Ready for Engineering


mfmclelland
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OK, I'm new to CAP but with some help from you good folks and some work, I have my working drawings completed. For some background, I have designed 100's of homes in the past. I have a degree in Architectural Drafting and designed homes in Utah using pencil and vellum for years. I got out of the business about 18 years ago and did other ventures. We are getting ready to build a new house and I bought my wife The Home Designer program to play around with. She  played with various ideas and it molded into  the plan we liked. I started using that software to see if it could take me to finish drawings. While it got me close, I felt it was a bit limiting on the working drawing side so I made the jump to CAP. I now have everything completed except engineering. The city we are building in requires two sets of engineered plans with a wet stamp. I contacted an engineer in the area and his pricing is reasonable. He wants me to deliver CAD drawings. From those he will do the engineering and print and wet stamp two sets. That si a long story but I am worried about the work flow.

 

I read on one of the threads here that to export for CAD, I need to open each sheet in the layout plan and then open and export each individual view as a DWG file. I'm not quite sure how that works since a lot of my notes etc. are on the layout file and not the working view. Then the next problem to me seems to be that once he does his thing in CAD, how will that reintegrate back into CAP? It seems at this point that my plans will be in two versions and if I decide to make changes or re-sell the plan etc. there will be a disconnect. Is someone willing to baby step me through the best way to handle this? I am going to get back into drawing houses here in Utah but I see this is a hurdle down the road as every city wants engineering as I have described above. Is not using AutoCAD a disadvantage in the long run?

 

I love CAP, it is intuitive and I have never had so much fun drawing, but I am worried that by not using the "industry standard", I may be handicapping myself. I would love some thoughts from those of you who have figured out how to work around this or maybe have experience in both programs. Thanks!

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It is rather simple and straight forward. In order to share dwg versions of Chief Premier with AutoCAD you must export from plan view  (in AutoCAD that is called "model space") where the native scale is real world or 1' = 1'. If you export directly from a layout you are exporting the view or drawing at the down scaled size to fit on a target piece of paper. If you do that the AutoCAD person has to then guess or figure out what paper size the file is.

 

Another consideration is that exports from layout must match, version wise with the AutoCAD application that is to import them. So if you export to the current version of AutoCAD and your Engineer uses Version 14, he will not be able to open and edit your exported files.

 

DJP

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So the thing to do is to find out what version of AutoCAD the Engineer uses and export only to that version.

 

You open your layout, double-click on the view you wish to export and then from that plan view, layer set and annotation set, your export will then match in every way your intended drawing when exported.

 

DJP

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Thanks for the response. OK, that part makes sense to me and I actually downloaded the free autocad viewer and played around a bit to see what he would see with my exports. I see that he would have access to any of the layers I exported etc to turn off or on. so that put me at ease a bit. I guess my last question would be this.

 

Once he does the engineering and  adds his info to the plans, I assume he would then send me back a DWG file with his additions etc. that I can then import into CAP. Once that file is imported, do I replace the existing plan with his new modified plan or import it as a new plan or...? I imported the DWG file I created back into CAP and a lot of the functionality is gone (3D, walls moving etc.). Obviously I will want his info on all plans I print for the builder. Can you explain the steps once I get his DWG file back? Thanks again!

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The work the engineer does in AutoCAD cannot be "brought back" into Chief. They do not play together like that. Best bet would be to simply give the engineer what he needs, let him create what he needs to create, and then simply add his pages to your layout set. DO NOT save his dwg over top the Chief file, you are asking for trouble.

 

Another option, and one that I use with my engineer, is to simply send him/her a PDF and have them redline the pages as needed and send back to me for inclusion/revision in my Chief file. 

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