caliwag

So much routine plan stuff seems to be on the basis of 'here's the general idea - insert standard details as necessary' - which is fine for traditional pattern housing. As soon as anything departs from the norm then details are often sadly lacking - and are made up on the fly by the project manager and the contractor.... resulting in cold bridges, mis-alignments, re-work etc. 

Seen it too much on projects where I'm the electrician. Now need to avoid it on my own project.

Interesting, thank you for the 'reinforcing' comment...indeed cold-bridging, a real issue to avoided 'on the fly'

I’ve did my first AutoCAD course 23 years ago and used it religiously since and even thought it for a while. Over the last 2-3 years I’ve slowly switched to Revit (made by the came company as AutoCAD). You draw walls, window and door components instead of lines and arcs. When you draw a wall the plan, elevation, section and 3D views all update. It has built in clash detection and is slowly replacing CAD.
If your getting drawings done ask can they provide a BIM model rather than line drawings. You can take an unlimited number of view or sheets (drawings) off this model. Believe it or not almost every public funded job in Ireland must be produced in BIM format instead of line. Our office has fully transferred and don’t use CAD now but smaller practices wouldn’t have yet made the full transition. It’s worth doing a quick Google on BIM and Revit before hiring someone to produce drawings.

I'm not sure this is just a design time issue - perhaps in may be in new build, but certainly in my renovation what has worked for me was to communicate the 'feel' and the desired outcomes to the builder. So there would be no down stand , and there should no visible fixings wherever possible - sounds easy but we've taken to the extent of no brackets to hold the glass in the stairs. No visible hinges on the windows, in fact no visible difference between opening casements and fixed lights.

 

Once the builders had the 'feel' then things get build in a way to match the 'feel' not the drawing - I guess the variance for this between new build and renovation is that the as built doesn't match the drawing either... 

 

In fact we got to the point that when I was away on holiday Tony dropped me a txt to say we need to raise the lintel on the fire place and adjust the shape of the aperture as its not in keeping with the room before he fitted the reclaimed bricks and hearth and made good. As I trust Tony's view of the build and what I want then that is what we did. The drawings just don't exist...

14 minutes ago, Lesgrandepotato said:

I'm not sure this is just a design time issue - perhaps in may be in new build, but certainly in my renovation what has worked for me was to communicate the 'feel' and the desired outcomes to the builder. So there would be no down stand , and there should no visible fixings wherever possible - sounds easy but we've taken to the extent of no brackets to hold the glass in the stairs. No visible hinges on the windows, in fact no visible difference between opening casements and fixed lights.

 

Once the builders had the 'feel' then things get build in a way to match the 'feel' not the drawing - I guess the variance for this between new build and renovation is that the as built doesn't match the drawing either... 

 

In fact we got to the point that when I was away on holiday Tony dropped me a txt to say we need to raise the lintel on the fire place and adjust the shape of the aperture as its not in keeping with the room before he fitted the reclaimed bricks and hearth and made good. As I trust Tony's view of the build and what I want then that is what we did. The drawings just don't exist...

Getting a contractor on board with your design style is a good trick if you can manage it.... but in neglecting detailed drawings what you are doing is trusting your contactor to think and plan all those design details for you, and hoping that they have taken on sufficient data that everything works out for all the trades. What you have there with your contractor is a project manager, architect and structural engineer rolled into one.

Just now, Dee J said:

but in neglecting detailed drawings what you are doing is trusting your contactor to think and plan all those design details for you, and hoping that they have taken on sufficient data that everything works out for all the trades.

Not to think for me, to think 'with' me. As ultimately they are the skilled workers / designers here - I'm just specifying the outcomes. 

We did have detailed drawings, well BR level drawings, but when it comes down to tearing into the building things turn out to be different to what we expect. An example of this was the fact that in our build the depths and directions of the floor joists turned out to be much more varied than expected.

I guess what I'm saying is these details matter at design, and they matter as much at implementation as ultimately they are still to be applied until the building is built, and that the drawing is not necessarily what gets built

Edited October 24, 2017 by Lesgrandepotato