Being the recent B.S. Arch grad that I am, I've found myself witha ton of construction document work at my job. This is probably my first real experience in a professional arch office setting. I've done short internships for a couple of weeks here and there, but most of them were just for the purpose of seeing what an arch office/practice is like and performing tasks like model builinng. In my experience at arch school, even though we had construction classes and obviously had to draw diagrams for projects, the cirriculum never seemed to focus on learning what is actually needed to produce CDs. And it's not like I went to some no-name school either, it was a top ten program. I understand the general conventions as any arch student should, however find that in my current position it's almost been expected and assumed that I am able and competent to whip out a nearly perfect CD. While I know the general rules, there's a lot of questions that I have - just nitty gritty stuff, but ones that make a difference. I know most schools like mine are similar in the fact that practical skills like this are not put at the forefront. How do others feel? I almost feel embarassed that I don't know certain things, even though I probably shouldn't, but still.
ahh, the breaking down of the ego, yes it's quite humbling, but a necessary part of learning how to put a building together. embrace this moment and learn one thing, because sooner or later you were going to have this happen. first thing you should know and probably already do, is that this profession has made me believe that architectural education doesn't end just because we have that piece of paper that says "Graduate", the only thing that paper tells you is that you have moved to the next sphere in your education of an architect. ask a ton of questions, just because you went to a top ten school doesn't mean that your firm should be less than forthcoming with their requirement to provide you the required training and skills for you to take the exam. consultant prior office documentation, chances are they will teach you alot about your particular office expects, and as you gain more knowledge you will begin to develop your own vocabulary and see where their details are wrong. look to your manufacturers, they are good basis for starting, afterall it is their equipment/product you will be using.
and don't be afraid to ask questions.
it may be embarrassing - but not nearly as embarrassing as problems turning up later in the field.
kind of a pay now or pay more later situation.
I teamed up with the technicians that were around me and asked them questions. I got along with one in particular who enjoyed answering my questions and gave a thorough explanation when I needed it. I guess I did this because the technicians were more accessible than the architects and understood the issues I was having actually better than the designers. They were also less busy - so more agreeable to help when I needed it. I too went to a top school and was infused with plenty of design knowledge but absolutely zero building-going-together knowledge. It was a struggle but I did plenty of studying of building systems on my own time. You won't get all of your education you need now from your firm just as you didn't get it all in school. Architecture is a highly self-motivated profession. There are plenty of opportunities to weed you out, and if you stick with it, it makes it that much sweeter. Good luck.
Oh - another thing my firm had me do was standard details, for a whole summer. This really catapulted my understanding of detailing. I looked for details to draw from manufacturer's, I looked thru old prints to pull out details. I even looked at other firm's prints and I also got to study how other firms put CD's together and realized that there are many ways to do them and varing levels of quality. Depends on your firm's structure, but you might look into this. Congratulations on landing the job and the degree, that is an accomlishment!
This book would be a good reference to keep handy. I had the author as a professor (he's now the department head) and we used it as a reference in our classes on CDs. Its a good place to start for putting a set together, etc. but you'd have to supplement it with your office's standards and the knowledge from everyone around you. Mix it all up with a ton of questions and you'll be good to go!
alright, that link doesn't work, sorry about that... here's the book info:
A Manual of Construction Documentation: An Illustrated Guide to Preparing Construction Drawings by Glenn E. Wiggins. Easily found on Amazon for about $20 for the paperback.
i feel your pain. i would suggest living with graphic standards and i still think ching's building construction illustrated is soooooo very helpful. as the great reo speedwagon proclaimed "keep pushin"
as i am still one of those in the "fantasy" world of school, my opinion might not count, but both wiggin's book in combination with ching helped me to grasp how a building went together. my const. doc prof was incredibly anal during that semester, and while i felt like more of a victim than a student during that time, i now feel fortunate. i will be heading out in the real world after may, so i'll keep you posted.
some of you guys had construction doc classes? i had never heard the term construction docs till i got my job.
no, i guess i heard it in pro practice class. i wonder if this is typical. i had never heard of redlines either. living in a box, baby
i made it, so can you.
