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Shop Drawings ?

Drip Dry

New Member
I'm not new, but I'm being asked to do shop drawings for the contractor to give to the architect.
Not sure what their really looking for. I don't want to look stupid by asking them a lot of questions... but maybe I am.

Anybody know what I should be doing. Better yet, does anyone have a sample of a drawing you used before

This will be 1/2" Gemini letters with a bronze finish mounted with studs on a building.

Job is simple, just not sure about the drawings

Thanks
 

Gino

Premium Subscriber
I didn't realize Gemini did only 1/2" letters, but have you ever heard of a proof ??

The party involved wants to know what it will look like.

Probably take a picture of the building, super-impose the letters on the wall in a close color and show them the proper spacing, height and whatnot when the job will be finished.
 

oksigns

New Member
yes exactly this I printed these off all the time on presentation board.

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Andy D

Active Member
This is a sample of the mechanicals we do for most jobs.
We call out the sizes and other specification, but more importantly
our prints have scale called out and are printed to scale so that the builder or anyone else
can put a scale ruler on the print out and get the size on any part of the sign.


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Andy D

Active Member
I'm not new, but I'm being asked to do shop drawings for the contractor to give to the architect.
Not sure what their really looking for. I don't want to look stupid by asking them a lot of questions... but maybe I am.

Anybody know what I should be doing. Better yet, does anyone have a sample of a drawing you used before

This will be 1/2" Gemini letters with a bronze finish mounted with studs on a building.

Job is simple, just not sure about the drawings

Thanks

And BTW, you're not being stupid, it's a valid question, more goes into a professional
drawing than many realize.

I learned under a Mechanical Engineer and he was a stickler over the smallest of details . :noway:
 

Imakesigns

New Member
what program are you using to create the last one? that looks awesome. I use my design software and try to make it look as professional as possible, but nowhere near that.
 

oksigns

New Member
InDesign or Illustrator... InDesign has the layout tools to make things go faster. Make a template and run with it.
 

Andy D

Active Member
J [COLOR=#333333 said:
what program are you using to create the last one? that looks awesome. I use my design software and try to make it look as professional as possible, but nowhere near that.[/COLOR]

Yeah, Corel Draw is what I used for that drawing.
I'm not too savvy on AI, but from what I understand, It's hard to do
large projects on scale.

I liken Corel Draw as hybrid of Adobe Illustrator and CAD.
 

J Hill Designs

New Member
I swear I can barely draw 2 concentric circles in illustrator....and forget about resizing them!

that program is so bulky its ridiculous (IMO)
 

oksigns

New Member
I swear I can barely draw 2 concentric circles in illustrator....and forget about resizing them!

that program is so bulky its ridiculous (IMO)

It's very unwieldy and unintuitive for sure, but I have grown in to it :/

You draw a circle, and then Object>Offset Path, rinse and repeat OR, use blend for "x" amount of steps. The first option has more precision
 

WildWestDesigns

Active Member
It's very unwieldy and unintuitive for sure, but I have grown in to it :/

You draw a circle, and then Object>Offset Path, rinse and repeat OR, use blend for "x" amount of steps. The first option has more precision

You can also make those into Actions, so you don't have to continually go to the list up top to do common functions. Just click on the object, click on the action and it can automate everything for you depending on what's recorded in the action.

InDesign is what I would use for something like this. Create the base and then plug in play for whatever you made need. Be sure to save the indd document to an indt (template), that way when you open the template it won't save on top of the template when you go to save the file with everything plugged in for the project.
 

Andy D

Active Member
I swear I can barely draw 2 concentric circles in illustrator....and forget about resizing them!

that program is so bulky its ridiculous (IMO)

Yeah, me too, but I'm sure it's what you learn on.

It seems that most people that go to school to become "Graphic Artist" are brain washed by their teachers
who are fanboys of all things Adobe and Mac, to think Corel isn't a real design program.

Corel Draw is a great program, especially for the sign industry.
 

WildWestDesigns

Active Member
Yeah, me too, but I'm sure it's what you learn on.

I think that's the winner right there. I cut my teeth on Adobe, so that's what I know. I didn't mean to give the impression that I was knocking Corel.

Corel Draw is a great program, especially for the sign industry.

It's also used quite a bit in the apparel market as well. It directly interfaces with my digitizing program, however, I haven't installed it. You install it second if you want to be able to toggle between the 2 programs. I'm just too used to Ai, so I never have installed it. Again, not trying to knock it. Some of the tricks that I use in Ai, I actually found out from people using DRAW.
 

Andy D

Active Member
I think that's the winner right there. I cut my teeth on Adobe, so that's what I know. I didn't mean to give the impression that I was knocking Corel.
I didn't take it that way:smile:
One huge advantage for me that Corel has that none of the Adobe programs do is it's
customization, everything from quick keys to screen layout.
I picked up many strange quick key habits over the years from previous programs such as Graphics Advantage, Inspire & Flexi that I
didn't have to relearn.
 

Rick

Certified Enneadecagon Designer
This is what our submittals look like.

Depending on your letter size, you may only need 3 studs per letter.
If the copy is exterior on a new building, they may not want to embed that deep due to waterproofing... the architect or contractor will let you know.

I know how to use Corel, but the way I design and draw these geek drawings, Illustrator with CadTools fits my workflow.
For one thing, I can design in multiple scales on a single page, layers are easier to work with, Cadtools has more options
I dig the drawing tools, dig how I can pull templates and drawings from my symbols palette I set up - in the scale I want.

Corel is a great design/sign/drafting program - this coming from a guy who designs on a Mac in Illy
But Corel does not do what I need it to do...
 

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Drip Dry

New Member
I always do something like OKsigns showed. But I like what Rick and Andy showed me. I will do something based on those.

The reason I asked was because I thought maybe since the architect is involved, they may be looking for something more.

And Gino, They are 1/2" thick aluminum letters. They will be 10" tall. The building is more than 20 miles away. Little hard to just go take a picture. But the architect supplied a drawing of the building that I will use

Thanks all
 

GypsyGraphics

New Member
InDesign is what I would use for something like this. Create the base and then plug in play for whatever you made need. Be sure to save the indd document to an indt (template), that way when you open the template it won't save on top of the template when you go to save the file with everything plugged in for the project.

i'm a big BIG fan of InDesign! (simply nothing better for layout and typography)

i still do all my illustrations, geek drawings and CAD work in Illustrator, but when it comes to presenting a large package/submittal... you can't beat InDesign for pagination/folios, master pages, table of content and such. i love illustrator but not when it come to text and i'd tear my hair out if i had to manage a 50 page, let alone a 200 page submittal, in illustrator alone.

InDesign and Illustrator together... just DREAMY!
 

legacyborn

New Member
Yarr, thread pirate here. (sorry)

When I worked for another company they used Flexi Sign and within Flexi there is a way to automatically export what you are working on to a template (In this case we had a form similar to these)

Does anyone know of a way to do that in Corel?
 
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