To open any link in a new tab, preserving your position in the current article, just hold down the <CTRL> key on your keyboard before clicking the link or click using your mouse wheel.

Plan, Sheet, Drawing, or Page? Terms Explained

Owned by Daniel Wal
Mar 30, 2023
2 min read

Plan, Sheet, Drawing, or Page?

Before we go any further, we should explain that in conversation, the terms Drawing, Plan, Image, and Page are used interchangeably. In PlanSwift:

  • Page - this is an electronic "container" of sorts, accessed on the Home, Page, Tools, and View Tabs where an electronic representation of a Plan (a construction sheet, drawing, or plan) is displayed. The Page contains the Plan (and an Overlay, if you've added one), all the takeoff objects you draw, and all Annotations (drawing markups such as: Shapes, Highlights, Notes, etc.).

    • Name is the title of that Plan based on the Title Block of the plan/sheet/drawing itself such as "2nd Floor Plan" or "1st Floor Reflected Ceiling Plan" or "Mechanicals Details Plan". You can rename a Page (after you’ve added it) by right-clicking it in the Pages list and opening its Properties.

  • Plan - this is a single drawing or sheet from a set of construction documents (which we call a "plan set"). Each Plan creates its own Page in the Pages panel. The Plan is what is displayed within the Page Window when you open a Page from the Pages panel (could we say “Pages” any more often?) (for all intents and purposes, let's consider a Plan a blueprint...)

  • Drawings or Image Files - these are the actual files (PDFs, TIFS, etc.) you import into or add to a project when creating it. If you are adding a multipage PDF, each separate page/sheet from that PDF is extracted into a separate Page in PlanSwift. If you choose to convert to TIFF during project creation (which we recommend), a separate TIFF is created for each Page, each will be named the same, so we recommend going through your project immediately and updating all the Page Names so you can tell them apart.

We recommend taking some time and organizing and collating your Pages before you start taking off a project. This way, the Pages are in a logical order and you can navigate them more smoothly and efficiently. They'll also have much more user-friendly names.

Drawing

We typically do not use the term "drawing" when referring to the Page or Plan. When referring to a blueprint and takeoff/markups represented on-screen, we use the term "Page" - drawing is what you do with a Takeoff Item (you draw takeoff) or the actual file (PDF, TIFF, etc.) stored on your computer. 

Copyright 2023 ConstructConnect