Architecture schools are not the place to learn the practice of Architecture. It takes a good 10 years of practical experience and exposure to learn the profession.
I know you probably feel a little bitterly towards your school for not even trying to teach you all this, but I can assure you that you shouldn't. I go to a school that does try and teach this, and it doesn't work too well. When they started in on the construction documents stuff, everyone who had worked in an office got bored because we weren't learning anything new, and everyone who hadn't worked in an office just got very, very confused. CD's are such a hands-on sort of thing that I truly believe it can't be taught in school.
Just know that everyone goes through what you are going through now, the only difference between any of us is whether it happened in our first internship during school, or after we graduate.
oh thank God im not alone..... im just a little third year architecture student, and have had this issue swimming in my head for awhile now. Last semester (fall 04) we had to do CD's for our building tech class, but it was on such a small scale that i learned little more than the proper way to link elevation details to their specific pages.... Is this what im hearing here..... that as far as really learing CD's... im going to have chill with my new old friend frank ching and slave through it? oh well horrray for architecture
I remember taking "Design Development" (wink) where we were supposed to put together a CD set and having no clue as to what the hell I was doing. I just did not get how the symbols related to the various pages (bad teacher... no one explained it). I made some bullshit set and somehow passed (think I knew 4 or 5 people who never graduated cause they didn't finish the damn class). Couldn't read details for shit, couldn't tell which way was up (still sometimes have trouble, quite honestly). Anyways, 5 years after graduating I have my license and am working on a couple of CD sets right now, yipee, so you'll be fine... just ask questions, lots of questions. and the refernce books are helpful, but looking at lots of sets from different offices and doing redlines for an older more experienced person helps the most.
in our school curriculum, in India, we have a whole semester ' 'working drawings' to essentially take a building that we had done in the earlier quarter and make the most improtant and relevant drawings of a CD set. We cursed it then, because it would mean that each person would have to hand-draft and ink around 25 d-size sheets in a period of 3-4 months. (this was around 8 years back...)
but now i realize how much it helps - dont they have anything like that in the american arch. system???
I didn't have any class like that, and cringe thinking how dumb I must have seemed just 8 or 10 months ago; but now I'm putting sets together. again, arch school teaches you the ways to think about a building, all the physical and spatial parts & pieces; then you get out of school and learn how the contractor understands the drawings, the basic graphic standards, etc.
...And if you're lucky, your office uses Revit and you don't have to deal with 100 xref'd files, and putting a set together makes a little more sense...also, you can click on those detail symbols & go straight to the detail you want to see... Really helped me understand how a building goes together, and how to show it in the CD set, so much better.
for those of you not yet in this situation, this is why it helps you enormously to work for architects summers (and part time too if you can swing it) while in school. to get out of school able to both design, and know how to put together drawings for permits and construction makes you off-tha-rack valuable. work is really the best place to learn those things too, instead of taking too much autocad in school or all that. doing it on a practical level under architects supervision speeds up the process.
I hear you. I thought I'd be fine going into the "real world," since my AutoCAD skills were pretty top-notch (my opinion). Now I understand that there is a hugh huge difference b/w acutally knowing how to operate the program and navigate through it and then actually knowing how to use it as a tool b/c that's what it is really - a TOOL. Too bad I didn't invest more in getting a good summer internships. I do agree though that by working through them and simply doing redlines are a good method of understanding the whole thing. I've only just started at this place and already I feel as though I've made a lot of progress. And I'm not even putting together a set, only one piece of the team that is completing the task. It may not be the most interesting parto of arch, but what I really like about it is the methodical process that goes into it. If you learn the steps and heed to the guidelines, it's really not that bad. I enjoy the coordination required of it and wouldn't mind being the P.M. that leads the whole process one day. Oh yeah, and XREFs, I didn't even know about them b/f, and now I'm almost an expert. Such a pain though.
it's nice to hear people who are new to the profession willing to learning through the CD process. it really is important to learn the things in that phase. how buildings are put together and the technical proficiency one must master before moving to the next level is important.
i agree that architecture school teaches a student how to visualize and 'think' like an architect. it's the profession that teaches the technical side of realizing that vision.
i think too often, fresh graduates think they're going to be doing the sexy design parts of a building or project and not the "in the trenches, CAD, getting it done" part. pumping CAD is also a term i don't like. the person who isn't learning is pumping CAD, those who are learning are becoming architects.
architecture is incredibly technical. that is really lost in the education process in school. i think the key to being a good architect is being able to visualize good design and temper that with the knowledge of realizing that vision.
