keynotes in the drawings. No, there is no linkage in this system ... unless you create the keynote legend as an xref that is attached to each sheet file. Even then, the blocks are not connected to the table or the element being noted.

Unless you are setting this up for future use and those vanilla ACAD users will become ACA users, it's not worth the headache of learning how to "keynote" like Revit does.

[jb785642]

jb785642, I am dealing with the same issues in my organization. Here's what I've determined over time:
1. There are a few tutorials on YouTube, that recommend several different methods for doing keynoting. however, most of them dont address how to achieve the two different kinds of keynotes per the NCS.
2. Reference keynotes are done using the Keynote tool. These are listed in a keynote legend. For the keynote symbol family, open the family, and modify this to be an elongated hexagon.
Keynotes are linked to a keynote legend, because these come from a master database, and they can occur multiple times through the document set, so they are listing a type.
3. For the Sheet Notes, create a symbol (a standard hexagon, for example). Link this to a schedule, to list the sheet keynotes. These are listed in a schedule because you are listing individual instances of the tag in each sheet. These are unique to each sheet, but you might have the same note on a different sheet. I dont use the keynote database for the sheet keynotes because: a. I want the sheet keyntoes to use a different tag style; b. I don't want the users to clutter up the database with hundreds of sheet-specific notes not tied to a spec section.
4. I'm dealing with the same question about how to organize the database for the organization. I'm trying to find some answers to that.... I"m not sure if it's better to have a single master database for the organization, or to have the users set up a database for each project, from say a master database. I'd prefer to only have one master database linked to our standard spec sections, but I'm still trying to determine how to manage this with many users, and over a variety of project types.