Seeking AutoCAD help resources that cater to Landscape Architects

What you’re going to find (and sounds like you already have) is that there is no one right way to do construction docs.  There are no standards.  Or rather there are, but they’re not a one size fits all solution and nobody follows all of them.  Every office is going to do things a little bit different; some of them will have very detailed and rigorous standards, and some will draw everything on one layer in model space (and I mean everything) and have never heard of snapping.  Some will use a different symbol for every plant species, some just genus, and some a palette of no more than a dozen or so symbols.

Standards also take a lot of time and experience to create.  Until you’ve done something a few times, you don’t really understand what all the options are and what they affect as far as the tools you have to work with, what you’re trying to do, and how much time/effort it takes.  A lot of effort goes into designing styles (plot styles, dim styles, text styles, etc.) that the rest of the office just has to pick and use as appropriate.

This is typically something you learn in an internship or your first couple of years working somewhere.  You might try introducing yourself at a couple of local firms and seeing if they can tell you a bit about or give you a copy of their standards.  Or maybe even a couple of example files that you can look at to see how they were put together.  Local municipalities will have plan sets you can get copies of, but unlikely digital CAD versions.  Beyond that, if there are specific questions you have, you might get some help here.  But I bet you’ll find even more cooks here than at your school; if nothing else you’ll probably create some lively discussions. 🙂

As for the things you mentioned above, my take:  All plans, details, dimensions, and labels should be done in model space.  The only thing that belongs in paper space are the titleblock/associated info, ‘window’/detail labels (as in what the detail IS, not all the dimensioning and labels), and note text.  Sheet set manager is great in concept, but we never got it to work right – do it all manually (they may have improved it since I last messed with it several versions ago, but I don’t know).  With the proper set-up, the manager doesn’t save any time unless you’re constantly moving details around, which you shouldn’t be.  LT scale should be whatever the plan is, ie 20 scale plan, ltscale is 20.  Keep things/linework logically grouped on layers.  Make logical layer names that group related items together.  Make use of xrefs.  Don’t put your entire plan set in one file (break it up by sheet purpose or scale, if not one file per sheet).  Above all else, be consistent.

Keep things consistent – there are many ways to do things.  Rule of thumb I’ve stuck with through many offices is if it exists in the real world, it stays in model space, if it doesn’t (mostly the text) it’s in paper space.  On detail sheets normally everything is in model space.

The more organized an office is overall, the more likely the office will have standards for layers, colors, overall CAD organization.  Something to keep in mind when you intern/look for jobs as working in places without a standard can get very messy and frustrating.

Your post is a good example of why professors don’t teach more AutoCAD in schools… given the steep learning curve, AutoCAD is difficult to teach, especially if your professors and GTAs have little or no real-world experience.

AJ Slater wrote an ebook that he shamelessly plugged mentioned several times in this space a while back. I have not read his book, but it probably contains some good info for somebody starting out in the profession… and I imagine I would learn a lot as well. The link seems to be dead, but I bet if you contact him he would respond.

Good luck!

https://land8.com/forum/topics/autocad-systems-for-landscape-architecure

I’m trying to visualize what you are doing and understand the problem since it is not a specific description. My response is on a total guess of what that problem is based solely on my past experience.

” I’m at the point of ripping my hair out while trying to create sheet sets with title blocks and annotated information.”

I’m guessing that you are putting together several construction details and notes on plan sheets and you are then having to add more details, change annotations, decide which goes on which sheet, making them fit, getting the pages to look good, ….

If that is the case, one way to do that is to draw all of your details in model space to scale using all the line weights and text that you normally do. Set up multiple sheets for the details to go on in ONE layout tab in paperspace. Use “copy with base point” to instantly put each detail on the windows clipboard (one at a time). Then go to the detail layout tab and use “paste as block” command (both found under “edit” pull down menu). Each detail will be a block that you can drag around and re-scale.

You can do all of your details sheets in this one layout tab  until the project is nearer to completion and you are confident that each sheet is likely to remain close to the way you have them. Then you can “right click” on that layout tab and select “move or copy” and check the box next to copy and repeat for each sheet. Then you erase the other sheets in each layout tab so that you have individual tabs for each sheet.

When you need to change anything in one of those details use the block edit command (_bedit). That opens the block up as its own drawing so that you can change text or anything else in it and it will still remain a block on your sheet. That way your dimensioning scale does not get freaked out like it would if you exploded the block and you don’t have to re-create a new block.

This also makes it easy to grab these details for future projects.

That may have nothing to do with your question, but I’m just taking a guess.

I’ve been using AutoCAD to produce LA documentation for more than 15 years – and I’m still learning new things almost every day. AutoCAD is a very complex software and it’s a matter of learning what works efficiently and also how decisions made at the commencement of documentation will affect you through the whole documentation process. 

Happy to answer any questions you might have

Regards

Paul Stafford

paul@cadsmarter.com

http://cadsmarter.com

I didn’t read everyone of these but did read most. I didn’t see anyone mention landF/X. We are looking at which platform to adopt after doing hand work for my career. We found this and I talked to another LA who uses it and loves it. Hope that helps