What’s your opinion about CAD notes so far? Tell it in one word!

I remember when I was working in an architectural firm. It was in early 2000. We simply use AutoCAD as replacement for manual drafting. We were just throwing a bunch of lines and text to make the drawings. Of course it was faster than manual drafting. Of course the objects like dimensions and hatches are smarter. We even have several AutoLISP program from our predecessor to complete our work faster.

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But we were just trying to get the job done quickly. It was pain when we need to modify the drawings. When we need to create schedules and drawing list we had to do them manually. Of course they were prone to mistakes. I remember our team failed to meet the deadline because we sent wrong drawings. Those were our pain when we were just trying to get the drawings done.

Yes those CAD software are impressive

Have you ever seen Revit, Inventor, or other vertical products demonstration? OK vertical products sounds so Autodesk, you might know them as BIM or PLM software. They were pretty impressive, weren’t they? Why they look very fast when working with those products?

1. They have many reusable components specific for your design. You can just place walls, doors, and windows in Revit. You can quickly add standard components from Inventor content library. Of course if you use them, you will need to create some of your own custom components. But after you created them once, you can quickly reuse them later.
2. Those objects are intelligent. You can create Bill of Materials in Inventor in seconds. You can quickly create various building component schedules in Revit. It’s because they have information. You also provide more information when you’re doing the design.
3. They are easy to modify. You can replace one standard component with another. You can change building components just by selecting other type from drop down menu.
4. The drawings are also intelligent. You can have orthogonal drawings and sections quickly. There are a bunch of information automatically placed on the title block.
5. And many more impressive features.

Sometimes we just use what we have

Not all companies can invest and purchase those sophisticated CAD software. It’s not always about budget. Sometimes you have to use software that project owners ask you to use it. There are several reasons that make us stay with what we use today: AutoCAD. Some of the reasons are pretty good reasons.

As a user, of course we just use it. And we do our best to improve how we work. Those software can give some ideas to imitate them in AutoCAD. Remember the wall in our dynamic block tutorial? It’s kind of look like Revit in 2D, isn’t it?

That’s why we are here on CAD notes, aren’t we? We’re looking for ways to complete our job, efficiently. Become more productive.

So we do these

That’s why I started this blog. We launched work better with AutoCAD program. It’s our framework, and we want to go to bit size tutorials and tips from it. Unfortunately we don’t get as many responses as we expected.

Your feedback is very important to improve our future articles. We need your experience and discuss with us in each topic.

If you’re interested, you can also share your experience in an article. Write for us.

We also launched e-books to improve your productivity.

AutoCAD Block Best Practices should help you to work with reusable contents. Not just placing common components, but also giving them information. And automate some process in your design.

Document management with AutoCAD sheet set should help you to manage your drawings. You can group all sheets in a project. You can get common information from that project to place them on title blocks. You can create sheet list quickly, and batch plot all drawings in your projects quickly.

You can help

You can help us to provide articles to help all readers. The easiest thing to do it is by actively involved in discussion. And you can write great articles for us.

What’s your opinion about CAD notes so far? Tell it in one word!

Of course you can write in a whole sentence or paragraph. But we can accept a word like ‘boring’ too.

Do you like what we’re doing here?

About Edwin Prakoso

I work as a Sr. Consultant in PT Cipta Satria Informatika. I've been using AutoCAD since R14 and Revit since Revit Building 9. I occasionally write for AUGIWorld magazine and I am also active in Autodesk discussion forum. I'm a member of Autodesk Expert Elite, an appreciation for individuals who give contributions to the Autodesk community.
Connect with me on twitter or LinkedIn.