Trimble Business Center

For all of you that were at PUG last week, here are the updated ARCH A-E Drafting Templates (Landscape Format) with Horizontal Titles Area. The Zip file also contains a minor update to the Example Project Template (vct) that you should use with these plotting Templates. I have made a number of changes to the CDE size sheets as well as adding the A and B size sheets in line with the requests at PUG. If you could use these and send me any suggestions or requests for improvement I would appreciate it.

Remember the following

1. The Logo file Your Logo Goes Here.jpg should stay with the VCL Drafting Template Files
2. The Logo size is 400 Pixels wide by up to ~250 Pixels high before edits are needed in the Templates to relocate the logos
3. Your Logo can substitutre the Trimble Logo by
   1. Resizing it to 400 Pixels wide and sabing it as a JPEG with the name Your Logo Goes Here.JPG and save it in the folder with the Drafting Templates
4. The Project Template has all of the Text Styles etc that are used by the Drafting Templates along with all of the Dimension Styles and Grid Styles used in the Templates. They are mostly also stored on the Base Sheet  of the Drafting Templates so that they are imported and created in Projects when you import the Drafting Template
5. The Smart Text in the Titles area is populated as Sheets are created and use the Project settings for General Settings, User Settings and Company Settings. Edit those into the VCT file and re save as a template to add your Organization, User and Project Details.
6. Start a New Project
7. Create the Site or Corridor Model(s) that you want to Plot
8. Drag in the Sheet Template you want to use (ARCH A,B,C,D or E)
9. For Plan Sheets they will use a Dynaview Collection. Once you have added a Dynaview Collection you need to Edit the properties of the Plan Sheet and add the Dynaview Collection as the source data for the Sheets. Then Right click and Build Sheets.
10. For Cross Sections, Profile Only or Plan and Profile Sheets you need to Right Click and Select Edit - which will ask you which Corridor you want to create the drawings from. Once selected the Editor will open and give you a preview of what your sheets will look like. You may need to change
    1. Plot Scale
    2. Vertical Exaggeration
    3. Surfaces Referenced
    4. Interval Settings for Finish or Existing Surface (depends on the names that you used for those surfaces)
    5. For Plan and profile Sheets, remember the Height of the Plan Section multiplied by the Vertical scale is the width of road you can plot - so if your Plan is 4" high and you have 50 scale you have 200' to work with. The Plan Settings allows you to specify how much of that 200' you want at the left and right side of the alignment. This is computed at the start and end station of the section of plan in the plan view dynaview, and is set on the Left and right axes of the plan box.
    6. Remember for Plan Plotting that the Text defined in Sheet Units is controlled by the Project Setting for Plan View of Scale - the Scale in the Project Setting should be the same as the scale that you use for the Drawings - if you don't match these the Text may be Larger or Smaller than you expect in the Sheet View.
    7. You can of course change the Templates to suit your company layouts etc. once you have made the changes, make sure that your project is empty of data so that the Template loses its references. Also remember that to edit the Corridor Settings for Sections, Plans or Profiles you will need to load some Corridor Data so that the Editor has something to work with. All that data needs to be deleted (Surfaces, Corridors, Cut FIll Maps, Alignments and Plan View Data) prior to Exporting the updated VCL Template Files. I recommend that you a) Save the Project so you keep your Template under development work and that you also save as a new Revision Template each time you save out in case you screw something up and have to go back.
    8. The Templates should fast track your use of the Drafting Module - with simple changes to your VCT and Logo File you will have something that works well out of the box - but you will have to customize to meet your needs for different projects.

Happy Drafting and let me know how you get on

Alan