Are Match Lines Relevant

[Charles Karl]

Just curious about the use of match lines; are they necessary in the BIM world at all? My thought is that a good key plan along with the use of scope boxes would be enough. Any thoughts?

[RobDraw]

Matchlines don't have anything to do with BIM. They a drafting entity. An aid for reading drawing sets. In my experience, key plans usually indicate the area shown on a particular sheet and the matchlines indicate what sheet to go to for the continuation. I see you have combined those bits of information into your key plan. I'd say matchlines still have a place in the drafting world.

[Charles Karl]

Matchlines don't have anything to do with BIM. They a drafting entity. An aid for reading drawing sets. In my experience, key plans usually indicate the area shown on a particular sheet and the matchlines indicate what sheet to go to for the continuation. I see you have combined those bits of information into your key plan. I'd say matchlines still have a place in the drafting world.

It is possible though to utilize a key plan and grid lines to know what area of the building you are looking at and what sheet to find that area on without the use of matchlines. For instance, I am looking at a plan with a match line 2 feet away from a grid line. Seems redundant.

[kubsix]

A match line aids in delineating between sheets for manual quantity take-off/pricing. Think along the lines of receptacles, lights, diffusers, etc. It is increasingly important with BIM as items show on both sides of the match line, which is a departure from the CAD days.

[glenbob305]

Matchlines are required by some of the old school folks in my office. A good keyplan as shown IMO would be fine. BTW, how did you make that keyplan? Is that a legend ? I've always struggled making keyplans because i want to show say the ground level but a view isn't placeable on more than one sheet. Do i need to export to cad and then link it back in? that seems ridiculous.

Just curious about the use of match lines; are they necessary in the BIM world at all? My thought is that a good key plan along with the use of scope boxes would be enough. Any thoughts?

[Charles Karl]

A match line aids in delineating between sheets for manual quantity take-off/pricing. Think along the lines of receptacles, lights, diffusers, etc. It is increasingly important with BIM as items show on both sides of the match line, which is a departure from the CAD days.

This is good to know, as I am thinking of them from an arch perspective. Just curious though, could schedules be employed here rather than a manual count, or do you manually confirm your schedules are accurate?

[Charles Karl]

Matchlines are required by some of the old school folks in my office. A good keyplan as shown IMO would be fine. BTW, how did you make that keyplan? Is that a legend ? I've always struggled making keyplans because i want to show say the ground level but a view isn't placeable on more than one sheet. Do i need to export to cad and then link it back in? that seems ridiculous.

The keyplan is 2d lines, regions and bold text controlled by yes/no parameters within the title block family. The callouts are detail groups including detail lines and text. We place the detail groups on the sheet over the top of the key plan. As you can imagine, we have a long list of detail groups to call out views on sheets. It is by no means perfect, but I have yet to see a perfect keyplan method. The bottom line is that one can easily flip though a series of sheets with the aid of an accurate keyplan.

[chris.macko]

I make the keyplan a generic annotation with filled regions tied to visibility parameters. That gets placed in the titleblock family and linked to similar parameters in the titleblock. This works well when you have a lot of sheets referencing the same series of plan areas, especially across disciplines.

[Dave Jones]

The bottom line is that one can easily flip though a series of sheets with the aid of an accurate keyplan.

Using Bluebeam Batch Link one could also hyperlink those detail callouts to link to your sheet numbers in a PDF file. Makes for quick navigation for those not in the model.

[RobDraw]

Coming from the MEP side, I have had matchlines that would divide a building or a wing and depending on the trade/system may vary slightly. For instance, a room on a duct plan might want to be on one side of the matchline because the duct runs end there and on the lighting might want to be on the other side because of circuiting. At a small scale like a key plan, those slight differences would not be discernible.