Powercad Tutorial
Angel Smidt
Learnt AutoCAD in TAFE (Drafting). Good to learn the basics and stuff.
Probably can self-taught and learn on your own.
I was taught Revit and PowerCAD in-house training when employed in the Building Services Industry.
If you still have a .edu email, you can get free student versions of AutoCAD and Revit packages. There is a wealth of knowledge and tutorials freely available from the Autodesk website. Might also be worth looking into something like Lynda or LinkedIn Learn.
We just use a drafting view and draw them using lines and detail items, much like traditional AutoCAD with lines and blocks. One add-in that comes to mind is called MagiCAD. They create an add-in that assists in the creation of schematics.
How have you been doing this in the past? AutoCAD? There are add-ins but I'm not a fan so I will not suggest any. If you want to use all revit elements, then you could start a drafting view in Revit and start drawing things from scratch. My preferred method would be to link an AutoCAD single line diagram into a Revit drafting view, then slap that drafting view on a sheet.
What size is your project's single line? Is it easily contained within a single view? If not, you may have to create separate DWGs for each single line and put each one on a different drafting view. That is unless you're okay with scaling your imported DWG file in.
the way i see most companies do it (and the way i setup templtes) is with drafting views. you need symbols created as detail items so that they don't scale and then of course all the associated linestyles created. don't forget you can't have text in linetype so if you have text in autocad linetypes then it's best to approach that with the sooner rather than later. usually when i'm working in a joint venture with another company and they suggest schematics in autocad it's an indicator to me that they don't really have their act in gear.
based on feedback i've received from electrical guys i work with, i would highly recommend powercad-m, it's about $100 for a licence and it does all the single line diagrams for you.. not to mention if you can get the electrical engineers on board with it, they can take responsibility for the schematics themselves and it avoids the markups/drafting cycle of producing schematics.
I'm relatively new to Reivt, I don't have to many templates setup as yet. Could explain more about creating symbols as detail items please. I need to build up families/library asap, and any tips would be a great help.
you may need to slightly adjust some of your symbols as revit can't do tiny lines and circles. but usualy you can get pretty close. for example i had a symbol that has a 0.25mm circle in a symbol but in revit i had to draw it 0.35mm or something like that.
make sure you have your line styles / categories in your symbol. i suggest you create your own symbol template. this just ensures that you have all the correct line weights in your family and then in the future if for whatever reason you need to adjust your line weights, all of your symbols will update together.
as you're new to revit (and i'm not sure what your experience level is) then it's also worth pointing out that when you're creating symbols for your 3d elements, your lights, air terminals, drainage pits etc. should have their symbols created with detail items so they always display the correct regardless of the scale of the drawing. this is for coordination purposes.
on the flipside, objects like power and data outlets, sprinklers, exit lights and so forth that are more symbolic in their display will generally have an annotation symbol associated with them. this is so they're not lost on the drawing as having a 1:1 representation they would be lost.
We have a lot of one line symbols already created as Generic Annotations as shown below, but I think I'd rather make them Detail items. And even when text is checked to 'Keep Readable', it will still rotate 90 degrees. Is there a workaround for that?
there is no hard and fast rule that you have to use detail items, you can use annotation symbols so don't go changing everything across if you don't need to. it just makes sense to use detail items for schematics.
detail items are just like any other family, you can add user editable type and instance parameters to control visibility, size, etc. and then you tag them. probably not needed, but a quick video demo:
my background is also hydraulics (plumbing) and sometimes our schematics can get quite tight and an embedded tag in a predetermined location within the family just doens't work. tagging detail items means you can shift the tags around to where you want them to be, complete with leaders and everything you need.
another thing to consider with detail items is line based detail components. say for example you're creating an electrical SLD, and you want to show information on the circuit between a panel and another object. you can use a line based detail component and that way you only enter the data on the circuit once and you can tag it out anywhere along that line.
just moved into a non-architecture office running Macs only, and i have the opportunity to decide what software to use as the standard for doing small projects...
drafting and modelling will be necessary, and in my former PC world, autoCAD and sketchup was all i needed (plus the adobe stuff)...
