Some of your clients may require you to match their standards – a venture that may seem complicated and downright daunting. We’ll help you build your confidence in determining which fonts, blocks, and linetypes to change and where to change them. Take a listen to Jake Lott, our in-house irrigation guru, as he uses the Department of Transportation (DoT) as an example. Each client will have different styles and requirements, but the concept is the same: You should feel comfortable matching any client’s standards.
Webinar Contents:
Note: The following catalog of content covered in this webinar is time stamped to allow you to follow along or skip to sections of the video that are relevant to your questions. You can also search for content on this page using the FIND command in your browser (CTRL + F in Windows, Command + F in Mac OS.)
- Intro/TOC
- Standards (and Why We Have Them)
- Adopting Others’ "Standards"
- Types of Content to Consider
- Where and How to Make Changes
- Backing Up and Maintaining
- Questions
0:00 – 4:46: Intro/TOC
4:47 – 11:59: Standards (and Why We Have Them)
Important Questions:
Why?
- Why do we have standards?
- Why do we need standards?
Organization, consistency, and templates (not reinventing the wheel)
What?
- What are your standards?
How?
- How do you update and maintain your standards?
Describing what standards are (7:05):
-
A process for updating your standards
- Should not always stay the same
- ”I really like this look.” >> “This is our new standard.”
If you can’t be flexible or back up “why?”, it’s not a good standard.
Understanding good standards (9:05)
- Legibility
- Is it easy to read?
- Efficiency
- Are you able to get through things quickly?
- What you do get through, is it accurate?
- Revision time: Is it a quick process?
- Short learning curve
- Can new hires hit the ground running?
- Is it easy to pick up?
- Adaptability
- If something needs to be done a certain way, can you do it with less hassle?
Example: “My circle is better than your circle.” (9:50)
What do you want to leave up to the contractor?
12:00 – 22:19: Adopting Others’ “Standards”
Types of Content to Consider (12:03)
What to look for (12:03):
- Layers/colors
- Text styles
- Linetypes
- Dimension styles
- Schedules
- Notes
- Layouts
What you should end up with (12:32):
- Saved Layer States
- Drawing templates
- Master block file
- Blocks to place into drawing
- Unique Preference Set
- Project template
Where and how can you make these changes? (13:40)
Example CAD standards folder (14:08)
How to sift through materials received from another firm or agency to determine their standards (16:50)
Using our BatchMan tool to make specific changes to specified files or folders and save the results into a specific location (18:30)
Our irrigation symbol families (20:20)
22:20 – 51:49: Backing Up and Maintaining
Block-naming standards (22:20)
Valve callout styles (25:20)
Creating a new Preference Set (26:20)
Making changes to a callout’s source file and preview slide (28:10)
Updating font styles/Text Styles (33:40)
Updating the schedule symbol block for a callout (35:10)
Naming custom blocks (39:00)
Saving user-defined blocks and defining them in a drawing (41:15)
The dangers of drawing corruption and how to deal with it (49:10)
Saving and loading Layer States (a Layer State is a saved set of layer properties) (50:00)
51:50 – end: Questions
Question: Our office requires a "T," "S," and "G" along the lateral lines for tree, shrub, and grass areas. I’m currently placing these letters on all the laterals, but it’s extremely time consuming. Is there a better way to do this?
Answer: Yes! You could use our Custom Line tool to create lines with these characters and then assign that livetype to lateral pipes in the Pipe Data.
Question: One of our standards is to label the drip area related to the valve. We currently place a number manually. Is there a way we can incorporate this with Land F/X so it can auto-update when we change the valve number? (58:28)
Answer: You could place the valve callout next to the valve, right-click for a callout with no arrow, and then move the number indicator to that location.
