The UK building services industry, CAD drawing

[Holsteijn]

Hello everyone,

 

At the moment I am busy with a research about the building services industry in the UK. I want to know some special things about the industry and I hope you can help me with it.

 

First I want to know who is responsible for the drawing part of installation plans/drawings (electrical and mechanical installation, like piping and electrical parts) in the industry? The construction companies, plumbers, engineers?

 

The next question is about what kind of software is used:

Is it AutoCAD, or AutoCAD MEP or other software?

 

In short I want to know what the structure of the building service industry is and especially the drawing part.

 

Thanks for your time and I hope you can help me!

 

 

Kind regards,

 

David

[gdury]

David,

 

In response to your questions:

 

First I want to know who is responsible for the drawing part of installation plans/drawings (electrical and mechanical installation, like piping and electrical parts) in the industry? The construction companies, plumbers, engineers?

As an initial start, the M&E Consultants generate the general 2d information that would be used for the constuction companies to develop into working/installation 2D/3D drawings. Some consultants will produce 3d models for the construction companies to adopt as a collaboration process.

The next question is about what kind of software is used:

Is it AutoCAD, or AutoCAD MEP or other software?

Most Building services consultants/contractors/installers will use Autocad as the vertical platform. There are quite a few dedicated packages such as MEP, Revit etc... Most contractors/installers will use Cad-Duct.

 

To assist viewing, Navisworks is the most likely package as the *.nwd files can be distributed and viewed using the FREE Fredom viewer which can be downloaded from the Autodesk website. Additional bolt-on's can be added such as Clash detection and Rendering, should you wish to develop presentations or animations.

 

In short I want to know what the structure of the building service industry is and especially the drawing part

Our Desco cad manual outlines the proceedures for creating developing & maintaining Building Services cad drawings. We use Autocad MEP with Cad-DUCT Solids. To assist our drawing and 3d model development, we also use Navisworks to view and package the model for distribution.

 

Most companies will have similar cad setup, although naming of service layers and plotting parameters (pen colours) will be different.

The majority of contractors within the UK, use intranet project hosing sites such as ASITE,4PROJECTS, BUZZSAW etc to provide collaboration between all the project teams.

Please reply with your email address so i can pass on our Cad Manual in PDF format

 

Trust this helps

 

Regards

 

Graham D