Detail Bubble and callouts


capitaldesigns
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Does CA have detail bubbles somewhere in the program ? I have been looking I can not find any.

I am assuming that most CA users use detail bubble to call out your details on the framing plans,

foundation plans and sections.

 

I am coming from AutoCAD background and AutoCAD gives the user many different options

for placing detail bubble and section bubbles. I hope CA has these options as well and I am

just not finding them. Can someone let me know where to find the detail bubbles.

 

Thanks,

 

Mike

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I made them from callouts in the dropdown menu with the text tools.

If you like you can reproduce all your favorites with cad and block them to put in your library and if you use them all the time you could even put them on a toolbar.

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I will look into that tomorrow. It sure would be nice if CA would give us these callout that are more automatic.

I do not know how much others use this type of detail and section bubbles. Where I'm at in California we use

them a lot. I will use 50 to 100 of them in anew house design. This should be very easy for CA to incorporate

into the program.

 

Thanks for your help,

 

Mike

 

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I wonder why CA does not add these features to their program. When I am in the construction drawing phase of a residential project

I can have 50 to 100 detail and section callout on the structural plans. Being able to have these callout more automated is a big time saver.

This really stands out when comparing AutoCAD's routines to CA lack of such routines.

 

CA is very good when it comes to drawing the floor plans, elevations and perspective views. But when it come to the construction drawings

AutoCAD hands down beats CA. It's as if CA has determined that the construction drawing phase of the project is not that important. It seems

as if they think that the construction drawing phase of the project is just a minor part of the project and not worth their time and energy to improve

this part of the program.

 

 I wonder if CA believes most of their users do not provide the structural drawing for our projects. That we send them to our structural engineer to

provide the structural plans and calculations and that all we provide is the site plan, floor plans, elevations, cabinets elevations and 3D perspective views.

I do not know all of their users provide in your plans, but I usually provided all of the plans from the site plan all the way through the structural details.

 

The routines that are provided in AutoCAD have been a big time saver for me over the last 20 years. I wish that CA would listen to their users and incorporate

the routines found in AutoCAD into CA. If they did CA would be an all around great program, from design drawings to construction drawings. Wouldn't that be

something.

 

Thanks,

 

Mike

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Mike,

 

If you have your Layout and Plan Templates set up so that the ConDocs are coordinated .....

Almost all of the ConDocs will be done automatically as you create the design in the Plan.  It takes a bit of time to set it up but then you won't need to do much in the Layout at all.

 

Callouts can be linked to the Layout using the tools provided in Chief.  You just need to study the Help file for how to do that.

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7 hours ago, capitaldesigns said:

But when it come to the construction drawings

AutoCAD hands down beats CA.

That is subjective. I'm sure I couldn't put together a set of plans in AC any longer. I moved away from AC 13 years ago, and haven't looked back. You will find yourself falling into the trap we see on this forum week after week. Chief isn't AC, and doesn't pretend to be. Full time users of this product can put together a set of construction docs every bit as fast in Chief as you can in AC. 

 

You can look through post after post, and a common theme will occur. Those that continually struggle with what we all consider to be easy, very standard practice in other software, are constantly fighting Chief to be something it's not. It's not a "get on board or get out" situation, but stop fighting the program and ensure your template is set up to handle the situations you struggle with.

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1 hour ago, Joe_Carrick said:

Callouts can be linked to the Layout using the tools provided in Chief.  You just need to study the Help file for how to do that.

Joe, 

I would love to know how to do this. While cameras can be displayed as a callout, and linked to Layouts, I have not found a way to link plain old callouts to Layouts. How do you do that?

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18 minutes ago, Richard_Morrison said:

Joe, 

I would love to know how to do this. While cameras can be displayed as a callout, and linked to Layouts, I have not found a way to link plain old callouts to Layouts. How do you do that?

Pretty sure EVERY other Chief user would like to know how to do this as well...

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20 minutes ago, Richard_Morrison said:

Joe, 

I would love to know how to do this. While cameras can be displayed as a callout, and linked to Layouts, I have not found a way to link plain old callouts to Layouts. How do you do that?

In theory, we should be able to put %layout.label% in the text below the line in the callout in a detail.  When sent to Layout the Layout sheet number should be displayed. 