I just spent the better part of yesterday red marking an intern's "preliminary" set of Permit drawings. She was not happy with the remarks I made or the sea of red on the drawings but I agree with the above comments it is a humbling experience. I had my own humbling experience many years back and it is an important lesson for every young Architect, just hope everyone has it earlier in their career as it would be embrassing to go through it later in life. Learn to understand what the purpose of the drawings, and know what every line and every note refers to....nothing less than perfection, simple right! That's what the client and the contractor expect.
I'm an interiors major and we're required to take "methods and materials" which is really a construction tech class, we learn about basic detailing and general job site rules. The following semester we are required to take "working drawings" building on what we learned the semester before...
These classes are indispensable to me, I can't imagine why they wouldn't be considered important for an architecture student.
contractors expect perfection? to me that's absurd, i'm sorry, but that has to be a joke, right? clients expect perfection, architects expect perfection, contractors - unless they are super fucking anal, and hire absolutely skilled craftspeople - are never as interested in applying perfection to their craft as architects...and the day i hit perfection i'll know it's time to move on to hair dressing.
Now if you take a carpenter who is also an artist would'nt they fit the mold of architect? I have the unusal fortune to have become an architect and a carpenter and its a blessing because the CD's being talked about here are contract documents more often for the quantifying and placing of materials, but we in my firm are essentially able to build on the fly (without comprimising design). Sadly the architects role has been diminished to that of a permit getter in a lot of cases. In fact we design and have them put it on paper and find ourselves holding the profesionals hand because of the poor quality of cd's nowdays. Hint- its already estimated before the cd's are even close to done and in a lot of cases it could be built to. Maybe architects should spend less time in school - in my opinion it was fun and creative yes, but a colossal waste of time. Your creative and imaginative anyways - you dont need a $45k+ education to validate you. (ok - you do - legally)
the contractors that i work with just want their drawings stamped. the less information on the drawings the better since they are going to do what they want anyway. thats design/build baby...i had a cd class in grad school. took an incomplete.
45 thousand for a degree??? where'd you go to community college???
I think being able to sketch out how a building is built is the most important. Then you have the ability to ask questions about what is going on. You also can then create. What you put on the drawings will becaome clear once you know what is needed. It's a process not a copyist's session. I went to IIT, which was an awful place for someone with an education, and my teachers didn't understand teh importance of sketching and thinking. Once you have that down, you'll be able to tackle anything that's thrown at you.
VR- I went to UIC - best deal around, in fact it cost much less than 40k and since I made it to 50% of my classes without being kicked out I was able to work. This profession doesnt need art school rejects in black shirts and old men in bow ties misleading its young. DONT ARGUE WITH THE MAN WITH THE HAMMER. Make Arch - Dead on - if you cant draw you cant be an architect - its the inate ability to see and tranfer it to paper. I wouldnt trust a piolet without depth perception either. Just give a builder who actually loves building the sketches, that frees the architect to be the conceptualist they want to be anyways.
I'm doing some elevations for a project at work - not presentation kinds, but for cds. I know how to do a true elevation and true section, but I can't really seem to determine which of these my p.m. wants. At first I thought it was the former but then he starts redlining my work and putting in notes for sectional descriptions. I discussed this with him, trying my best not to seem so daft and naive, but all I get is a vague circumspect response. It's probably also naive of me to be asking you guys about this since every office is different, but . . .
when you guys do cd elevations is it a true elevation or a combination sectional one. Additional advice on this task welcome.
shouldn't 'p.m' be able to show you drawings similar to his/her expectations?
maybe eventually we learn to draw as economically as we can, with optimal amount of info and minimal number of sheets. Where clarity is preferred to 'format-correctness'.
