5 replies to this topic

[GENE GILES]

Any suggestion on how to reorganize symbols? We have a shared folder in our office. We have a ton of symbols we do not use.

[Philip Frank]

Sort your symbols so that the most often used ones are at the top of the list.

[Sam Morgan]

 20240412_094118.jpg   188.9KB   1 downloads

 

I created this years ago.  

[Fred Dickson]

Good idea Sam!  I must admit though, I don't like turning my head sideways to use it.   

[Joseph Stoddard]

Hey Gene

Just happened to catch this -  I learned this back in the DOS days... the first step to anyone in your office drawing efficiently is limiting what's in every single library (including walls, beams.. openings... all the symbols.. Speed Notes... EVERYTHING  to  ONLY the items your office is actually likely to  use.  Of course archive/back-up everything so you can get stuff you're removing back....but remove anything and everything  you don't use. 

 

Next - use a naming convention that mirrors your office standard. Everyone in your office needs to call things by the same name, period. THEN you can re-name what is left in all your libraries to mirror that  If you notate a 36" exterior door  "3/0" on your plans... name it that in the library NOT 3680 or something else nobody will be able to find or search on.  I wasted half an hour the other day in a non-organized SP2024 installation  trying to find what we used to name "60in FG Tub/Shwr-LH"... SoftPlan calls that symbol "bath tub enclosed 5ft" and I  had long-forgotten that or they changed the name...  Nothing I was using in my search was bringing it up.  If you're paying a drafter that's an expensive waste of time and 30 minutes they're not producing anything.    BTW this goes double for drawing and room names.  Owners' Suite, Master Suite, EnSuite.... Foyer...Entry...  BR1, Bedroom 1, Bed Room One...whatever.... it  doesn't matter but  pick ONE and use it consistently .. then and only then you can name libraries and everything in them consistently  to that convention. 

 

You can play games with naming  to force the libraries to display in something other than default alpha-numeric order,  Used to use a 3-digit code for example 001 WC-12-std ,   002 WC12-elng    etc.  but I no longer find the need to go that far if I've done a good job of minimizing the library.  

 

Finally - Name your  symbol  and speed note libraries to mirror your workflow.   For my personal work... I have libraries for  "Floorplan", Elevation, Sections, Detail, etc. because I'm old-school and 99% of the time am generating 2D line drawings from the 3D model and then detailing those line drawings for construction. I want to be able to  generate the elevation or section...open the library for that type of drawing  and click-click-click  everything I possibly can onto that drawing in one shot.  It's 10x faster than having to open/shut multiple libraries.   If OTOH you're  using annotated model views in your construction drawings, a different approach might be faster/better. 

 

Another approach. If you're drafting for hire for multiple builders - something that has worked well for us in the past is to organize certain libraries (openings or walls/beams for example)  by builder name or abbrev.   We use a 3-letter code for every builder and can use that a prefix on every library..  It just depends how you have your drafters work... but whatever that is....set up SoftPlan to mirror it!   And if you don't have a good pre-defined workflow (everyone doing their own thing their own way... the WORST way to run  a drafting operation IMO) this might be a good time to make that a project - use the "we have to organize SoftPlan" as the excuse to standardize all the rest.   Hope that helps. 

[GENE GILES]

Thank you all for the info.