Working with Typed Plans
About Typed Plans
BricsCAD® BIM uses drawing templates to customize your generated drawings. For a general understanding of how these templates are created and work, please visit the Templates for generated drawings article.
Typed Plans allow you to create customized templates for drawing types based on a set filter parameter rule against an entity type’s value or property within the 3D BIM model. This is especially helpful for customizing graphics of model entities independent of their assigned layers or layer states, therefore transferable and usable on other projects with similar entity properties.
- At the level of the BIM project.
- In the support folder.
- Typed Plans in a project can be managed in the UI of the BIM Project Browser. It is possible to create a new Typed Plan from the BIM Project Browser, to rename or remove a Typed Plan, or to edit an existing Typed Plan.
- Typed Plans in the support folder cannot be managed from the BIM Project Browser as they don't belong to a project. Use the TYPEDPLANS command to manage them. When running this command, a BIM Typed Plans dialog box displays, listing all Typed Plans in the support folder.
The Typed Plans are operated by 3 principles: Entity Customizations, Filter Rules & Styles. They are accessible from the BIM Typed Plan Editor dialog box.
BIM Typed Plans dialog box
- To open the BIM Typed Plans dialog box, enter the TYPEDPLANS command in the Command line or click on the Typed Plans icon in the Ribbon panel.
- Click to create a new
template. By default, the template is named New Typed Plan with the text
highlighted.Note: All the controls of BIM Typed Plan are represented as graphic icons within the BIM Typed Plan and BIM Typed Plan Editor dialog boxes, such as to create a new control item. They are repeated throughout the tool in different settings, for example Entity Customizations, Ply Customizations, but their functions and purposes remain consistent.
- Rename the template while the text is being highlighted. When finished, press
Enter to save and apply the name.Note: You can duplicate, delete or rename your typed plans. To do that, hover the cursor over the desired Typed Plan and click the context menu button to expand the options.
BIM Typed Plan Editor dialog box
Click the desired typed plan in the BIM Typed Plans dialog box to open the BIM Typed Plan Editor dialog box, which allows you to edit the customizations of the selected Typed Plan.
Entity customizations
Drawing customizations styles
- Click the pencil icon to access the Styles tab.
- To create a new style, click on the
bottom right of the dialog box and a new Style
template tab will appear.
- By default, the tab is named Style. Rename it while the text is highlighted as shown. After you are finished, press Enter to save and apply.
- Create a list of desired styles that you wish to use for the desired typed
plan. An example of the style templates:
Each tab contains its individual styles settings, such as the style’s color, line type, line weight and line type scale.
- To edit any of the styles template available, click on its relevant tab to
access its settings.Note: Similar to the BIM Typed Plans dialog box, hover over the styles template tabs to reveal the context menu button to duplicate, rename or delete.Style settings include the options to define Color, Line Type, Line Weight and Line type scale in their respective drop-down dialogs. Once done, click OK to save and apply the changes.
- To leave the Styles page, click Back at the bottom left side of the dialog box to return to your previous page. From there, you can navigate to modify the Entity Customizations or Rules templates.
Filter rules
- Filter rules can be further classed into sub rules, which falls as a sub-set of
the parent rule, e.g. Fire Equipment as a Filter Rule, whereas
Fire Extinguisher is classed as a sub rule.also appears respectively and accordingly at each rule level. At the end of each rule, regardless of it being a subset or otherwise, it has to end with an Entity Customization.
- You can edit the filter parameters by clicking on the
Filter button.
- The filter Operation values are also available as a drop-down list.Note: You can also start typing a certain keyword to search a specific property that you want to filter on.
- You can specify a string manually in your check value if your Check type is a
Literal. If you have selected a Property value for Check type, your Check
property value will refer to the same values found in the Filter property
drop-down.
- To end and legitimize a filter rule, the Entity Customization value must be
added and filled in. The options available in the drop-down selection reflects
the existing customizations tab available in the Entity Customization page.
Tag customizations
- Click to create a
new Tag customization. By default, the template is named New
customization with the text highlighted.
Rename it while the text is highlighted as shown. After you are done, hit Enter to save and apply.
- Hover over the tag customization tabs to reveal the context menu button to
duplicate, rename or delete.Note: The default tag customizations cannot be deleted.
- You can edit filter rules for Tag customizations. It is similar with changing the filter rules for Entity customizations described above.
- Click on a tag customization to change its properties, such as Style, Auto
rotation, Auto placement and Offset:
Typed Plans at the level of the Project browser
Applying templates to viewports on sheets
- To apply the template, navigate to your sheet drawing with your desired viewport.
- Open the Properties panel and select the viewport to view its
properties.
- Navigate to the Drawing Customization property and click on the
drop-down selection to the right.
- Select your desired Typed Plan.
- Once done, hover over your selected viewport to access the Quad. Click
Update Section in the Quad under
Model tab.
- You should see a refreshed Viewport with the graphical changes as per your Typed Plans settings.
Accessing customization templates
By default settings, these templates are stored in the Customizations folder within your Support folder in the following path, under the Bim folder and then Sections subfolder:
C:\Users\<user_name>\AppData\Roaming\Bricsys\BricsCAD\V22x64\en_US\Support\Bim\Sections\Customizations
The AppData folder is hidden by default, so you may have to unhide it first. This path can also be accessed by entering SECTIONSETTINGSSEARCHPATH in the command line.
New customizations created with BIM Typed Plans will be stored in a Customizations subfolder in the specified path. Each customization template is saved as an individual folder which contains in its basic form Settings.dwg, a Filter.json and a New customization.json files. The folder will also contain any external symbol sources which you have created new using the Create New buttons.