Gathering (and keeping track of) all the information from BuildHub

[Bancroft]

This post is focused towards new members of the group and based on my own thoughts/experiences...

 

Since discovering this brilliant community I've been 'drinking from the firehose' all the really useful information contained.  I started doing so even before we had our application for planning permission go in.

 

Early in the process I realised I needed some way of collating all the useful stuff (more and more tabs open in my browser just wasn't going to work!).

 

So, I decided to use Freeform on my Mac.  Essentially, it's a digital whiteboard that allows me to put pretty much anything (text, web links, photos etc) on to one document and have it all there ready for me to refer back to.

 

And it's searchable too so no matter how big/complex/untidy it gets it remains easy to find what I'm looking for.

 

Now, each time I come into BuildHub and find useful stuff, I just cut and paste relevant text to Freeform and add a page link (so that I can easily go back and remind myself of the whole discussion).  If there are a number of posts/comments on the same subject I group them all together under one 'yellow stickie' in the programme.

 

And it's easy to move them around, group together with similar subjects, add/subtract extra stuff, etc.

 

Just seems to work well for my way of working and worth considering as a way of keeping on top of all the useful info here.

[Nickfromwales]

Great feedback, thanks!   

[Nick Laslett]

I use the Notes app on my iPad, which with iCloud can be accessed from my phone and laptop. Some of the notes are shared with my wife so that she can update them. It has a good search function and a folder system so that you can use a work breakdown structure to organise the data. You can markup pictures, do simple sketches. The Apple Pencil is great for this. 
 

I have an amazing note that is pictures of DHW manifolds, DHW schematics with links to the relevant BuildHub posts and my own hand drawn schematic with marked up photos. I will hopefully tidy it up and post it here one day. 
 

The forum has a number of tools to help manage information. I find the best way to catalogue interesting threads is to use the “Follow” thread button, but without email alerts, I use this like a bookmark. You can then more easily find topics when you need to go back to them. The “Activity” drop down allows you to filter the site just showing threads you follow using “My Activity Stream”, “Content I follow”. You can Heart individual posts, this functions like a “like”, these can then be reviewed from your profile screen, you need to click on the green reputation button, you can then see all the posts you have hearted. 
 

The other app on my iPad that has been invaluable to me is DWG Fastview, this is a free DWG viewer for looking at AutoCAD files. It is not just useful for looking at house plans, but also components like MVHR or construction details. In the app you can take precise measurements, I used it to interrogate the window CAD drawings. On the Mac, I use eDrawings another free DWG viewer. 
 

When the build starts you need to photograph everything, you can never have enough photos. It is good discipline to make albums for each stage of the build. I actually bought a drone just for documenting the build. This was especially useful for documenting the UFH pipe layout with a measurement reference in the overhead photo. 
 

I like Freeform too. It is a very powerful tool which also works across phone, iPad and laptop. I think I’d already gone deep into using Notes, before Freeform was released. 

Edited February 10 by Nick Laslett