Sharing Files correctly within the design Team using Vectorworks

In this blog, I will attermpt to show how I share files within a design team, the video below, I hope will make it all clear, and show the method I use.

I must admit this came originaly from a practice I worked ast a log time ago, and was set up using dwg files, all I have done here is also explain the way Vectorworks imports layers, I have used Vectorworks 2013, my current drawing package, although if you look carfully enough you can see I also have Vectorworks 2016, so I will replicate this later in the new 2016 version, I will also do it with IFC files not the raw Vectorwork files.

So take a lok at the video, I start by being the Architects practice, send out the files, I am then the Lift manufacturer, I reference the file show the position of the lift, and don't forget, my drawings are geolocated, I save it for future work, and save it again as a file to send back to the Architect, and also cleanit up, removing all the clutter, I keep in my file and and the referenced files i originaly added, I am now left with a small file that has the lift correctly positioned, and geolocated.

This I send back and the Architect practice who loads it in as a ref file and can now use the information, as its geolocated, the lift is in the correct position.

The Engineer and other consultants would do exactly the same, 

Look at the difference in file size doing it this way, also there is no conflict with the Architect files being sent back.

Adding data to a CAD Object - Vectorworks

I want to continue the links I have been adding, re BIM, and how data can be added and linked. This last item is the one that seems to confuse, so stay with me I'll try and explain it all.

First lets consider how information can be added to a CAD drawing, and for my ease of mind, for this blog, I shall stick to Vectorworks, its the one I know best, I shall move to Autocad and Revit in the blogs to come.

Some time back I made two different videos on this subject, both are shown below, they show the ease and simplistic way data, of almost any shape and size can be added to almost anything in Vectorworks and named, but don't belie this as being low level, its not, this is simply the most powerful CAD database there is.

The first shows the way data can be added to a tree symbol and the second how this can be extracted via a report, and imported into a spreadsheet, read Cobie file.

Big Data

In a conversation with a few friends over the weekend, it suddenly occurred to me, that a lot of small company information lies in so many CAD formats to just plain old word, and text files.
practices hold vast amounts of data, so often stored away in a variety of formats, from defunct documents like wordstar, remember that,  scanned drawings, the current collection of CAD file formats, IFC, and spreadsheets in the millions..

The trick will be to pull this information into a single cohesive viewable format, so welcome to big data, and the incomprehesable world of fragmented data.

I was always taught, keep data simple and regulated, but data is so often not cooperating in this, its all over the place and in so many different formats, and its often corrupted in some form or other.

So how do we get all this information to talk, thats the quest I am now on, its a long term project, but all linked to my CAD, BIM, internet of things paper, the more I look the more it expands to new areas. Googles Hadoop is an open-source software framework for storing data and running applications on clusters of commodity hardware. It provides massive storage for any kind of data, enormous processing power and the ability to handle virtually limitless concurrent tasks or jobs.

In short its the backbone of the new data

So I have or am, pulling together a presentation on the way ahead for Architectural Data, its not BIM, its not CAD, it has to be more, and so much lies outside your company or even personal data hives, on the open web, waiting to be linked and searched.

Should you learn more about this, yes, should you hand out this and all your data to an external company to make sense of it all, maybe, perhaps not, but one thing is sure, putting your head into the sand and hoping it will pass you by and everything will return to as it was, is not an option.

If your interested in attending a lecture on this subject, contact me and I will add you to my mailing letter list and let you know when and were. or if you want an in house lecture specific to your

company, again, make contact and I will get straight back to you.

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