Annotating Site Plans and Details for VDCI Elementary School

Adding General Notes and Details to Site Plans - VDCI Elementary School Project

Learn how to utilize section callouts, add general notes, link CAD, and annotate sheets in site planning. This article provides a step-by-step guide to improving your site planning skills, specifically in handling elements such as hangers, bracing details, and line restraints.

Key Insights

  • The article teaches how to select section callouts and how to hide and view elements, which are fundamental skills in site planning.
  • The guide details how to add general notes to your site plan and link Computer-Aided Design (CAD), which greatly aids in achieving precision and accuracy in your work.
  • Annotation of sheets is also covered, with emphasis on handling hangers, bracing details, and line restraints in a site plan for a project titled 'VDCI Elementary School'.

Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.

Now let's select these section callouts. We will create our own later. Hold down Control, right-click, and choose Hide in View > Elements.

Now double-click to make sure you are out of the site plan. Now we have some general notes to add, so let's go back to our Insert tab and find Link CAD. Go to your Downloads folder, and let's go to Linked Revit and find DWGs.

Let's bring in our FP General Notes. For the positioning, set it to Manual—Origin, and click Open.

This was brought in from model space, and that's fine. Click Yes. Okay, now if you brought it in manually, you'll be able to move it around.

Let's go ahead and find a spot in this upper corner—right here. Okay, now I don't want this overlap here, so I will click on this and use my arrow key to nudge it.

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That's pretty good. Let's place our sheet name and scale label in this corner here. Later, we will align this location on all of our sheets.

Okay, so on your site plan, you should have two sheets that include our backflow. We should have our general notes about our system, our site plan with annotations, and our sheet list. Your sheet should be labeled “VDCI Elementary School – Site Plan General Notes, ” and this is sheet FP1. So let's go ahead and annotate our hangers and details sheet.

Open FP2. Okay, now we have a few details to bring in here. So let's go back to Insert and Link CAD.

Find that same DWGs folder. Let's bring in our Hangers and Bracing Details. Set the positioning to Manual—Origin.

Click Yes. Okay. These are all the hangers, sway bracing, and line restraints that we'll be using in our piping.

We're not going to model all of those on our plan here, but we'll use these notes. Okay, place that approximately here. Now let's go back to Link CAD.

Find our Hangers and Bracing Notes. Again, click Yes. From model space, that's fine. Okay, here are all of our seismic bracing and hanger notes with spacing and line restraints.

Let's bring it in somewhere here. Okay, and one more to bring in. So one more time—Link CAD.

Find our Hangers and Bracing Tables. This file contains more of our seismic information, including the weight of water-filled piping and the distance between our hangers. Okay.

You might have to move things around and adjust, but your sheet should look something like this. Make sure it's titled "Hangers and Details." All right, let's go ahead and hit Save.

And in the next video, we'll begin annotating our piping plans.

photo of Derek Cutsinger

Derek Cutsinger

BIM Instructor/Coordinator

Derek’s background is in both education and MEP. He earned his BA in Music Education from San Diego State University and is also a TEFL certified English language instructor. In addition to educational roles, he is also an experienced fire protection design engineer and has extensive knowledge in many programs and processes used in AEC industries. He brings his unique and eclectic skillset to VDCI as their Curriculum Coordinator. In his free time he can be found weightlifting in his garage, hanging out with his wife and pug, or painting and drawing in his studio.

  • BA Music Education – San Diego State University
  • MA Applied Linguistics (in process) – San Diego State University
  • TEFL Certified English Language Instructor
  • NICET 1 Certification
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