My goal was to create something that could be used by others to encourage people to use FC more for architecture and construction. I also wanted something that would be relatively easy for people to use as a starting point to create their own custom templates without completely starting from scratch. So far I've created the attached Arch D template. I plan to also create an Arch E1 with a similar format, but I figured I would post it here and see if anyone has any feedback for what they would like to see on it. Each office has their own standards of course, so I'm trying to keep it somewhat generic, while also providing some flexibility. Arch D (36" x 24") and E1 (42" x 30") are by far the most common sizes used here in the U.S. so those are the ones I wanted to create and share.
A few things to note:
- There are probably more fields available than would be needed in most cases. I did this to provide more flexibility. Just enter spaces if a field is not to be used and it will show up as blank. I don't know of a way to "wrap" text in the SVG file, so if that IS possible then the number of fields could be reduced
- I initially wanted to use 90 degree rotated text for the project name and project address fields, but editable rotated text is pretty difficult to create correctly in Inkscape (at least for me), so in the interest of making it more easily usable and editable at the SVG level I opted to not use rotated text.
- When you open the SVG file in Inkscape you will see some things that look off-center. I did this to compensate for a discrepancy with how it displays in FC to get it to display correctly in FC.
Something else that would be great is if the editable fields could be controlled by a spreadsheet via "expressions". The idea being that, for a set of drawings one could change the information (like the project name, or address) from one place on all of the sheets. Another example would be controlling sheet numbers and sheet names via a spreadsheet that is used in the set. The spreadsheet could be placed on a sheet and used as a sheet index. This would provide BIM functionality similar to programs like Revit. Ideally this would be "bi-directional" so it could be edited on the sheet index OR on the sheet, and they would sync.
I started a discussion on the TechDraw sub-forum about it here:
viewtopic.php?t=76186
I'm being told that right now the editable text editor doesn't have the ability to handle expressions, but it could be added. In the meantime there may be a way to do it via a macro. This discussion is still in progress at the time of this post.
Let me know what you all think.