(p.m.? prime meunster? principle mentor? you probably defined pm above. :) )
i agree with you EP, except that unless the contractor is of the design/build variety that i described, the drawings must be much more than sketches since their is that evil little word "liability" coming into play. and UIC is a quality program, worked with some people from there.
e909 is correct. your office should have files and files and files of drawings to refer to. we do elevations and sections in our sweatshop.
sans - it may feel like theyre running you in circles, and they may be, but essentially you do the picture that best tells the story. Sometimes the info for a section can be in the elevation. Sometimes vica versa. Only time and practice will get you to the point of making those decisions. Just ask questions to your pm about why they chose the drawings to make and how. You may annoy them but deep down they'll respect the inquisitiveness.
That's not an annoying question sanofiSYN. It is a good question and should be asked to whomever is marking up your drawings.
Usually we draw elevations and sections - not combination section/elevations. When drawing a section in design development we might draw what is beyond in elevation to help the owner read the drawings. But for CDs this tends to confuse the contractor and if you have the same info in multiple locations such as you might in one of these section elevations then you have the possiblity of contradictary information.
CDs are to include the information only once if possible, and in a predictable place. You don't, for example, call out rom finishes on a plan if you have a room finish schedule. Or you dont show elevation things in a section. CDs are to be simple and readable and organized. Chances are your firm has a way they like to do this although in my experience each proj. arch. has their own take and does things a little differently. There also may be a good reason to do the section/elevation, but you will ask this and find out! Meanwhile, do get a few sets of CDs recently done by your office to use as a guide.
Thanks for the response Strawbeary. I have to admit, this is all a bit frustrating, but I know it'll get better and I'm accepting the fact that I'm going to be making mistakes. It's true, at least I can learn from them now as opposed to further on in the future.
Feb 14, 05 9:03 pm ·
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construction drawings
Being the recent B.S. Arch grad that I am, I've found myself witha ton of construction document work at my job. This is probably my first real experience in a professional arch office setting. I've done short internships for a couple of weeks here and there, but most of them were just for the purpose of seeing what an arch office/practice is like and performing tasks like model builinng. In my experience at arch school, even though we had construction classes and obviously had to draw diagrams for projects, the cirriculum never seemed to focus on learning what is actually needed to produce CDs. And it's not like I went to some no-name school either, it was a top ten program. I understand the general conventions as any arch student should, however find that in my current position it's almost been expected and assumed that I am able and competent to whip out a nearly perfect CD. While I know the general rules, there's a lot of questions that I have - just nitty gritty stuff, but ones that make a difference. I know most schools like mine are similar in the fact that practical skills like this are not put at the forefront. How do others feel? I almost feel embarassed that I don't know certain things, even though I probably shouldn't, but still.
ahh, the breaking down of the ego, yes it's quite humbling, but a necessary part of learning how to put a building together. embrace this moment and learn one thing, because sooner or later you were going to have this happen. first thing you should know and probably already do, is that this profession has made me believe that architectural education doesn't end just because we have that piece of paper that says "Graduate", the only thing that paper tells you is that you have moved to the next sphere in your education of an architect. ask a ton of questions, just because you went to a top ten school doesn't mean that your firm should be less than forthcoming with their requirement to provide you the required training and skills for you to take the exam. consultant prior office documentation, chances are they will teach you alot about your particular office expects, and as you gain more knowledge you will begin to develop your own vocabulary and see where their details are wrong. look to your manufacturers, they are good basis for starting, afterall it is their equipment/product you will be using.
be patient it will come.
and don't be afraid to ask questions.
it may be embarrassing - but not nearly as embarrassing as problems turning up later in the field.
kind of a pay now or pay more later situation.
I teamed up with the technicians that were around me and asked them questions. I got along with one in particular who enjoyed answering my questions and gave a thorough explanation when I needed it. I guess I did this because the technicians were more accessible than the architects and understood the issues I was having actually better than the designers. They were also less busy - so more agreeable to help when I needed it. I too went to a top school and was infused with plenty of design knowledge but absolutely zero building-going-together knowledge. It was a struggle but I did plenty of studying of building systems on my own time. You won't get all of your education you need now from your firm just as you didn't get it all in school. Architecture is a highly self-motivated profession. There are plenty of opportunities to weed you out, and if you stick with it, it makes it that much sweeter. Good luck.
