Just agreed to help a friend do some floor plans and though i’m competent/comfortable with Rhino for 3d modeling I have never had to make floor plans and documentation before. The floorplans and elevations will be for a reno, not for construction or anything major so it shouldn’t be too big a task.
I’m not a architect but i’m experienced with Rhino and 3Ds for modeling and don’t think I should have any problems with the actual drafting/modeling. If anything i’m concerned that I don’t know all the conventions and standards expected of architectural documents, but ill have examples to learn from.
***My real question is, should I be doing a series of individual 2D drawings, or should I model the whole house and take cross sections with cutting planes and make 2d ??? Ill need an elevation of all 4 sides and some overheads, perhaps just modeling it would be faster?
Anyhow would appreciate any advice from people who have experience with this.
For me this question always comes down to time and how “fancy” the drawings need to be. If really pressed, just knocking it out quickly in 2D is almost always the fastest, but you don’t get any of the prettiness of materials or shadows if you desire them. My usual method is modeling it up, setting my views in details in layout space, dropping clipping planes into the details I need, then any supporting line work (section lines, hidden lines, hatches, dims), end up in layout (paper) space.
Okay, so it seems as though 2d is going to be much faster. Thinking about that it makes sense as taking sections from a 3d model would still likely require a lot of cleanup to make the sections into standardized floorplan layout with proper designation of doors windows and other features. Plus cleaning out all the unneeded and overlapping line work.
Has anyone used something like VisualARQ for this type of process? Dont think I would get it for this first project but if we start doing more work like this it might be a good solution. seems as thought you can get full documentation from the model BIM style.
Yeah, no real need for a 3d model then since we won’t be doing any walk through animation or anything.
Thanks for the link Ill check it out, and thanks for the advice!
With my workflow, I really never use make2d, but do use the results from Section heavily. The results from Section (if you have modeled well) are always clean and don’t require much cleanup at all. For my particular requirements, the offsetting of the section curves and hatching always take the most time (because we are often building one sided walls)
I have never used VisualARQ only because most of my work is non-standard enough that I don’t feel it would cover what I need. I have always been tempted though to try it.
Even though I often don’t need to fly through a model, having it there to use in details, providing background and clarity can be very useful.