Organizing a drawing ?

[spaskalev]

Hi, new QCAD (or anycad for that matter) here. I'm making a preliminary drawing of a house plan along a plot. I'd like to keep everything in a single file, overlaid on anchors, and just have different views of it, e.g. just plot, plot and foundations, plot and floor plan, foundation and columns, plot and roof, etc. I am familiar with layers as a concept from image editors, but they seem to function a bit different in cad by controlling not just elements but their properties as well. I am thinking of using parent layers for the actual things and then use child layers for the different draft properties. Is that a suitable approach ?

Thanks!

[CVH]

Hi,

Yes sounds good.

Collect everything that should looks the same and belongs to the same thing in a layer.
Major drawing sections can be parents. Floors -Walls - ...
See:
https://qcad.org/en/tutorial-working-with-layers

Some of my parent sections may even be empty and only serve as a collection of the sublayers.
Or as a trial set 1-N ....
Or a revission ....

Regards,
CVH

[JohnRob]

Not directly to your question but you should first select the grid size you are willing to deal with. My interior layout is 1/8 of an inch. Probably unrealistically small but my measurements are to 1/8 th inch.

[Duncan Lithgow]

I'm not sure I understand. Are you suggesting using a parent layer for each 'drawing'? What is the benefit of that? Does that mean that when plotting I have to turn layers on and off for each plot where I want to show different sets of information from the same overall drawing? That sounds tedious. Would blocks be a better solution? The elements common to multiple drawings can be blocks and be reused for each sheet.

Actually it is exactly this type of issue that brought me to this forum, so I think I'll continue using this thread if that's okay.

The other issue to do with organizing a drawing is the issues of multiple scales in a single file. Normally I wouldn't dream of drawing anything at any scale other than 1:1 but that workflow doesn't seem possible with QCAD. At the moment I have a few 1:10 details on the way and want to also draw a roof plan (maybe 1:100) and a section (maybe 1:20/1:50). I would love some example file to look at or some best practice advice.

The lack of XREF is also causing me some headaches ... normally I wouldn't try and draft lots of drawings in one file, I'd reference them into each other. But in this case it seems like the best approach.

[Husky]

I'm not sure I understand. Are you suggesting using a parent layer for each 'drawing'? What is the benefit of that? Does that mean that when plotting I have to turn layers on and off for each plot where I want to show different sets of information from the same overall drawing? That sounds tedious. Would blocks be a better solution? The elements common to multiple drawings can be blocks and be reused for each sheet.

I recommend to create as many layer as it makes common cense to your drawing but avoid to go crazy with layer. An overloaded layer drawing doesn't mean it is easier to organize the drawing - it could be simple confusing to work with.
A basic layer set which should be used by you could look like this one:

Husky-2020.10.20-02.png (19.03 KiB) Viewed 7192 times

Additional: If you are working on e.g. a house drawing it would make sense to put all electrical stuff or furniture on an extra layer. That would make it easy to "clear" areas of your drawing for detail work on something else or printing different information to paper, pdf etc. Just toggle the visibility as you need it ...

https://qcad.org/en/tutorial-working-with-layers

Talking about printing ...
Every layer has the option to be plottable or not. If you know that e.g. the layer "Auxiliary" needs never to be printed just disable it for printing.
On the other hand - if you have to put a lot of work each time into which layer has to be visible / not visible for printing you have the possibility to set it ones and save the settings below "Layer States". Those settings are reusable ...

The other issue to do with organizing a drawing is the issues of multiple scales in a single file. Normally I wouldn't dream of drawing anything at any scale other than 1:1 but that workflow doesn't seem possible with QCAD.

Common CAD pratice is to draw everything in Model-Space 1:1. That is possible in QCAD!

At the moment I have a few 1:10 details on the way and want to also draw a roof plan (maybe 1:100) and a section (maybe 1:20/1:50). I would love some example file to look at or some best practice advice.

Maybe you like to have a look at "Layout Blocks" (Paper_Space) and "Viewports". That brings you easily in the situation to prepare a print for different detail scales etc. without changing any scale in your Model_Space ...

https://qcad.org/en/tutorial-working-wi ... -viewports

[Duncan Lithgow]

A basic layer set which should be used by you could look like this one:

I'm missing quite a few of those buttons. I have snap and plotable as layer attributes, but you seem to have them as toggles in the layer manager.

I'm getting the hang of it now. Got Layout Blocks to do what I want. I guess the layout block should really be 1:1 and the viewports should then be set at the appropriate scales?

Layer States will have to be the next thing I look into...

Thanks for your help getting this far. Has anyone made a 'migrating from AutoCAD' guide?

[Husky]

I'm missing quite a few of those buttons. I have snap and plotable as layer attributes, but you seem to have them as toggles in the layer manager.

Just a question of your settings in "Application Preferences"

Husky-2020.10.31-02.png (21.52 KiB) Viewed 7081 times

[Duncan Lithgow]

Are there some sample files somewhere where I can see a suggested best practice for setting up a file for a building project with drawings of different paper sizes and scales and optimized reuse of geometry?