Stages of Drawings

So we've been talking a lot about these different tools that are available for the contract documents, things like schedules, and tags, and column lines, and all those kinds of things. But another important thing to remember is that there are gonna be a lot of different stages of the drawing. So I'll have obviously the big stages, like the difference between a design drawing and a contract documents drawing, but also as the contract documents are moving along, there'll be points along the way where the drawings actually go through various transformations and those different stages become an important way of sort of seeing where you're at along the way.

So for example, I might have an early stage of a drawings, kind of in that design drawing kind of thinking, where I have a big overall dimension and it's telling me how big the building is. But then, as I start building in more information, maybe now I'm getting to a spot where, "Alright, I've got... "Multiple pieces of dimensional information in here, "that are gonna fill out how I'm thinking about the "overall process of talking about this as a structure." So I'm getting more and more detailed, and at some point I'm saying...

"That alright, here's the last little bit "of information that I'm gonna say on this drawing, "and now everything else I want you to find, "you want to get some more detail about what's going on, "you're gonna use that tag and go to some other drawing "that's gonna give you more information." So this would go through multiple phases, I would first see that overall dimension, then at a later phase I would start to see the breakdown of those dimensions to get a little more detail, and then at a later phase I'd actually go through and make sure that all the tags and all those elements are sending me to the appropriate drawings.

I don't want to do that kind of tagging too early, because there's still too many things that are changing.

I wouldn't want to start putting tag information in at a point when things were still slipping and sliding around and what was going on in one drawing was being altered, or we still hadn't finalized how we were gonna organize certain parts of the drawing, I would wanna wait and do that at the end. That's one of those sort of stages of the drawing, I have to make sure that I'm working on the things as they are appropriate for the process that we're in. So first of all, there's the big stages that are different, so there's the design drawings versus the contract document type drawings, and then there's the sort of stages of the contract document drawings as they're being produced.

I'm gonna start with big picture ideas and make sure that everything is sort of working at the grand scale, and then I'm gonna get more and more into the detail and fill out the information. So we just talked about dimensions, I could have the same conversation about poche, I'm gonna have walls, I'm drawing in the walls, the drawings should read without any poche in them.

I should understand through line weights and other elements, kind of generally what we're talking about and be able to use that set of drawings for a period of time in the early phases. But then as I'm getting more and more specific, understanding of what the materials actually are, I can start filling in through poche, through notes, through those different elements, what those materials really look like in that plan. And so I'm building up that information.

It doesn't necessarily help me very much to start in the corner and get more and more detailed, more and more detailed, and then slowly make the drawing kind of come alive through the rest of it. I need to be able to have the overall idea clear and down. Then I need to add a level of detail into it. Then I need to add another level of detail of materiality and dimensions into it, so that I can bring it up all the way. Then I need to start adding in all the excess notes that I haven't gotten to yet, and then I need to start adding all the tags that are gonna tell me, "This is related to that." So that I can build it up as it goes along.

The whole point here is that every drawing should be readable at every phase. I want the plan to still look like a plan when I'm 20% done. Doesn't help me to have a plan that isn't readable when we're 20% done, because I'm making decisions off of that plan. I need to be able to use it for my decision making. So I want a simple version of it, that I can then build up the information.

Same with the section, I'm gonna start with a simple version of the section, and then as I build up and get more detailed, that section may change quite a bit, but it's useful to have started with one that's sort of the simplified idea, because that's how I'm gonna know that I need to start making alterations to it. And I'm gonna build up that information, and eventually I'll start putting all the tag information on to send me from that section to the wall sections to elevations, to detail moments about the parapets or whatever it happens to be.

So I'm gonna build that information up, it should have multiple stages, and those multiple stages probably align with very specific aspects to how you're producing your process. I'm gonna have a design development process, I'm gonna get to a certain point, we're gonna have a design type drawings, we're gonna get a sign-off with the client, we're gonna take those drawings, we're gonna start moving into contract documents type drawings, there'll be a moment where we're still sort of like design drawings but we've moved into the contract documents, so those are gonna be simplified drawings with probably no poche, and then from there we're gonna move into a more detailed version, now we're getting into a spot where we're working with the engineers and we're coordinating the information back and forth, so now detail information is starting to find its way into the drawings, and then eventually I'm getting to the spot where we now have a really good idea of how everything's laid out, and we can cross-reference from one drawing to the other in a very clear manner.

And then, I can get to the spot where we're then coordinating, we're really going through with a fine-comb and looking through all of the specific pieces of information, and making sure that everything coordinates logically together in making whatever changes that we need to make. So then, I can finally use that set to use for coordination, we can take all those elements, we can go back and forth and make sure all that level of specific detail is in there, and that everything is coordinated together and not causing a problem, we have to get to that point so we can finalize the set but we wanna be able to use it at each of those different points along the way.

So not very helpful to start with a whole lot of detail and then fill it all out, 'cause that just means that most of the time the building isn't finished. You want it to always be useful, to always be the whole idea, and then you're filling in the information.

That's gonna be true with dimensions, that's gonna be true with the idea of poche. Remember whenever we talk about poche during contract documents phase, that's meaningful poche, it has to be telling us something specific and real, it's not an emotional or emotive idea, of just saying solid versus less solid, it's telling us something about the materiality specifically, or it's telling us something about the process, like, "These are walls that are gonna be removed." Or, "These are new walls versus "the other ones that don't have poche are existing walls." So whenever we talk about poche, we're talking about meaningful use when we're talking about it in the contract documents context.

Notes, we're gonna start with simple notes and then we're gonna build up and fill them out, and then the tags and all of that to get us from one drawing to another, we don't want to do that until we're ready to do that, because the drawings will keep changing, and then once that point is ready where everything is pretty much set, we're ready to do sort of coordination, that's when we wanna make sure that all the tags are in, and you can clearly find each of the different drawings as you go through.

So, each phase has logic to it, and each phase is slightly different, but they're all aiming towards that end product where the whole thing is all together.

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