I am involved in a project with a fire alarm system configured in a campus-style arrangement amongst several buildings. One fire alarm control panel is installed at each building, and all are networked in what I am assuming is an NFPA Class B (non-redundant) configuration. Two of the fire alarm...
In light of the housing market and the overall condition of the economy, I'm actually surprised to hear other local professionals tell me that their workloads really haven't skipped a beat.
At my firm, however, we've noticed a quick decline in the number of billable projects. Almost zero...
I have a client with some very unusual design requirements.
We're going to have a 1200A service entrance panel, which we'll call panel "A." Panel A supplies a 1200A automatic transfer switch. Panel "B" is a 1200A main distribution panel supplying all the buildings at the site.
The client wants...
I've been working at the same MEP engineering firm for the past three years and am just completely floored at all the great talent we've lost to competing engineering firms (The exception being a non-degreed HVAC designer that completely switched careers). They all leave for the same reason: an...
Electrical designers and engineers at the MEP firm I work at are required to design fire alarm systems, telephone, and on occasion, security systems.
I use the term "design" very loosely, however. For telephone systems, we provide locations for telephone and data outlets, telephone...
A few of us here at an MEP office in Florida are beginning to panic in an attempt to address a change in the Florida Building Code 2004.
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Interior lighting in buildings larger than 5,000 ft shall be controlled with an automatic control device to shut offbuilding...
I apologize in advance for the length of this post. I'm not even certain that this belongs in the forum that I'm posting it in. Well, here it goes.
Background information: I have a great interest in computers. I have experience in repairing, troubleshooting, basic networking, etc. I also have...
The subject header says it all. The HVAC department at my company wants me to look for a flexduct LSP or some other add-on for AutoCAD 2004. We're presently using an LSP called "flexhose", however, the HVAC people aren't too satisfied with its appearance (Two parallel lines - that's it). They're...
The electrical engineer that reviews jobs before they go out prefers that we keep fluorescent and incandescent loads on separate circuits. I've heard varying opinions, but it appears that the reason for doing this is to prevent the incandescent lights from flickering. Is there any truth to this...
First, I would like to apologize for the off-topic thread, since Building Systems 2004 really isn't AutoCAD, however, it is largely based around it.
I work for a small HVAC/electrical/plumbing/fire protection engineering firm. We upgraded all of our workstations to AutoCAD 2004 about 4 months...
I work for a small engineering firm that designs HVAC, plumbing, fire protection, and electrical systems for commercial and residential buildings. Presently, I am an electrical draftsman. The company hopes to gradually give me more and more design work. I'm looking for a book that will give me a...
The subject header says it all. I'm a draftsman working at a Mechanical/Electrical/Plumbing engineering firm. I've been doing electrical drafting and light design since I started earlier this year. I was recently told that they'd like me to learn Mechanical/HVAC. (Of course, they don't expect me...
Hello,
We just received a Xerox 8830 and are experiecning difficulty with its plot margins. Most of the time we plot Arch D 36x24s in Landscape format. Our titleblock is on the right-hand side of the drawing. From the right side of the titleblock to the edge of the paper, it *should* be...
One of the drafters at my place of employment cannot perform an audit on one of four drawings. He is running AutoCAD 2000i. When attempting to perform an audit on the drawing, the error message "ERROR: Could not instantiate AecDict" is displayed.
Strangely enough, he was able to...
