Civil Engineering Drafting Reference Books
Civil Engineering Drafting Reference Books
(OP)
Does anyone know a good refernece book that can be used to help edumacate our new drafter on how to show basic civil drafting stuff like curbs, plan/profiles, inlets, paving, etc. I'm doing alot of very detailed redline drawing and he's doing alot of tracing....does this sound familier?





RE: Civil Engineering Drafting Reference Books
I have encountered similar situations. I have not found any ref. that shows what you want. But, what I have done to rectify the drafting issue is to have the drafters draw exactly what is being designed. This includes culture and such. For instance, the curb is shown as face of curb top of curb and back of curb. Now depending on final plotted scale the top of curb is sometimes omitted. Typically, we show everything first then redline the data that seems too cluttered. To differentiate from existing to new, we use line types and weights. This has worked really well for many years. Just a suggestion.
RE: Civil Engineering Drafting Reference Books
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RE: Civil Engineering Drafting Reference Books
(Our office has a consistent problem in receiving CAD drawings - from architects in particular - for building footprints which have lines going every which-way, as if the CAD drafter or architect never heard of the concepts of parallel and perpendicular. Another thing they consistently do, insisting that they are being helpful, is putting all the linework, symbols, texts, etc., all onto one layer, called "NONE" or some such thing. Why they think this is helpful to us is beyond my comprehension. I don't understand what the point is of using CAD drafting if you don't understand the tools.)
If your new drafter is a skilled CAD drafter but is new to your field, giving him or her some samples of plans of recent projects from your office should help bring him or her along quickly.
I hope you have an in-house library of blocks for commonly used items, like inlets, end-sections, manholes and such, with separate blocks for both existing and proposed. We've found that if these blocks are created with a node at a common insertion point and are created on layer "0", they are easily inserted and are easily changed to the appropriate layer. All of the items in one of these blocks should also have their linetypes to be "bylayer" and colors "bylayer", so they will be subject to layer conditions when assigned in the project drawing.
A notebook with a hard copy of legends, common notes, abbreviations, linework, linetypes, symbols, base sheet templates, etc., used and approved by your company, should be developed (if you haven't done so already) and should be photocopied and handed out to every new employee who may do any amount of CAD drafting. It seems time-consuming, but it won't take any more time than the time it takes to train a new CAD drafter to draft plans the way your company wants them.
Of course, the AIA and other national groups have books of standards available, and your state agencies (DOT, for example) should have standards available that they require for plans drawn up for submission to them. Many linetypes and symbols are commonly used by most companies, for ready recognition between fields and agencies.
Good luck!
RE: Civil Engineering Drafting Reference Books