Common Sense CAD – Part 4

The Border

I have seen so many troubles because people got the border wrong. It should be a very common sense kind of thing, but many complicate it beyond what is needed.

First, draw the border full size in Model Space. If it is to be 24″ x 36″, then draw the trim lines exactly that size. Use ORTHO lock to make them exact. Use the Rectangle command to get them right.

When you are done, plot the file from model space at 1:1. Check the file with your scale on the hardcopy to verify that it is exact.

Save the file.

Now Xref the border file onto your sheet.

The Border is Xrefed into Paper Space of your Sheet files.

In the olden days it use to go in Model Space. Back in the “stone age”. You know, before Paper Space was invented. Do not place the border in Model Space. It now goes in Paper Space.

Attach the file at 0,0,0. Use a layer that you create – Not layer “0” or “defpoints”. You did not create or own these layers. They belong to Autodesk, not you.

Do not scale the border when you attach it, larger or smaller. Keep it at 1 to 1. That is full size. One inch on the border will be one inch on hard copy and when measured in CAD.

LTSCALE should be set to “1” for plotting on all Sheet files.

Some simple guidelines, but often not followed.

The CADD Manager blog has passed 400,000 visits. It includes 191,259 unique visitors and 39,119 return visitors. Those two numbers don’t add up to the 400,000, so I obviously don’t understand the stats…

I marked the milestone of passing 300,000 visits on January 29, 2007.

The most visitors I had in one day was on Thursday, March 15th, 2007 with 1,659 when I ran a series on “Ethereal CAD vs Chaotic CAD vs Despot CAD“. The average is 422 visits per day since I opened the blog on Dec. 15, 2004.

My rank on Technorati is 640,383 and my Technorati Authority rank is 10.

Here is a breakdown of where people are coming from “in general”. I am using Statcounter for all my stats. A freebie that I like.

Numbers are very interesting to me. So my stats are fun to watch.

Thanks to all of you who have visited over the years!!

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I was reading a past issue of PC Mag (May 2007) and found…

10 Most Common Passwords

1. password
2. 123456
3. qwerty
4. abc123
5. letmein
6. monkey
7. myspace1
8. password1
9. blink182
10. (your first name)

Now I think that this list has been circulating the web for some time. Do you really think that one of the top ten would still be “blink182”?

Anyway, it got me thinking about password security and I thought I might share some of those thoughts with you.

First a confession, some of my passwords are not that great. Ok – that being said, here are my suggestions to preserve good password protection for your files and online activity.

1. Don’t make it a real word. Real words are easy to figure out. Most hacking programs can easily run through the dictionary – in several languages.
2. Don’t make it the name of anyone, or anything – living, dead, friend, foe, animal, mineral or vegetable. Not your best friends name, your old school name, or your favorite food name.
3. Don’t make it a series of numbers or letters that is easy to type on your keyboard. Don’t leave a password as whatever the default was when you installed the program or set up the account.
4. Don’t make it the same on multiple accounts or websites.
5. Never make your online banking password the same as anything else.
6. Don’t make all of your financial accounts the same password.
7. Don’t write down your password, but if you do, just write down partials or reminders.
8. Don’t tell anyone your password, even the IT guy. Just type it in for them if they are working on your machine.
9. When you tell someone your password (I knew you would) write it down and don’t say it out loud. Show the paper to the person and then destroy the paper.
10. If you are asked to change your password – don’t just add a number on the end.
11. Be rationally paranoid. Don’t get lazy. A good dose of fear works wonders.

Well – that does it for the short list. Now, I need to go take some of my own advice.

I stumbled onto the Official SketchUp blog. You can get tips and tricks and even sign up for surveys that the SketchUp team will do on features and feedback. You will also read about SketchUp plug-ins, new books that are out and contest winners.

Take a look at it when you get a chance.

Draw things to scale and accurately

It may sound simple, but many CAD users are not in the habit of drawing items actual size. They think that if it is close, it is good enough. Well, it’s not good enough. It contaminates the CAD you have and produces incorrect files. You know that CAD files have a way of being reused in other projects and if they are wrong at the beginning, they are wrong forever.

People assume that you are going to draw accurately. If you do not, and someone does not catch the error, then troubles creep in. Someone may use your file as a background, then offset from your linework, thus making theirs incorrect.