Oh - another thing my firm had me do was standard details, for a whole summer. This really catapulted my understanding of detailing. I looked for details to draw from manufacturer's, I looked thru old prints to pull out details. I even looked at other firm's prints and I also got to study how other firms put CD's together and realized that there are many ways to do them and varing levels of quality. Depends on your firm's structure, but you might look into this. Congratulations on landing the job and the degree, that is an accomlishment!
This book would be a good reference to keep handy. I had the author as a professor (he's now the department head) and we used it as a reference in our classes on CDs. Its a good place to start for putting a set together, etc. but you'd have to supplement it with your office's standards and the knowledge from everyone around you. Mix it all up with a ton of questions and you'll be good to go!
alright, that link doesn't work, sorry about that... here's the book info:
A Manual of Construction Documentation: An Illustrated Guide to Preparing Construction Drawings by Glenn E. Wiggins. Easily found on Amazon for about $20 for the paperback.
thanks guys. i think i might just pick up that book.
i feel your pain. i would suggest living with graphic standards and i still think ching's building construction illustrated is soooooo very helpful. as the great reo speedwagon proclaimed "keep pushin"
as i am still one of those in the "fantasy" world of school, my opinion might not count, but both wiggin's book in combination with ching helped me to grasp how a building went together. my const. doc prof was incredibly anal during that semester, and while i felt like more of a victim than a student during that time, i now feel fortunate. i will be heading out in the real world after may, so i'll keep you posted.
some of you guys had construction doc classes? i had never heard the term construction docs till i got my job.
no, i guess i heard it in pro practice class. i wonder if this is typical. i had never heard of redlines either. living in a box, baby
i made it, so can you.
yeah, not sure if thats a curse or a blessing from Wentworth Institute of Technology...
Architecture schools are not the place to learn the practice of Architecture. It takes a good 10 years of practical experience and exposure to learn the profession.
I know you probably feel a little bitterly towards your school for not even trying to teach you all this, but I can assure you that you shouldn't. I go to a school that does try and teach this, and it doesn't work too well. When they started in on the construction documents stuff, everyone who had worked in an office got bored because we weren't learning anything new, and everyone who hadn't worked in an office just got very, very confused. CD's are such a hands-on sort of thing that I truly believe it can't be taught in school.
Just know that everyone goes through what you are going through now, the only difference between any of us is whether it happened in our first internship during school, or after we graduate.
and working off of cds is useful
oh thank God im not alone..... im just a little third year architecture student, and have had this issue swimming in my head for awhile now. Last semester (fall 04) we had to do CD's for our building tech class, but it was on such a small scale that i learned little more than the proper way to link elevation details to their specific pages.... Is this what im hearing here..... that as far as really learing CD's... im going to have chill with my new old friend frank ching and slave through it? oh well horrray for architecture
I remember taking "Design Development" (wink) where we were supposed to put together a CD set and having no clue as to what the hell I was doing. I just did not get how the symbols related to the various pages (bad teacher... no one explained it). I made some bullshit set and somehow passed (think I knew 4 or 5 people who never graduated cause they didn't finish the damn class). Couldn't read details for shit, couldn't tell which way was up (still sometimes have trouble, quite honestly). Anyways, 5 years after graduating I have my license and am working on a couple of CD sets right now, yipee, so you'll be fine... just ask questions, lots of questions. and the refernce books are helpful, but looking at lots of sets from different offices and doing redlines for an older more experienced person helps the most.
in our school curriculum, in India, we have a whole semester ' 'working drawings' to essentially take a building that we had done in the earlier quarter and make the most improtant and relevant drawings of a CD set. We cursed it then, because it would mean that each person would have to hand-draft and ink around 25 d-size sheets in a period of 3-4 months. (this was around 8 years back...)
but now i realize how much it helps - dont they have anything like that in the american arch. system???
oops i think R.A. rudolph kinda answered my question
I didn't have any class like that, and cringe thinking how dumb I must have seemed just 8 or 10 months ago; but now I'm putting sets together. again, arch school teaches you the ways to think about a building, all the physical and spatial parts & pieces; then you get out of school and learn how the contractor understands the drawings, the basic graphic standards, etc.
