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Drawing Manager - Provide a 'Layer' Field

Scott Bulmer
Booster
I searched for this topic unsuccessfully.

Standard practice seems to be that all drawings on layout sheets should be placed on the ArchiCAD layer. The option to quickly verify that condition (or determine a drawing's layer) should be available in the Drawing Manager, however it is not. This seems to be a no brainer to me, unless I am missing something.

Thanks,
Scott
AC27 v. 4060 w/ MEP, Cadimage, Twinmotion 2023.2.2 using AC from AC6.0, 2021 MacPro M1 chip, Adobe CC. Used AC on both platforms.
7 REPLIES 7
Karl Ottenstein
Moderator
I think this is a good wish, Scott. "Layer" (and more) should also be available parameters for the Drawing List schedule (Project Indexes). I fully expected it to be there.

Cheers,
Karl
One of the forum moderators
AC 27 USA and earlier   •   macOS Ventura 13.6.6, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB
__archiben
Booster
i'm not sure about this. we have a drawing manager and a drawing tool - where does the boundary lie? i would be happy to see the drawing tool go and an enhanced (read: vastly redesigned!) drawing manager take over. but whilst we do have the drawing tool, core archicad parameters - such as layer - should reside there.

a workaround though - select all of your drawings in the drawing manager, hit 'Settings...' and change the layer of all of them.

~/ben
b e n f r o s t
b f [a t ] p l a n b a r c h i t e c t u r e [d o t] n z
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Karl Ottenstein
Moderator
~/archiben wrote:
a workaround though - select all of your drawings in the drawing manager, hit 'Settings...' and change the layer of all of them.
Yeah, but the point as I saw/see it is to get a report of which layers drawings are on. Sure, typically they are all on the AC layer, but one can imagine where certain drawings (including PDF) appear only in a layer combo for 'internal' prints, for 'preliminary' prints, etc. Without a report like Scott mentions, you would have to hid all layers but the one of interest and page through every layout sheet to see what shows up.

With model elements, we can schedule the layer...so there is no issue there. Why can't we schedule the same fields for placed drawings as we can for any other placed elements?

Cheers,
Karl
One of the forum moderators
AC 27 USA and earlier   •   macOS Ventura 13.6.6, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB
Link
Graphisoft Partner
Graphisoft Partner
I agree with Karl that it should be an available parameter in the Drawing List, and I don't think it's asking too much to put into the Drawing Manager fields. Although I would rather see Fit Frame to Drawing included there myself.

As Ben says, in the meantime you can select drawings in the Drawing Manager, or even on the layout or in the navigator/organizer.

Cheers,
Link.
Link
Graphisoft Partner
Graphisoft Partner
Karl wrote:
Sure, typically they are all on the AC layer, but one can imagine where certain drawings (including PDF) appear only in a layer combo for 'internal' prints, for 'preliminary' prints, etc. Without a report like Scott mentions, you would have to hid all layers but the one of interest and page through every layout sheet to see what shows up.
Do you think many people do this Karl? The reason I ask is that I think it's far beyond what GS even anticipated. I remember during beta asking if they were going to include layout book viewsets for these exact publishing purposes, but they quickly put a lid on that can of worms.

Cheers,
Link.
Karl Ottenstein
Moderator
Link wrote:
Karl wrote:
Sure, typically they are all on the AC layer, but one can imagine where certain drawings (including PDF) appear only in a layer combo for 'internal' prints, for 'preliminary' prints, etc. Without a report like Scott mentions, you would have to hide all layers but the one of interest and page through every layout sheet to see what shows up.
Do you think many people do this Karl? The reason I ask is that I think it's far beyond what GS even anticipated. I remember during beta asking if they were going to include layout book viewsets for these exact publishing purposes, but they quickly put a lid on that can of worms.

Cheers,
Link.
No, I don't. 😉 But, the thing is that the drawing tool has a layer assigned to it, and people screw up, even if not doing intentionally clever things with layers. So, for CAD manager auditing, the layer and all other parameters should be schedulable just as they are for all other elements.

Just seems like a simple consistency request, and there are so few inconsistent things in ArchiCAD, that they might as well fix those few, right?

Karl
One of the forum moderators
AC 27 USA and earlier   •   macOS Ventura 13.6.6, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB
Scott Bulmer
Booster
Karl, Link & Ben, thank you all for your comments on this, and clearly the topic goes way deeper than my initial request, the basis of which follows (this goes without saying, but here it is anyway):

One of the things architects have to do is to triple-check contract documents before they are published in any form. In my experience, many offices use human resources with widely varying technical abilities. One common issue with all levels of employees is their knack for placing items incorrectly, drawings on layers being one of them. Checking for this condition should be simpler than it currently is.

Ben’s suggestion is a very useful workaround (thanks!), but it is my preference to have better control in both the drawing and view lists, especially given the power of those features.

Much appreciated as always,
Scott
AC27 v. 4060 w/ MEP, Cadimage, Twinmotion 2023.2.2 using AC from AC6.0, 2021 MacPro M1 chip, Adobe CC. Used AC on both platforms.