Architosh reView: VectorWorks ARCHITECT

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	Architosh Staff (info@architosh.com)

MacCAD reView: VectorWorks ARCHITECT - Part 4, page 2

29 May 00

Part 4: Tools for Construction Documents- Continued

Notes Management Tools in VectorWorks ARCHITECT

One of MiniCAD's perennial weaknesses has been its notation tools. Any long time MiniCAD user will fess up to this fact, especially if they have used other CAD programs with better tools for notes. But even a first time CAD user working in MiniCAD or VectorWorks may get frustrated by its limited text editing tools. VectorWorks ARCHITECT solves many of the problems associated with these limits due to its very comprehensive notes management tools. They even address text format issues which previous versions of VectorWorks and MiniCAD could not.

Three Systems for Dealing with Notes

VectorWorks ARCHITECT has three new systems or tools for notes management. All of them offer features or improvements not found in just VectorWorks alone. And for those who are big on using ConDoc (CSI industry-based notes) for noting your construction documents or using an office standard "keynote system" then you will find VectorWorks ARCHITECT a must add-on to VectorWorks or MiniCAD.

ConDoc Notes Manager

ConDoc (TM) notes are a specialized type of notation system developed by the Construction Specifications Institute and a favorite of specification writers working in AEC firms. They have been gaining more widespread use over the last decade or so, being fully incorporated into the notation practices of architects.

VectorWorks ARCHITECT has a complete ConDoc Notes Database management system, allowing you to deploy ConDoc notes complying with the CSI Level 2 classification system. There are the 16 CSI divisions which are not editable and the 'sections' within those divisions which are fully editable. You can delete or add 'sections' as you see fit.

To start using the ConDoc notes system we added a ConDoc note to the database that covered a callout item in our casework detail shown on the previous page. From the Notes menu item select ConDoc Notes Manager...

You can see the other new menu items under the new Notes menu in VW ARCHITECT in the view above. The three different notes "managers" are ConDoc, Keynotes, and Notes Manager -- which is related to project general notes management. More on that later.

The ConDoc notes manager comes empty. You need to develop it by creating a ConDoc notes database. So we started with adding notes for a particular detail, in situ, the way a designer might create the notes while detailing a new item. The view below shows the popup menus for Division, Section and Item, with Add and Remove buttons at right. The Note Text box is where your written ConDoc note appears. A suffix system adds a letter A to this note item so that the ConDoc note on the detail will be "06400.A". You proceed in this way adding (and removing if necessary) notes that pertain to your construction drawings.

Placing ConDoc Notes in your Drawing

First off, as you saw above in our example, the note text is quite small for that particular item. Your ConDoc notes can be up to 255 characters long, enabling you to spell out a lot of detail and be very specific about items. This is the beauty of using these types of keynote systems, you provide a density of data in a drawing without cluttering up the drawing itself.

Placing a note is quick and simple, but does involve some steps. However these steps have their benefits -- including speed depending on how much text you write for notes and how often.

The above image is of the Sheet Notation Tool palette (or what would be called 'Tool Box' to some Adobe users). You will notice four buttons, two with the word "KEY" and two with "XXX's". They place notes with straight or bending leader lines for keynotes and ConDoc notes, respectively. Since we want to use straight leaders and ConDoc notes the first button is the correct tool choice.

Placing the actual notes on your drawings is fast. It involves a first and second click process where the first mouse click is the start of the pointed line (line with angle typically) and the second is where the arrow would be. The straight line going back to the text itself is drawn automatically. After two mouse clicks the Place ConDoc Note palette appears. See below.

Your next step is to select from the popup menus a division and then a section and then a note item. Clicking OK sets the ConDoc note at the drawing. This multi-step process is quite fast except for one part. Whenever you place a note you always have to choose the division and section again. It would be nice if these defaulted back to the last choice for division and section so the next note placed would just involve choosing the note item. That would speed things along, having to only choose from one popup menu.

Here's another improvement. This could be improved by allowing the user to choose a setting in a Notes Manager preference for "Remember Division and Section Last Used" or "Remember Division Last Used" or "Don't Remember Last Division or Section Used". Another method would be to toggle this 'remembering function' on and off within this dialog window. In our example detail a number of the notes were in the same division and section so the lack of this time saving feature made the process of placing notes slightly annoying. But to be fair this is only a minor flaw, the process and benefits of using ARCHITECT's new notation tools outweigh this setback, especially if your drawings are highly noted with a density of information.

Ok. Now we will go and place the actual ConDoc notes database on a sheet. Click next to continue.

Next Page: More on ARCHITECT'S Keynote and General Note Tools

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