...And if you're lucky, your office uses Revit and you don't have to deal with 100 xref'd files, and putting a set together makes a little more sense...also, you can click on those detail symbols & go straight to the detail you want to see... Really helped me understand how a building goes together, and how to show it in the CD set, so much better.
for those of you not yet in this situation, this is why it helps you enormously to work for architects summers (and part time too if you can swing it) while in school. to get out of school able to both design, and know how to put together drawings for permits and construction makes you off-tha-rack valuable. work is really the best place to learn those things too, instead of taking too much autocad in school or all that. doing it on a practical level under architects supervision speeds up the process.
I hear you. I thought I'd be fine going into the "real world," since my AutoCAD skills were pretty top-notch (my opinion). Now I understand that there is a hugh huge difference b/w acutally knowing how to operate the program and navigate through it and then actually knowing how to use it as a tool b/c that's what it is really - a TOOL. Too bad I didn't invest more in getting a good summer internships. I do agree though that by working through them and simply doing redlines are a good method of understanding the whole thing. I've only just started at this place and already I feel as though I've made a lot of progress. And I'm not even putting together a set, only one piece of the team that is completing the task. It may not be the most interesting parto of arch, but what I really like about it is the methodical process that goes into it. If you learn the steps and heed to the guidelines, it's really not that bad. I enjoy the coordination required of it and wouldn't mind being the P.M. that leads the whole process one day. Oh yeah, and XREFs, I didn't even know about them b/f, and now I'm almost an expert. Such a pain though.
it's nice to hear people who are new to the profession willing to learning through the CD process. it really is important to learn the things in that phase. how buildings are put together and the technical proficiency one must master before moving to the next level is important.
i agree that architecture school teaches a student how to visualize and 'think' like an architect. it's the profession that teaches the technical side of realizing that vision.
i think too often, fresh graduates think they're going to be doing the sexy design parts of a building or project and not the "in the trenches, CAD, getting it done" part. pumping CAD is also a term i don't like. the person who isn't learning is pumping CAD, those who are learning are becoming architects.
architecture is incredibly technical. that is really lost in the education process in school. i think the key to being a good architect is being able to visualize good design and temper that with the knowledge of realizing that vision.
I just spent the better part of yesterday red marking an intern's "preliminary" set of Permit drawings. She was not happy with the remarks I made or the sea of red on the drawings but I agree with the above comments it is a humbling experience. I had my own humbling experience many years back and it is an important lesson for every young Architect, just hope everyone has it earlier in their career as it would be embrassing to go through it later in life. Learn to understand what the purpose of the drawings, and know what every line and every note refers to....nothing less than perfection, simple right! That's what the client and the contractor expect.
I'm an interiors major and we're required to take "methods and materials" which is really a construction tech class, we learn about basic detailing and general job site rules. The following semester we are required to take "working drawings" building on what we learned the semester before...
These classes are indispensable to me, I can't imagine why they wouldn't be considered important for an architecture student.
contractors expect perfection? to me that's absurd, i'm sorry, but that has to be a joke, right? clients expect perfection, architects expect perfection, contractors - unless they are super fucking anal, and hire absolutely skilled craftspeople - are never as interested in applying perfection to their craft as architects...and the day i hit perfection i'll know it's time to move on to hair dressing.
Now if you take a carpenter who is also an artist would'nt they fit the mold of architect? I have the unusal fortune to have become an architect and a carpenter and its a blessing because the CD's being talked about here are contract documents more often for the quantifying and placing of materials, but we in my firm are essentially able to build on the fly (without comprimising design). Sadly the architects role has been diminished to that of a permit getter in a lot of cases. In fact we design and have them put it on paper and find ourselves holding the profesionals hand because of the poor quality of cd's nowdays. Hint- its already estimated before the cd's are even close to done and in a lot of cases it could be built to. Maybe architects should spend less time in school - in my opinion it was fun and creative yes, but a colossal waste of time. Your creative and imaginative anyways - you dont need a $45k+ education to validate you. (ok - you do - legally)
the contractors that i work with just want their drawings stamped. the less information on the drawings the better since they are going to do what they want anyway. thats design/build baby...i had a cd class in grad school. took an incomplete.
