Topic Title

Hello all... just wanted to say that this message board is great, and will definately be a useful tool to me in getting reacquainted with DataCAD.

Which I guess is my reason for this message... a long time ago, (ok maybe 8 years ago) I took my first full time position fresh out of college in a small residential design firm. The problem was that they used DataCAD and I was an ACAD guy since high school. No big deal, I took the manual home with me and studied it religiously for a solid week. By that time I was sufficient enough to be productive and keep my job

Fast forward to today.. married, kids, running a startup drafting firm on my own, and I just have a severe lack of time. Well I am finding that doing residential homes in ACAD just frankly sucks and I am ready to switch back to DataCAD full-time for houses. I have the DataCAD Essentials manual and CD and have started going through them when I have time, but I guess I'd like to know what some of your procedures are when doing residential work, how you set up your drawing, templates you may use, how you lay out your border, grids, osnaps, etc etc.

I basically need to streamline the process to save myself time... I have a template.dwg that I use in Acad with all my blocks and everything, but it is still really slow-going. Plus I use paperspace so having the border in the model is another new thing I need to re-familiarize myself with. At my old job we had all this set up for us already, but now I feel like I'm starting with a blank slate.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks...

-Rob

Welcome back to DataCAD... You should have never left!

I use AutoCAD and SoftPlan at work and have used DataCAD since v.4 at other frims and still use it for my side work, I am running v.10.

Anyway, you should start by setting up a default drawing, on your first layer set your snap settings to 1/2" and create 30 or so other layers. I name them 1walls, 1windor, 1bathkit, 1labels, 1notes, 1dims, 1hatch, 2walls, etc. change the color of your layers and change other settings like autosave, snap, and display settings like curve center, etc.

you can then set up gotoviews for quick jumping between sheets.

save the drawing as a default or in a folder and open it up when you are starting a new drawing and save as.

taking a half hour or so to set up your default will save you a lot of time in the long run.

as for templates, after you finish your first house go through and make note templates up and elevation detail templates up from that drawing, and add to/revise the template with each house you finish and you will quickly build up a library.


-Mark