2D Plans from Existing Conditions

tschauff@posteo.de

Hello. In our Architecture Office we use pointclouds to capture existing buildings. In most Projects Time and cost efficiency allow only for 2d construction documents.

At the moment I m testing bricscad for this workflow.

1) I was able to load the pointcloud and I’m impressed by the good visibility of the scanned data. This was a major problem in other software (vectorworks)

2) then we created a section perpendicular to a facade with the intention to draw an elevation from it.

3) We set the UCS so it aligned with the elevation view, then we set the view to frontal projection. So far, so good. We can now trace the building’s features.

4) And now the question: How can we lock the drawing plane (x;y) and force bricscad to draw 2d instead of snapping to far off points?

5) How do we get the elevation flat to use as a regular 2d drawing?

Thank you.

Tom Foster

tschauff@posteo.de said:

How can we lock the drawing plane (x;y) and force bricscad to draw 2d instead of snapping to far off points?

I'm getting round to trying this myself, so don't have answers, just concerns. Surely, if rigidly locked to xy plane, you'll pick up precious few points which lie exactly on that plane. Don't we need a tolerance +/- ea side of the xy plane?

ScottS

Set OSNAPZ = 1 to ignore entity snap elevation, i.e., z coordinate.

Michael Mayer

ScottS said:

Set OSNAPZ = 1 to ignore entity snap elevation, i.e., z coordinate.

This is why I think Snapping Options should be always available in the GUI all the time.
like as a permanent bar above the status bar.
(which always has to show Coordinates in World AND Relative CS - and snapping all time on,
even if now Command active, to allow reading the coordinate of a specific point)

(vs the need to press CTRL and precisely try to hover, show and activate a Vertex,
which is still a very welcome "little" help so far)


Even in plain Top View, in Bricscad, I could never be sure, that there aren't any special
situations where drawing objects would not risk to unwanted moves in Z.
The only save option is still (only available since a few years) to loooooong-click for the
Manipulator to appear and moving along one single Axis at a time.

I think 2.5D drawing (snapping in 3D but safely move/manipulate in 2Ds only) is absolutely
mandatory for architectural works - which is mainly some kind of 2.5D in general.
Gravity and Efficiency forces us to have vertical and horizontal Structural Elements,
mostly rectilinear geometries, Walls and Slabs, Columns and Beams, ....
And this effects the way we will want to draw and model our virtual geometries.

I grew up in CAD in a Microstation environment
(steep learning curve ! But absolutely equal weighting of all 3D axes !)
Beside that I was able to force, them by my whining, to establish a 2D or (current) "Z" lock
that made Microstation navigation in Space (called Sticky Z by just pressing Enter)
Already by their "patented" Accu Draw, (*) there was always full control of drawing in
any 3D Axis - although no prioritization for any 3D Axis at all.
(*) basically a "BC Manipulator" but ALL time available by default.

Even Autodesk bought 3DSMax had a strict "2.5D" Snap option, that allowed to
snap geometry anywhere in 3D Space but allowed to be absolutely sure to not
arbitrarily move in a third Dimension that you can't neither see nor control in
an Orthographic Drawing Viewport - no matter if it is a Top PlanVieww at a certain
elevation nor if it is any other Orthographic drawing view like left, front or back.

OmidEkrami

Alternatively, you can have a look at POINTCLOUDPROJECTSECTION command. It is specifically designed to make "drawing around" a point cloud easier.
https://help.bricsys.com/document/_commandreference--CMD_pointcloudprojectsection/V22/EN_US?id=165079095014
You can see the command in action in this tutorial video at 29':25" :
https://youtu.be/BiWXMrJWtI8?t=1762