45 thousand for a degree??? where'd you go to community college???
I think being able to sketch out how a building is built is the most important. Then you have the ability to ask questions about what is going on. You also can then create. What you put on the drawings will becaome clear once you know what is needed. It's a process not a copyist's session. I went to IIT, which was an awful place for someone with an education, and my teachers didn't understand teh importance of sketching and thinking. Once you have that down, you'll be able to tackle anything that's thrown at you.
VR- I went to UIC - best deal around, in fact it cost much less than 40k and since I made it to 50% of my classes without being kicked out I was able to work. This profession doesnt need art school rejects in black shirts and old men in bow ties misleading its young. DONT ARGUE WITH THE MAN WITH THE HAMMER. Make Arch - Dead on - if you cant draw you cant be an architect - its the inate ability to see and tranfer it to paper. I wouldnt trust a piolet without depth perception either. Just give a builder who actually loves building the sketches, that frees the architect to be the conceptualist they want to be anyways.
but, there's the problem
contractors expect perfection
contractors expect money
I'm probably being really dense, but here goes:
I'm doing some elevations for a project at work - not presentation kinds, but for cds. I know how to do a true elevation and true section, but I can't really seem to determine which of these my p.m. wants. At first I thought it was the former but then he starts redlining my work and putting in notes for sectional descriptions. I discussed this with him, trying my best not to seem so daft and naive, but all I get is a vague circumspect response. It's probably also naive of me to be asking you guys about this since every office is different, but . . .
when you guys do cd elevations is it a true elevation or a combination sectional one. Additional advice on this task welcome.
shouldn't 'p.m' be able to show you drawings similar to his/her expectations?
maybe eventually we learn to draw as economically as we can, with optimal amount of info and minimal number of sheets. Where clarity is preferred to 'format-correctness'.
(p.m.? prime meunster? principle mentor? you probably defined pm above. :) )
i agree with you EP, except that unless the contractor is of the design/build variety that i described, the drawings must be much more than sketches since their is that evil little word "liability" coming into play. and UIC is a quality program, worked with some people from there.
e909 is correct. your office should have files and files and files of drawings to refer to. we do elevations and sections in our sweatshop.
sans - it may feel like theyre running you in circles, and they may be, but essentially you do the picture that best tells the story. Sometimes the info for a section can be in the elevation. Sometimes vica versa. Only time and practice will get you to the point of making those decisions. Just ask questions to your pm about why they chose the drawings to make and how. You may annoy them but deep down they'll respect the inquisitiveness.
Wouldnt it be great if UIC had a football team?
go Flamers!!! i mean Flames...
p.m. = project manager
That's not an annoying question sanofiSYN. It is a good question and should be asked to whomever is marking up your drawings.
Usually we draw elevations and sections - not combination section/elevations. When drawing a section in design development we might draw what is beyond in elevation to help the owner read the drawings. But for CDs this tends to confuse the contractor and if you have the same info in multiple locations such as you might in one of these section elevations then you have the possiblity of contradictary information.
CDs are to include the information only once if possible, and in a predictable place. You don't, for example, call out rom finishes on a plan if you have a room finish schedule. Or you dont show elevation things in a section. CDs are to be simple and readable and organized. Chances are your firm has a way they like to do this although in my experience each proj. arch. has their own take and does things a little differently. There also may be a good reason to do the section/elevation, but you will ask this and find out! Meanwhile, do get a few sets of CDs recently done by your office to use as a guide.
Thanks for the response Strawbeary. I have to admit, this is all a bit frustrating, but I know it'll get better and I'm accepting the fact that I'm going to be making mistakes. It's true, at least I can learn from them now as opposed to further on in the future.
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