 

But that doesn't work because CA hasn't made that linkage available.

 

So currently we have to enter that sheet number directly in the Callout below the line.  It isn't dynamic, but at least it works.

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22 minutes ago, Joe_Carrick said:

In theory, we should be able to put %layout.label% in the text below the line in the callout in a detail.  When sent to Layout the Layout sheet number should be displayed. 

 

But that doesn't work because CA hasn't made that linkage available.

D@mn that would be cool. Is it really that simple? Must be more to it or Chief would surely have implemented this by now huh?

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1 hour ago, HumbleChief said:

D@mn that would be cool. Is it really that simple? Must be more to it or Chief would surely have implemented this by now huh?

No, it's not that simple. Chief has no way of knowing (at least right now) which view in Layout an unlinked callout should reference. Until we get the capability of selecting a single placed view from the list of views already placed, and generating that layout location as a macro value, a callout is just a dumb 2D object. I'm not sure how hard that would be to program, but we have more important priorities, like ambient occlusion and bloom. :rolleyes: It's worth mentioning that other CAD programs have had dynamic referencing for years, so I would hope Chief gets on the ball. Moving/inserting/deleting a layout sheet can screw up many detail references at once, and I wish that I could say I haven't been embarrassed by a plan checker pointing out that a particular structural detail reference is wrong because of that. But I can't.   

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12 minutes ago, Richard_Morrison said:

Chief has no way of knowing (at least right now) which view in Layout an unlinked callout should reference.

How do you know that? 

The Layout Box has a link back to the view in the Plan.  It really shouldn't be that difficult for it to scan that view (usually a CAD Detail Window) and find any Callout that is tagged "Use Layout Label" and fill in the sheet number.  This is what it does for Section/Elevations so there really shouldn't be much difference.

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3 minutes ago, Joe_Carrick said:

How do you know that? 

The Layout Box has a link back to the view in the Plan.  It really shouldn't be that difficult for it to scan that view (usually a CAD Detail Window) and find any Callout that is tagged "Use Layout Label" and fill in the sheet number.  This is what it does for Section/Elevations so there really shouldn't be much difference.

CAD Details have no reference to any particular view in a Plan, because they are not generated from a Plan. In fact, they may even come from a CAD Detail that is in Layout only. So what information, exactly, is going to be in that purported link, and how is a standard callout even going to find that link?  Also, while there is only one view per camera, a callout reference for a framing detail, say, might be placed several times but only reference a single detail. 

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Does anyone know if CA programmers meet with CA users and go over our ideas to improve the program ?

I have heard people on this forum suggest that CA hire an architect to help them improve the program. I think

that is an excellent idea.

 

I believe it would be a good idea for CA to have quarterly meetings with new and existing users of the program

and go over our ideas on how to improve the program. I know there is a suggestion website where we can write

down our suggestions. I have done that several times in the past. I have never gotten a response from CA. I don't

know if they read my suggestions or not. It would be nice of them to at least confirm they have received and read my

suggestions.

 

Another reason AutoCAD users have a harder time learning CA is AutoCAD has more intuitive commands. For example,

In AutoCAD when you type in the command such as copy, AutoCAD gives the user on screen instruction at the command

line of what do next. I type C then enter to start the command. AutoCAD tells you to "select object". You follow the instructions

and select the object. Then you are asked <base point or displacement>/Multiple. If you are only making one copy you select

your base point. If you want multiple copies you type M then enter. Next you are asked to pick the second point of displacement.

After doing that you are done with that command. This is typical for all of AutoCAD's commands. If you are not sure of what to do

in a command, AutoCAD walks you through each step of the command.

 

CA gives the user no such on screen help. That would be very helpful to new users if CA would incorporate these on screen

instructions. Also it would be helpfully to existing users that are using a command that they very rarely use. I would thing that

it would be fairly simple for CA to incorporate on screen instructions similar to what AutoCAD has had for over 20 years.

 

Thanks,

 

Mike

 

 

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Richard,

 

I'm talking about a CAD Detail Window in the Plan that has been sent to Layout.  That creates the link.  I do not place Details in Layout from the Library.  Almost everything in my Layout comes from a some view in the Plan (Listed in the Project Browser)

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