Discover how to detail and annotate a Building Information Modelling (BIM) project using CAD software. This guide will take you through the steps of adjusting and managing the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) settings, tagging different fixtures, and manipulating the scale of annotation symbols for a clearer presentation.
Key Insights
- The article demonstrates how to adjust the scale of annotation symbols in BIM projects, which can be found under the MEP settings of your project. Reducing the scale of these symbols can lead to a cleaner, more readable project.
- Tagging individual elements, such as plumbing fixtures, is crucial for project clarity. This process also involves updating the comments and mark values for each tag to ensure consistency across your BIM project.
- Lastly, the article emphasizes the importance of paying attention to details when creating construction documents. This includes positioning tags strategically, aligning them for better readability, and adding arrowheads to ensure clarity. The meticulous detailing of your BIM project can significantly impact the overall presentation and understanding of your work.
Welcome back to the CAD Teacher VDCI video course content for BIM 322. What we did in the previous video was we created our actual sheet views for our first floor plumbing and second floor plumbing. And what I want to do is let's go ahead and start detailing this guy out.
I'm currently in my second floor plumbing. I want to go ahead and jump down to my first floor plumbing. So go ahead, if you're not there already, double-clicking your project browser to get to your first floor plumbing here.
And let's go ahead and zoom in so we can see exactly what we're working on. I still have my thin lines activated up here. That setting will stay on until I actually turn it back off.
And so what I want to do is I want to go ahead and start detailing some of this out and start annotating the different fixtures that we have here. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to first change my detail level to course because this is going to be my sheet view and that's how I want to represent it. It's just that single line diagram I showed you in the previous video.
So please go ahead down here and let's go to our detail level and let's change it to course. And as you can see, it's adjusted some things and everything's looking pretty nice. Now, one thing that you might notice is the fact that these symbols are fairly large and we don't necessarily need these to be represented at this scale.
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So let's go ahead and actually reduce the scale of those annotation symbols. That can be found in the manage tab here. So let's go to manage.
Let's go to our MEP settings. This is where all the different MEP settings for the project are held. I'm going to go to mechanical settings.
And as you can see, pipe and duct are in the same mechanical settings area. Please make sure that you're actually on the pipe settings. And then see where it says pipe fitting annotation size and then pipe rise slash drop annotation size.
Let's go ahead and change both of those to a 16th of an inch. There we go. I'm going to hit okay.
And as you can see, it's cleaned up somewhat. It's still hard to read, but that's why we're going to be giving you an enlarged plan view of this specific area. I'm going to go ahead and zoom back.
What I want to start with is actually annotating out each individual symbols themselves. So let's go ahead. I'm going to go to annotate.
I want to go tag by category. And I'm just going to go ahead and pick on my actual plumbing fixtures. I'm going to go ahead and also tag the water heater here and the gas regulator.
Come back over. Now if you notice, we're missing some information, but this information can be easily updated. I'm going to go ahead and hit escape twice to get out of my tag command.
I'm going to go ahead, and these will all be L1. They're going to be the same lavatory. So all I need to do is, is if you go to this one here, you can see under L1, it's in the comments and then the mark.
So comments and then mark. So I'm going to change in each of these, I'm going to change the comments and the mark to L1. Now I can actually do these individually.
When I selected this one here, I'm going to go to my comments, type in L, and then I'm going to go mark one. If you get this element to have duplicate mark values, that's perfectly fine. Hit okay, or I can select, I can edit both of them.
I'm going to select this guy here and this guy here. The identity data shows because they're both the same category and both the same type. So all the parameters will show up.
I'm going to go to comments, type in an L, go to mark, type in one, click off. I'm going to get this elements have duplicate mark values. That's perfectly fine.
I'm going to go ahead, hit okay. And there it is. What I'm going to do now is I'm just going to go ahead and start adjusting these tags.
So I'm going to bring this guy in to here, this guy into here. And I like to give it a short, straight leg. I'm going to bring this guy into here, this guy into here.
I'm actually going to center it a little bit nicer. And I've moved those tags around there. I'm going to go ahead and adjust these tags here.
I can stack the water closet tags. That's perfectly fine because they are the same exact tag. Stack these two water closet tags.
And this one is slightly different because this is going to be an ADA toilet. So it's a different type of toilet, a different seat height and set up. Perfect.
There we go. I'm going to go ahead, make sure that all my tags are kind of lining up nicely. I'm going to move this guy back up.
Again, just to make sure that everything looks clean and it's like you're paying attention to details. That's what a lot of people look for when they're looking at a set of construction documents is how well is that detailer looking at their own work and their own details. So I'm just going to make a few more minor adjustments.
The water heater, I'm going to go ahead and move that gas regulator down a little bit. I'm actually going to bring the water heater outside the building. It works a little bit better out here.
And there we go. The next thing we want to go ahead and tag is we've already tagged all the equipment, but I want to go ahead and tag pipe sizes. Now the only two pipes that I'm really going to be tagging here are this guy here and this guy here.
We'll be tagging the actual, these pipes and everything in the actual enlarged plan view. So I'm going to go ahead, tag by category, pick here, pick here. And there it is.
That's all it is to tagging the pipes. We're going to hit escape. Now let's say we wanted to give something an arrowhead on the end of these, you know, to make sure that they're pointing to the correct one.
And so it's a little bit easier to read. It's very simple and very easy to do. Please go ahead and select either one of these tags here that you use for the pipes.
And let's go ahead and use edit type. See how we have the leader arrowhead. Let's go ahead and change that.
And we have all these different ones. Let's see, the one that we want to go ahead and use is, is let's go ahead and use just the arrow filled 15 degree. I'm going to hit okay.
Hit apply. Hit okay. And there we go.
We effectively added a leaderhead so that we know exactly which pipe we're actually going to. So what we'll do next in the next video is we're pretty much done with this for now. But in the next video, we'll go ahead and actually tap is actually create the, the larger view of this and then tag all the other components located here.
See them.
