Getting Started with 3D Drawings.

Ryan Arnold · 2024-05-21T22:59:15+00:00

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Hi Everyone,

Here is a quick overview of getting started with 3D Drawings. Please review this thread and comment back to me if you have any questions or run into any issues getting started.

First, after you have been accepted for a new Bluebeam Labs experiement you will be given access to that experiment in the Labs tab on Bluebeam Cloud:

If you do not see this tab you will need to be given access to it, please contact us at labs@bluebeam.com and we will help get you access.

Click "3D Drawings" to load up the experimental section. You will then be presented with a list of projects you have built. If you do not have an active 3D Drawings project you can create one use the + New Projects button:

From the create project screen you can add a new project, give it a name and press the "+ Create" button.

After creating your project upload your plan drawings into it using the "upload" button. While the sheets are being processed they will appeared greyed out in a grid pattern:

After the sheets have processed you can press the meta data button to review the data that the AI has interpreted:

You can see here that the AI will have detected information such as the sheet name, number, and discipline:

If you review the meta data of an elevation sheet in a drawing you will see that the AI has identified seperate sections of the drawing that include different elevation information as well as meta data related to that. For example, in this screenshot the AI has detected taht this part of the drawing relates to the West Elevation on Floor 1:

It is possible that the AI may not detect the relationships between all of your sheets. If that is the case you can manually set up these relationships using the "connect button". For example, if we click on A201 and load the "connect view", then we click the 'elevation' button we can see there is one elevation symbol that is red:

If you click the red elevation icon it will bring up a list of potential elevation sheets to connect to A201:

In this example, we will select A300 and then link it using the "Link" button:

After the relationship between sheets has been set up we can then view our drawings as a 3D model by pressing the "3D Drawings" button. You can grab the drawing and rotate it aound to view it from any angle in 3D Space. Also you can highlight specific floors to make them easier to see:

This is an excellent tool to give your drawings additional context and make it much easier for someone who is not used to reading plan drawings to visualize how the eleveation and floor plan drawings align in a 3D Space.

One other feature is that you can select floors in the drawing and then view them in an overlay similar to how you could in Revu.

You can also use this to overlay the same floor with different drawings such as this example where we are seeing Architectural overlayed with Mechanical:

We encourage you to get starting with 3D Drawings using your own plan drawings. Upload them and try out the features described here. Let us know your thoughts here in this discussion forum. We look forward to your great feedback!

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Comments

Duane Gingras

I know this has just started however I"m unable to creat a new project, when I click on 3D Drawings I get:

Then when i try to make a new project the screen flashes but nothign happens.

Ryan Arnold

Hi Duane, Thanks for letting us know, If possible, can you forward these screenshots to me at labs@bluebeam.com?

I'll take a look at them with the team.

Ryan Arnold

Hi Again,

I am going to leave this comment here for the benefit of anyone who runs into the same problem that @Duane Gingras ran into.

The team has identified an issue with the way that the system is storing credentials, this is preventing the recent adjustments to Duane's account to take effect as expected. Here are some work arounds for now:

1. You can log out, then clear your local cache in your web browser and log back in.
2. You could try to log into Labs via incognito browsing mode on your web browser
3. You could try to log into cloud on a different browser

Please give these a try and let me know if any of them help. If not, you are not out of luck, the team will work to get a fix for this issue into the next release of 3D Drawings.

Tim S - FPI

Is there a best practice to set up drawings to where AI will fill in the most META? 😓
After clicking to view the 3-D, how do I go back to the stage where I make sure the drawings are all associated correctly. Sorry, I can't figure it out and need to start over in a new project? 😢

Ryan Arnold

Hi.

1) That is an excellent question. The development of "best practices" will be patially based on what feedback we get from everyone in this experiement. That being said I will go to the team and get some baselines as to what they would recommends for getting the most Meta Data.

2) As far as going editing your file's associations you can do this by using the connect button. This should show up if you are looking at a project that has been uploaded with detected elevation symbols. If you look at your project and select a drawing in it you should see the botton appear as it does in this screenshot:

If you do not see that button please send me a screenshot of what you are seeing.

Doug McLean

It didn't detect any meta data on any of the drawings I uploaded, perhaps Architects will need to do something different in the future?
The drawing zone it selected included the title block, again, is this something that will have to be adjusted when the drawings are first published?
Also not a fan of the stock building floor names. We should have the option to include a custom one

Doug McLean

The AI is having major issues picking up elevation labels where the text is on multiple lines.

Tim S - FPI

(I posted this on another thread, I think it should be on this one)
I have been trying 3D with steel drawings. The one thing that would be VERY helpful for me is the ability to highlight grid lines. Such as, highlight grids A and 1 and it will highlight on ALL drawings in the 3D model. 😊

Ryan Arnold

@Doug McLean I'd like to send over your comments to the team to take a closer look, would you mind sending me some screenshots of what the AI is doing at labs@bluebeam.com?

Ryan Arnold

@Tim S - FPI I will pass this along to the team as I think this is great feedback.