Dimensioning does not always show if something is accurate. You can set dimension round offs very high and still get a “looks good” dimension off of a bad design. Set you accuracy high and dimension everything right. I suggest setting your Precision to 1/256″ for Architectural. This guarantees that things will measure wrong if you draw them wrong.

When you dimension you can set your Precision to 1/16″ which allows for the display of bad dimensions if the geometry is wrong.

I hosted the Revit User Group Inland Empire at HMC Architects last night. It was a standing room only event that gathered over 45 interested parties to see a couple of presentations. Bob Carpenter of Onyx presented on BIM and Green Design followed by Scott Davis of Autodesk presenting “What’s new in 2008?”

Scott covered Groups in depth. What a great feature!

You can group elements in a project or family and then place them multiple times. Grouping elements is great for creating entities that represent repeating items. The example he used was a hotel room. He created a queen bed room and copied and edited it multiple times. Replacing and editing the groups in place and seeing the updates applied to all instances of the group.

He went on to show how groups could be “exported” out as .rvt files. This is done by going to File > Save to Library > Save Group. It prompts you for a name and then saves it out.

You can then load them into another project (See the Load to Project menu item above). In order to see any Groups to load, you must open the file in Revit first.

Will Rogers once said “Common sense ain’t common”.

That rings true in CAD circles and much a politics. Maybe more in CAD than you may think. When thinking of the things that should be “common sense” it become apparent that some folks are just not thinking at all.

Here is another common sense approach related to CAD:

Take a second look at your work

How many times have I seen bad CAD habits that are obvious when you look at the hardcopy output. Just looking at what you have drawn will show you if it is good or not. But how do you look at it. Not just a quick glance. It is called “Back Checking”. When you pick up redmarks, you mark off what you have drawn on the markup. That way you are sure that you have gotten it all. In CAD you look at it on screen or on hardcopy.

On Screen: Zoom in and look at the linework. Did you use OSNAP? Are the line touching that should be touching? Check the layer names. Use the LAYERWALK command to see if everything is on the right layer. Switch over to a 3D view and make sure your linework or objects are as they should be.

On Paper: Look to see if the line weights are correct. Compare it to the markups to see if you picked up everything. Make sure that everything is plotted out correctly. No layers turned off by mistake. No strange lines coming from the edge of a Viewport that should not be seen. Everything that should be seen is seen. No leader lines cut off the prints. No half words, cut off from the full sentence.

So just by taking a second look at your work you can avoid so much effort of coming back to get it right.

In a book called “THE DEATH OF COMMON SENSE – How Law Is Suffocating America”, Philip K. Howard postulates that the overemphasis on the Law was crippling society and the we were losing the understanding of plain old common sense. Instead of fostering cooperation, our legal system in effect works against it. By emphasizing violations rather than solutions, regulations promote bitterness and conflict. No I am not for anarchy and lawlessness, but it makes you think…

When this is applied to the CAD environment, we can take some interesting perspectives away from the conversation. When the standard is stresses to rigidly you end up with a totalitarian state of CAD.

Here are a few things that I think are just common sense approaches to CAD:

Don’t spend so much time on things that don’t matter.

By this I mean don’t over detail the model, the plan drawings, the sections, the details or anything else that just does not need so much detail. We have failed to pass on the general approach to including what needs to be included and leaving out what is not needed. When working on a file, keep in mind what is the output of that file. If you are creating a detail focus on what you need to communicate, not the peripheral areas that surround it. Don’t spend so much time getting the dirt to look right on a post detail. focus on what the contractor needs to know to get it built. They know what dirt is. No need to spend so much time on getting the hatch pattern perfect. I am reminded of so many details that have shown threads on bolts that appear as a blob on the print.

Use as few layers as you can.

I can think of only five reasons to create a layer in CAD and maybe not even all five will apply depending on how you are plotting (CTB vs STB) and who you are working with

Reason 1: I need to show differing lineweights
Reason 2: You need to show a different linetype
Reason 3: I need to turn it off seperately from other entities
Reason 4: Someone else may need to turn it off separately when XREFing it
Reason 5: You want to group things together by commodity (all walls on one layer) so that they can be manipulated together.

Beyond these simple reasons you may not need to create a layer. The first three are realy the most important to you. The system may create the layer for you and so you should not change it, but I am talking about the need for so many layers is way overblown. Keep it as simple as you can. Don’t just fall into the trap of creating a layer just because the entity is something different.

More to come…