Pursuit of Excellent Details 1

[kissymoose]

It's hard to acquire good quality construction details. As "standard" as construction methods are, there's so many unique ways to detail it all, and as a profession we tend to hold these things close to the chest competitively (RIP KootK's peace of mind last year). It obviously takes years of experience and even forensics to understand why one detail is better than another, but I often find myself googling different situations and coming up dry. Producing a good design that takes into account constructability, ease of design, price of materials, and fits well with other disciplines is very rewarding, and pursuing excellence in that area is very motivating. So I would like that pursuit to be a bit easier, and quality design to be more accessible. Besides company standards and internal experts, what resources do you use to learn more about good design and detailing?
I think it would be very useful to have a number of us compile a list here. I'll start:

Wood:

Simpson Strong-Tie (product manufacturer), all manner of detailing, explanation, engineering​

Wood Works (association), has some very helpful ones that are very hard to find elsewhere​

Roofing:

NRCA​

Some of these may seem obvious, but they're not for everyone, and I think it useful to communicate here who has the highest respected standards in these areas and should be the first reference to go to when looking for guidance. You can google masonry details and get all manner of "CAD sets" that is a lot of muck to wade through. I want to know where the person who designs masonry structures all the time says to go. Some examples of areas: residential (IRC) wood structures, IBC wood structures, precast concrete, masonry, light gauge, building envelope, steel trusses, PEMB foundations, etc...


*I'll already append to this request because the answer should be the same. Who should you go to to learn more about that type of construction? Who's the best, who's comprehensive, etc... e.g. woodworks webinars for engineered wood structures.

 

[LockeBT]

Underrated source: Contractors

There has been a few times where contractors, based on their collective experience working with different engineers, do suggest a better alternative to my existing details (at least constructability-wise through the lens of the contractor). So yeah do engage them and ask them what they have seen or prefer. Perhaps you might not end up with new details, but at least improved ones or alternatives.

 

[kissymoose]

That's a good point, I've had some good suggestions from contractors.

 

[fugeeo]

CALTRANS has good standards for Civil. Their Example of line-color is simple and straightforward.

A few thoughts :

A. A is how the person starts detailing as an engineer first, not a CAD man first, is probably first the Layer for every different type of piece.

B. The Details like CALTRANS and SIMPSON seem to almost have one detail type goes entirely into one layer. This is useful to isolate details, and would directly serve into a Block Library.

[li]The drawback to this is that the entities are embedded, so you can't really change anything. For instance, Multileader-MTEXT is entirely different than MTEXT. Thus, if Color was selected by Color, and not ByLayer or ByBlock, you have to manually change Color on every similar detail.[/li]
[li]The plus side is you get a complete detail that is locatable and also scrolled from the Layer List.[/li]
[li]The down side is you don't get the ease of Estimating the pieces. When every material type is a complete "kit" you can just about estimate all material readily as in A.[/li]
​

It must be that BIM is directly listing the entities, which CAD has not done. This has been done by the Class-Object Structures in Object-Oriented Programming.
But for a visual person, who "paints"; sometimes the person to person dexterity is the highest quality.
The manufacturing industry is getting more advanced with Object-Oriented depictions.
What do Patent Engineers use?

 

[kissymoose]

Thanks fugeeo, that's helpful in understanding the document side of things. However, I'm more interested in the design itself, knowing what standard design practices are and what are good tips and tricks for certain areas.

 

[fugeeo]

I agree. It's kind of a fickle.

I've worked with just a couple types of setups in Building Infrastructure - This is one:

Typically, the Model Space will be sectioned. As such, there is a Model Space Portal for every viewport. So, if you are close to the object, the viewport will show the 1:1 Scale. If it is a plan, the MS viewport will be quite large, and capture the 1:100 or 1:200 if you will. Then in Paper Space, a Viewport is setup for each Model Space Viewport for the Print Sheet. "These are all Plan Cut Details."

On another one, it was actually that the details were before the plan cuts. And the Details were so finely cued, they lead the Contract Drawing Phase. I would think such would be Design-Build or Manufacturer selling a product. I don't per se have real-time experience with no. 2, ...

 

[phamENG]

kissymoose - I find myself in the same situation often. I'm growing my detail library one project at a time. Each project, I pick one or two things that I'd really like to have detailed, but are typically left to convention, and I detail it and add it to my library. I try to keep a list of those sorts of details so when I travel I can work on them while sitting in an airport or on the plane (though I've traveled by air only twice in the last 3 years, so that's not as effective as it would have been when I was flying 3 times a month).

One note about wood structures - I try not to differentiate between IRC and IBC in my detailing. Everything is detailed as if it were governed by the IRC, and then I do special details where I have to. The reason for this is that the contractors are often the same. The GC's are different, but a carpenter is a carpenter and they may be on a house one day and a small commercial job the next.

