Master the art of creating detailed project specifications using AutoCAD in this comprehensive guide. Learn how to organize, format, and add project specifics effectively for a clear and easy to follow project plan.
Key Insights
- The process begins with drafting project specifications which serve as a guidebook providing detailed information on quality, installation details, and materials specific to the project. This information is then categorized into sections known as divisions, following a structure known as a master format.
- After drafting, the text is inserted into AutoCAD. However, AutoCAD tends not to import the original formatting, which requires manual adjustment. The imported text needs to be formatted for readability, with spaces added before each number and section, and section headings bolded for clarity.
- The final step involves adding minor details in each section with a dash and a space for easy readability. Despite minor inconsistencies in AutoCAD's automatic formatting, the final result provides a clear and detailed project specification document.
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Now let's add our project specifications. To do that, let's pull up our SheetNotes document, and if we scroll down, we're looking for project specifications. So what are these? Essentially, they are a project guidebook, and they provide information on quality, on installation details, and materials that are very specific to this project.
They are broken up into divisions, and that format with divisions and numbers is known typically as master format. So let's take a look quickly what we have. We have first some project information.
It talks about what's going to happen in this project as we remodel this house. It talks about the existing conditions and being careful during demolition. It talks about the cabinetry in the kitchen and bathroom that we'll be adding.
It talks about the doors. We're going to try to preserve some of the existing doors in the project and reuse them, and so on. So very specific to the project.
So all we're going to do is copy paste this information. We'll start at section 00, and we'll scroll down, and we'll stop at the bottom of section 8, at the door installation. We'll copy all of that.
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So control or command C, and then we'll go to our project specifications. If you zoom in, you'll see a little dash right under the P of project specifications. If you double click that, opens up a text box.
You can delete that dash and then control V or command V to paste, and it pastes it all in. But the downside of pasting into AutoCAD is it doesn't always bring in the format. So all it brought in was bold, and it bolded everything.
So our first step is to do control or command A to select everything, and do control or command B to unbold it, or click the bold button in our formatting options. And then from there, we can add the formatting we want. So I kind of like to just add for each of the numbers that start a little subsection, I like to add a space.
So I'll do that really quickly. Add a space before each number, and before each section, I like to do a double space. So you can do that pretty quickly all the way down, not too painful.
I have to move my view down to see everything. Two spaces before sections, one space before numbers. All right, that's looking pretty good.
Then beyond that, I like to bold, so control or command B or the B up there, each section heading. So that gets a nice bold to it. And then for each of these details like scope, protection, disposal, I'll zoom in here.
I like to add a dash and a space. And AutoCAD will automatically format that for me. It looks pretty good.
So let me just do that for scope, protection, and disposal. Now you might notice that AutoCAD doesn't always do that perfectly, but that's okay. It's okay to accept its results, and you zoom in and zoom out, it kind of fixes it for you.
Like right there, it didn't indent the second line, but I'm not going to sweat it. I'm just going to go down to bathroom vanity, dash space. Didn't fix that second line, but it will when I click out.
Let me show you what I mean. I'll click out of it, and it fixed it. It's just a weird AutoCAD thing.
So double-click back in here, and I'll do that for the same thing under opening scope. We're going to dash and a space, refinishing, dash and a space, hardware, dash space, and installation. Same thing, dash space.
You can zoom out and see now it's pretty clear, pretty easy to read. Looks like I missed one of the bolds here on this section, so I'll fix that. And also right here, another bold section.
All right, so there are all the sections, numbers, and now it's pretty straightforward, pretty easy to read. So let's go ahead and go back to our sheet notes document, and now we will start at section nine, finishes, and copy to the end, which ends at appliances. Control-C to copy, or you can right-click and select copy.
Go back to AutoCAD, double-click on the second text box here, delete the dash, and Control-V to paste. And now you know the drill. We're going to add in some spaces, so a space or return before every number.
I'm going to bold each of the sections. I'm going to, for all of the minor details, I'm going to add a dash space, so kitchen backsplash, bathroom floor, dash space. I'm going to put a space before every number and follow that format all the way down, just to make it readable.
Kitchen countertops, bathroom vanity. I see another number, so I'll do another space. Interior painting gets a dash.
The section 10 gets two spaces and bolded. Here's another number, so we get a single space. Another section gets a double space.
Oh, I see another detail, which is bathroom accessories, so I'll do dash space. Bold my section 22. Plumbing, see that the number gets a space.
Extra detail gets a dash and a space, and so on. We're getting there, all the way down. Bathroom lavatory sink, shower system, double enter for the electrical section and bold, dash space for each of these details.
A return for every number, dash space, and we'll click out, and it should format and look pretty good. So that's our goal, our product specifications. With that, it's an excellent time to save.
