Annotations in paper or model space?

Conham

Is it correct that the BC way is that the annotations and BIM tags should be made only in the paper space?

I see this is working quite smooth and we can follow the path for our needs to get the architectural drawings/PDFs done. However, the BIG problem occur when sharing the files with our consultants. They need to xref our plans, sections and so on to be used as overlays in their work, and they need to have the annotations also in model space! But room numbers, names and other annotative information only exists in paper space. That information will therefore not be xreferenced to their model space as an overlay/attachment. I just can't figure out how this is meant to work, so please, some suggestions on how the sharing is ment to be done would be appreciated.

Piet

Hi Conham,
you can use the EXPORTLAYOUT command to export a layout to modelspace in an external dwg. Be aware that you lose all associativity with the bim model, it is a kind of 'screenshot'

Conham

Hi Piet,
Thank you for your suggestion. EXPORTLAYOUT command will not solve this issue even if the command can be useful in some situations. The drawing in model space should be scaled to 1:1 and not scaled down to 1:100, 1:50 or whatever the viewport was set to. There should not be any information belonging to the final drawing like frames, stamps and text explanations, even if those objects could be on layers that are turned off.

An alternative could be to BLOCK or a WBLOCK the annotations and then insert or xref it back to model space. However this means that manual work has to be done every time some info is changed or updated. The block or xref could be placed on a layer that is frozen in the paper space viewport so the annotation info is not showed twice. I see this could work, but I'm afraid it´s to complicated to maintain on a bunch of drawings and there is a big risk that something goes wrong/is missed when updating the blocks.

It would be nice if BIMtags could be used in modelspace, but I guess there are some reason to why it's not. I'm still searching for a good solution, so suggestions are welcome!

Fossa

This paperspace annotation workflow has all but stopped our implementation of Bricscad in our office. This workflow is way to complex to try to get everyone up to speed on it. Bim Scheduling and tags are equally if not more so complex. Having to modify xml files to get tags to display what you need is not what an end user is after, especially in a production setting.. Unless this application gets more user friendly on the BIM end of documentation I'm not sure it's going to make it.

I have issued a feature request for the ablity to annotate in model space. Bricsys is looking into it. They do listen. I would ask that anyone interested in these issues do the same. This would help the devs to understand our workflows better.

Mikael Nordvall

At Open Studio we totally agree that placing tags in paperspace is a no-go. According to the standards used in Sweden we can not add important annotations in layouts. The drawings must be completed in modelspace.
As I remember it AutoCAD Architectural Desktop tried and failed with the assumption that annotations should be added in paperspace some years ago.
Why not just extend the capabilities of fields in BricsCAD to fetch BIM data from the 3D model?! Creating a BIM Workflow that enables any .DWG application to open the .DWG files produced in BricsCAD (BIM) without proxies or other fishy non-dwg-native objects remains a priority.

Conham

Mikael, I think your suggestion on how to extend the fields sounds interesting and it's good if it also results in a more open and native dwg solution. We also use the swedish standards here at Åland, but I think the problem is the same for every national standard when sharing a drawing with others. All information that is meant to be xrefed must be completed in model space.

For the moment I have found a workaround. When attaching tags and dimensions in the resulting Bimviewport a block with the same data is created the next time the viewport is updated. The block will have the same name as the resulting section block plus a suffix "dims" and the sheet name. If more tags or dims are added later those will also be added to the "dims" block during the next section update. It is therefore possible to place a copy of the the "dims" block in model space and scale it to the same scale as the resulting block and position it correctly. I have also placed the "dims" block on a layer called 0_ANNOTATION so it's easy to find and can be freezed the in the Bimviewport so the data is not shown twice. As you see it's now possible to use the same annotation data in a new sheet if needed or xref it to another drawing. This workaround is not super comfortable, but you only need to set it up once and after that just remember to update the Bimviewport after editing the information. I'm still in a testing phase, but so far it seems to work.

RVUSMC

Don't know If it will help but I have always use model space for annotations, as an old-time auto cad user,
I generated layers for all of the different annotation text, blocks, dim's I needed, so I could control them in model space.
If I needed to adjust the size, etc, in paper space was easy to do so, but the main files were in model space and could be frozen, updated, transferred , moved, as needed.
The only text that I put in paper space might be the sheet title pages
Randy

ScottS

Conham said:

For the moment I have found a workaround. When attaching tags and dimensions in the resulting Bimviewport a block with the same data is created the next time the viewport is updated. The block will have the same name as the resulting section block plus a suffix "dims" and the sheet name. If more tags or dims are added later those will also be added to the "dims" block during the next section update. It is therefore possible to place a copy of the the "dims" block in model space and scale it to the same scale as the resulting block and position it correctly. I have also placed the "dims" block on a layer called 0_ANNOTATION so it's easy to find and can be freezed the in the Bimviewport so the data is not shown twice. As you see it's now possible to use the same annotation data in a new sheet if needed or xref it to another drawing. This workaround is not super comfortable, but you only need to set it up once and after that just remember to update the Bimviewport after editing the information. I'm still in a testing phase, but so far it seems to work.

Thank you for sharing this uncomfortable but still valuable workaround. Inserting the "*_dims" block at 0,0 in paper space overlays it in the correct location w.r.t. the viewport, and then the block can be moved and scaled automatically into model space with CHSPACE.

Having annotation in model space is important not only for sharing files but also simply for working within the drawing itself. For example, when adding any sort of 2D linework to a BIM-generated section I very often want to see it in the context of other dimensions, notes, tags, etc. Plus, I know I'm not alone in preferring to work against the dark background of model space with color-coded layers while reserving paper space to display plot style output on a white sheet.

BIM lets us do complicated stuff, like cutting and updating multiple cross sections, in a fraction of the time but requires three times as long to do simple stuff. Although I wish it were easier, ultimately the tradeoff is worth the workarounds required to draft a good looking set of plans.