i know some people swear by vectorworks, but have also read old threads where crowbert is pretty adamant about it being garbage...
tried vectorworks years ago when it was still called minicad and could not figure out how to use it...i'm pretty good with software and can pick up most packages fairly easily, but could not even begin to do a thing with minicad coming from an autocad background...
anyone have any ideas why this might be? have heard similar stories from others switching from autocad...syntax, action, sequencing issue maybe? felt like an idiot not being able to pick it up...
otherwise, am considering ashlar vellum graphite for 2D cad and pairing it with sketchup for mac...
thoughts? especially from people who have made the switch rather than starting from vectorworks first?
I, too have found V-works unintuitive, despite it being the first CAD program I used professionally.
A very capable Mac drafting program is PowerCAD from engineered software. With the wild tools plug in you can do most of the things that make ACAD drafting fast -- stretch, create groups (equivalent to blocks), and the trim and extend tools are well implemented. The xref function is not so great, but it is there. I have set the key commands to be the same as commonly used ACAD commands, which helps ease the transition.
You could think of PCAD as Illustrator with good snaps, as it is a "paper space" program -- you work to scale all the time, which you may not like if you are accustomed to the "real world units" environment of ACAD. Your experience with Adobe products will serve you well in getting up to speed in PCAD. I have had good results bringing geometry from PCAD into Sketch Up via dwg, too.
Another option is Form-Z -- good modeling and the drafting is not bad, once you get used to it.
yep, will demo PowerCAD too...
speaking of groups, this is a tangent, but anyone know whatever happenned to the "quick groups" command in autoCAD? used to be an express tool and i've noticed it's been gone for a few years now...
if grouping was as easy as in sketchup, it would go a long way in acad...
Find a tutorial. Vectorworks is really easy and straightforward. I learned Autocad first and it is easy to work in both.
Note the green architecture tutorial.
PowerCADD is a dinosaur that simulates working with tracing paper. It is a dead end.
i thought powercad and minicad were split from the same primal scream that made minicad.
minicad is dead easy. different, but easy. i used it back in the early days of computing then went autocad for about 10 years before going back to VW in office environment. it literally took me a morning to start working like I was being payed. by the first week it was just another software.
i think the thing about 2d cad is that what you really need to know is how to set up dwgs. the software is not so impt unless you are looking for productivity gains through BIM.
however, that said, i use AC now. i still prefer it to VW...
I started on AutoCAD, then ArchiCAD, then tried Vectorworks last year while in a small office. I've had a crack at Revit, but only in the tutorials. Couldn't get my head around the VW interface and found it horrendously inaccurate.
I would personally recommend ArchiCAD above any of these others. It's intuitive and built with Architects in mind. I found Revit, while a step inthe right direction, a bit too complicated for it's own good. BIM is totally the way forward, but it does require a whole new mind-set about the way you produce work from the very start.
Just my 2c.
will have another look at VW in demo mode if available...maybe things have gotten much easier in the last while...
i'd like to avoid having mixed platforms to make it easy to keep track of where my files are...tend to forget to transfer files between machines a lot, even over a LAN...so maybe boot camp and autoCAD is the most practical, just need to justify the cost of it as a standard...maybe LT instead...
and as for quick groups, anyone?
vw isnt actually that hard. kinda like drafting in illustrator. with blocks.
personally, i dont care for it, but ive had to do it here and there. the way id recommend learning it is: look at all the basic things you do and need to do in autocad. flip through the vw manual to see how its done there, make a page of commands, etc., to keep at hand. understand the some of the basic differences (no command line, how to navigate, layers vs classes, constructing symbols). vw has become more like your pc cads and vw is trying to be a proto-bim program where drawing is actually producing 3d information, which automatically adjusts. decide if you want to access those features or use it as just any other drawing program. learning how to make it do what you want can be a wrestling match as it is always trying to 'make things easy' (a typical mac vs pc move), but its easily doable and efficient if you take the time to set it up.
i still dont like it, though. and yes, its snaps are a little dodgey at times.