[agla]

There are several things that we do in CAD drawings to help our work look good and easy to read. Some of which take a lot of time.

There are many commands that are under utilized. For instance, when you have a rectangular stepping stone path that meanders through a site, you can make a block out of the rectangle and space it evenly along a splined polyline rotating with the line by using the "measure" command. The same can be done with a series of blocks that would detail a stone wall by just drawing a polyline.

Many CAD programs set up for landscape design have plant and other symbols in them. They also tend to ask for additional information (or attributes) to help with quauntity take offs. It really slows down the process of inputting the symbols. I have some short cuts to speed up the process.

I use Landcadd with Intellicad as its engine. I have the landscape design, quantity takeoff, and colorfast modules. I am finding that I rarely use any of the modules and just use the CAD component. My efficiency is much higher by not using the modules. Has anyone else had a similar experience?

I will be happy to share some of the techniques that I use and would like to hear some of yours. Please add to this subject.

[Paul]

I turn off my attributes too With Auto cad we have set up all our detail sheets in one file and have a detail sheet ready to go, lots of details are avaible on line from varoius manufactures and others can be purchase on line, helping you give a better presentation with your customer.

[agla]

Who uses polylines with width and who plots line weight by color? I use the line color and have a standard set of colors to line width that I always use.

For me it becomes second nature that a driveway is red or white for a certain line weight (.14) while delicate plant symbols are #33 (.03), hatching is #11(.07). Those are some that I use to make line weight intuitive and not have to deal with polylines and editing them for width. That speeds things up considerably.

[Stonehenge]

Is it possible to turn any of your drawings into some sort of file that could be displayed over the web?

I'd love to get a clearer idea of what you're describing. If you have troubles, email me and we'll figure something out.

[agla]

I made up a webpage to show you.

http://www.geocities.com/agla1247/lineweight.html

[PSUscaper]

Agla,

how do you post a ACAD drawing??? Did you convert it to a Jpeg or Bitmap??? I'm try'ing to figure out the best way, as straight out emailing the whole file would take foreverer (especially with my connection speed). I noticed you only showed a small section. maybe that's how you reduced the file size????

By the way........I switched to a white background over the black when I converted from intellicad to autocad Lt (thought I think intellicad only runs with a black as I remember???)..........it's much nicer on the eyes when you compare it to a black......

steve

[agla]

If you go to the tools pull down menu there is a place to view or save an image. If you do one or the other, "render" shows up as a minimized window bar at the bottom of your screen. click it open. Click on options, set it to the higher dimension and 32 bit. Now go back and save the image. It does the full screen view.

That is how I did the first one. I was zoomed in to show what i wanted to.

The second one, I just hit the print screen button on the key board and pasted it in an empty gif.

The third one is a scanned paper plan, so that I could show the printed line weights.

If you use the first method, (I save them as tif and later convert to jpg if I e-mail) then open in photoshop or other good imaging software you turn it into a B&W picture and discard the color data. Then you can invert to black on white. Then convert back to color and use the paint bucket to color it in. I do this to show distant clients things going before conservation sometimes.

I have Landcadd Colorfast, but it is way to slow to convert everything to closed polylines that I find that I don't use it to color. I like the looks of black & white and our clients don't seem to need the rush of a rendering.

[PSUscaper]

Thanks,

I'm going to try and see what I can do with getting a few drawings up.

That's interesting with the colorfast. I was wondering how it worked...........I know what you mean about the closed polylines.
It's bad enough doing the hatching, none the less going back and closing everything in for coloring.

I'm a little 'sloppy' with my polylines as it is........I would hate to have to convert them all to closed.

steve

[agla]

To help you out with hatching:

You can make a closed polyline very easily using an obscure command "bpoly". It makes a closed polyline by clicking inside of lines that enclose a space much like pick point in hatching. It is helpful when you just can't seem to get those polylines to join. ...also really good for area calcs. It will not recognize a spline (which I will never use again), but will recognize a splined polyline.

Another good way to maintain good line work is to use the fillet command with 0 as the radius. That way you don't get lines short or long on intersections.
That is also really good for drawing things like house footprints from architectural plans when combined with the offset command. You can start with two lines with no measured lengths 90 degrees to each other and just keep offsetting by the lengths ofthe jogs and fillet all the corners in ...very fast and accurate.

By the way, Landcadd does have some tools to help in using colorfast. It is not terrible, but it is time consuming.

[agla]

Drawing houses and other rectalinear objects:

One thing that I definitely do differently now is to construct this type of object using a randomly drawn horizontal (on screen) line. Then I use the offset command to establish wall lengths. The process is repeated for the vertical lines. The trim and/or fillet (0 radius) command can be used to make the corners and chop off excess lines. It is much faster than drawing in each line by length especially if there are lots of jogs in walls.

[diginahole]

I'm sure everybody has there own way of laying out the building and once it becomes intuitive to construct them that way it becomes very fast. My method differs from AGLA's. I turn on the ortho button and simply point the direction I want the line to go and type in the distance. I usually draw in the window and door openings for quick reference points when reviewing the layout in the client's yard. I type the distance from say the corner to the window then the window opening then window to door etc.... Then the whole polyline is offset 10" and the end points of the polyline segments are connected to show window and door openings. I find it quick and simple no trimming required.

BTW... I have been trying to find where you change the ortho settings in ACAD 2K so I can add the 45 degree increments, can anyone help point me in the right direction? I know it's there somewhere, it's just been hiding from me.

[agla]

I did not know that you can do 45's with ortho, but as long as you are typing in lengths you can spec angle too. You probably kbnow that, but for those that don't here it is.

@24<45 would give you a 24' line at 45 degrees from horizontal.
default 0 degrees is straight left to right. 45 would be 1:30 on a clock. /
@24<135 would go to the upper left 24'. \

90 is straight up, 180 straight left, 270 straight down

[diginahole]

Yup, if I remember correctly from my ACAD classes a few years back you can set the ortho to 15, 30, 45, or 90 degree increments. I use the @length< for the 45's now, but if I figure out how to change the settting I'll let ya's know. The polar setting gives me the 45's but I hate the tracking lines and messages popping up at every snap so I use the at length going degrees prompt.

Another difference from my set up vs AGLA's is my default units are set to inches. @24<45 would produce a line 24" line going 45 from horizontal. I buy my tape measures marked in inches as opposed to one that is marked say 10' 4". It saves keystrokes when entering measurements. Three keysrokes for 124, four for 10'4. You can still enter it as 10'4 when you want but most often taking measurements off a house inches works best for me. It sounds silly when I say it now but every bit helps eh.

[PSUscaper]

Hello,

I believe you can set your ortho to any angle you choose........I did it a while ago with acad 12, but too be honest, I can't figure it out on Acad 2000 LT.

Usually, I scan my title survey in, insert into drawing, then trace the lines/house/objects I need and then erase the scanned image. Next, I just rotate the entire object so it is square.

Using polar will allow you to make 90 degree angles relative to each line. Also, using polar gives you measurement and setting the snap allows you to just draw the lines without out typing in angles and measurement as the length is displayed in a small window.

steve