NCMA has a detail library.

 

[skeletron]

I use the same technique as @phamENG...grow the library one project at a time. Pick yourself up, and dust off the scrapes from your last project. If you try to jump into it ONLY AFTER you have the ultimate detail library, the world will be over. If you try to jump into it by buying/acquiring everyone else's details, your library is going to be so unmanageable that you likely won't have a good understanding of what and how everything works (not your fault...just saying, some people like to detail the details and some people like to bare bones the details).

Not a huge fan of just plunking a manufacturer's stock CAD into my drawing, so I'll usually clean it up in my style before putting it in the library.

What resources to use for learning? Old drawings, illustrated guides, field trips, old structures, new structures, the contractor's back-of-the-stud sketch, your creativity.

 

[dhengr]

Kissymoose:
Study other’s plans and details, for various types of construction and different construction materials, from successful projects, and ask questions and try to understand why they are done this way and not that way, etc. Watch closely at construction sites how things are being done. Again, ask questions and understand what’s going on, how they are doing it and why, by talking with someone who knows what they are talking about, on the site or on the project. There is a lot of b.s., ‘we’ve always done it that way,’ and just plain bum knowledge/understanding of construction methods, etc., out there and you have to be able to see through that. Good construction people are usually willing to explain when you show a serious interest in learning and understanding and they should be tolerant of well reasoned questions, and explanations of the engineer’s viewpoint of each particular situation. Obviously, what we want are plans which are easy for others to read and understand/decipher, and details which are structurally sound, load path and all that good stuff, and still reasonably easy to construct. We should be willing to work with a reasonable contractor to make the job run smoothly, but all of the savings in time, materials and money should not go into his pocket alone, there should be some return to the project, on our good faith effort to help. At the same time, you should not end up being their free engineer because they didn’t pay attention to details during the biding and construction planning meetings.

 

[kissymoose]

Each project, I pick one or two things that I'd really like to have detailed, but are typically left to convention, and I detail it and add it to my library.

That sounds like a good way to do it. I do expect this endeavor to be a career-long trek, but I would like a better launching pad. Thanks for the NCMA reminder, that's perfect.

' If you try to jump into it ONLY AFTER you have the ultimate detail library, the world will be over.

Ha, that's true. I do need to fight the urge to be perfectly prepared before accepting new projects.

Study other’s plans and details, for various types of construction and different construction materials, from successful projects, and ask questions

I agree, communication from those who know seems like the best way to do any of this, but having an association that offers the examples and educations is something I can take advantage of right now. Building those relationships just feels unpredictable and requires producing mediocre work to get your foot in the door. Where have you been able to get other's plans and details?

 

[phamENG]

kissymoose - every once in a while a google search will dig a set of drawings out of a municipality's online storage system or web portal That's one way I really cleaned up my general notes. I had the ones I was used to using...but after spending a day looking through large drawing sets that I found online, I saw what they should look/read like and changed my own as needed. I just tried it again...turns out if you google "General Structural Notes" you get a whole bunch of full drawing sets.

Find contractors/fabricators who need specialty engineers to provide calculations, and make sure you ask for the full set of contract documents and not just the ones they think are relevant. You can get a lot of good stuff from those as well as insights from the fabricators.

 

[fugeeo]

https://www.apacad.org/cad-details

: APACAD

Ωμ

 

[kissymoose]

Great! Thanks for the suggestions phamENG, very helpful.
and thanks for the link fugeeo, there's some good stuff in there. I'm liking more and more 3D details

 

[phamENG]

Forgot about APA's database. Good call, fugeeo.

I've started going to isometrics and step by step stuff for repair details. It gives my drawings an IKEA feel, but I find the repairs are executed with less...creativity from the contractors.

 

[kissymoose]

Yes, and even for me, someone who designed the darn thing, looking through 2D plan, section, elevation can be very confusing to get a clear picture of how it all fits for certain parts. A single isometric view with the right presentation can be so much better.

 

[EcoGen]

I've started going to isometrics and step by step stuff for repair details. It gives my drawings an IKEA feel, but I find the repairs are executed with less...creativity from the contractors.

I also think some Contractors ignore some of our repair details too because they don't want to spend the 20 mins figuring each component of the detail out. Using isometric views would be a step in the right direction for some of our very typical repair details and most new construction details. But I work with a lot of custom existing conditions that I think would make 3D views very difficult and time consuming to customize. I still do everything in AutoCAD by default btw unless the Architect forces to go REVIT.

EcoGen Consultants LLC
Structural Engineers
ecogenconsultants.com