[Vince]

I can’t see anyway that a formula can be used so my only suggestion is to draw up some grids using the poly lengths at 2′ centres – maybe make a few up with different overall shapes and sizes. Group these lengths together and save as a tool.

Then when required lay the grid over your slab area, ungroup it and make the fine tuning adjustments to suit the actual shape.

Not ideal but this may save some time compared to starting afresh each time.

[Matt Hackman]

Thanks for the response, I may end up doing what you said as I’ve been drawing the lines every time but having them spaced out already will cut down on some of the time for sure.

[David Cutler]

This might be a good example of where a “trim” feature would be handy to have. Imagine being able to drop your pre-arranged 2×2 grid over an irregular shape and then being able to draw a “trimming line” around the limits of the area to be cut. Could be a huge timesaver!

https://suggestions.bluebeam.com/ideas/new

[Vince]

The other thing I tried to do was to draw a shape with a cut out then ‘fill’ that void with the grid – no luck!

[David Cutler]

Interesting question @matt-hackman

Not knowing the shape of what you are looking at I made a quick calc. Starting with a simple 10 ft x 10 ft square (100 SF) cutting 1 boundary edge (say north side and west side) and every 2 feet in both directions you would end up with 100 lf of saw cutting (50 lf north-south, 50 lf east-west). So, in this case, if you measured the square footage it would be a 1 to 1 relationship between square footage and saw cutting. You would need to add an additional boundary cut on one side north south and east west.

[Matt Hackman]

Thanks for the response, I, unfortunately, haven’t run into a slab being demoed that’s square too often. I might try looking into excel formulas. I do have OST access so I have the option of uploading a single sheet and calculating just the saw cutting in there.

[Troy DeGroot]

Formulas were my first response, you need a custom column for the cut spacing, then another one to divide height by spacing plus width divided by spacing. This works great for square slabs, however now that you say slabs are rarely square this wouldn’t work because the width and height of the markup isn’t an accurate value when not square with the sheet. I’ve built very similar custom columns to calculate rebar, but it has it’s limitations.

[Vince]

I tried a quick couple of calculations from different sizes of squares & rectangles, although the results were reasonable accurate on some they were way out on others. I would imagine this variance will just grow with irregular shapes.

[Doug McLean]

wouldn’t the formula be something like – ((number of 2 x 2 blocks * 4) + width + height)
Assuming each 2 x 2 square will be cut on at least one width and one height and the attached 2 x 2 square will complete the cut. Then the additional width and height will complete all the cuts.

[Vince]

Unfortunately, it depends on the configuration e.g. if you use a simple example of just four blocks in square and rectangular configurations formulas don’t appear to work. Once you get into much larger and irregular shapes then the discrepancies between formula results and the actual lengths grows.

[David Cutler]

This might be worth trying @matt-hackman

1. Starting with a grid draw a series of 1 ft horizontal and vertical “sawcut” lines. Maybe start with a 10 X 10 grid

2. Select them all and group them together

3. Add this group as a custom tool

4. Paste this group over your area as needed

5. Select and ungroup your markup

6. Select the pieces that fall outside your cut demo area and delete them.

7. Select all again and group the remaining pieces.

A lot comes down to how accurate you want to be. You could work with 6” long segments or 5 ft. You could also extend or add filler pieces to dial it in.

[David Cutler]

I tried this once I got in front of my computer this morning and it seems as if it could work well with some refinement @matt-hackman

A couple of additional notes:

1. Draw you sawcut gridlines in 1 ft (or smaller) segments of one perimeter measurement (polyline may work also). You can then “split all” to get the individual segments.

2. Draw you grid line once and then copy paste it to increase your grid size. Once you have a 10 ft x 10 ft grid copy that group and replicate it quickly to cover large areas.

3. Leave the bottom and right side piece out so that when you place your duplicate group next to it you don’t double up on the matching edge.

4. The “lasso” tool works great for selecting the segments that you want to remove (thank you @Vince for introducing me to this tool!), though it takes a bit of practice.

Curious to hear what everyone thinks of this idea/how it can be improved!😎

[Vince]

I’ve been look at creating grids for something else then came up with this….

Create your 2’x2′ template grid in a new document covering the biggest area that you’ll need – cover an A1 piece of paper if needed. Use individual Polylines – this should only take a few minutes.

If you use group to make to copy & paste when drawing your template then make sure everything is ungrouped when you finish.

Then to use: –

1. Copy the whole template page into the document you are working on.

2. Go to the area you are wanting to measure and use “Spaces” and draw around the area that you are looking at.

3. Copy the space and paste it onto your grid instead of trying to put the grid onto your shape.

4. Move the space around to get the best fit on your grid.

5. Go to your mark-ups list and sort by spaces and then select the space that you are working on.

That should be it – 2′ long lengths that are fully captured in the space will be totalled in the mark-up list. This should be the only item within that space so the mark-up list will give you the total length of all the 2’s.

No need for cutting, stretching or deleting of the grid. You can of course make adjustments to the shape of the Space to include any additional 2′ lengths to your measures or you can move the whole shape slightly to see what difference that makes.

Still not 100% accurate but should hopefully get you near enough.

Alternatively, you can go for a slightly more ‘destructive’ route. You will need to know the total length of all the 2′ segments in your grid to start with for this one.

1. Copy the whole template page into the document you are working on.

2. Either use an area mark-up or spaces to copy the shape of the area that you want to measure.

3. Paste the shape onto your grid.

4. Use the lasso tool to trace around your shape – this will select any of the grid line that even partly fall with your area.

5. Delete the selected lines.

6. Deducted the resulting total length of gridlines from your original total to obtain the total length deleted.

This method obviously doesn’t allow for any manipulation or fine tuning though.

😃

[Vince]

Actually, on the 2nd version, don’t delete the lines!

Just rename the subject and change the attributes – maybe make the lines thicker and a different colour so they are easily identifiable.

This way you can then make adjustments if you want to.

To get the total of the lines just sort the mark-up table for whatever you have called the selected lines.

[Matt Hackman]

@Vince I just saw your LinkedIn video and it was super helpful to see this in the video and may do this in the future!

[Vince]

Hi @Matt. Glad you found the video helpful!

One bit of advice – when setting up your grid start off by using the ‘sketch to scale’ and copy a few of these across to set up the basic grid. You can then draw your ‘perimeter’ lines over these. This way you can make sure your grid spacings are exact. From there you can copy & paste the perimeter lines to fill out the rest of the page.

[Don Walke]

I don’t know how accurate you need to be. Real life says that what you planned in the office won’t happen in the field. All the calculations will result in an answer of approximately 1 lf of saw cut per 1 sf of slab, given a 2′ x 2′ grid. The larger the slab the closer it will become as slab edges become less in proportion to slab area.

[David Cutler]

That’s a very good point @dhwalkellc . Sometimes I wonder if I’m spending too much time getting to the closest foot on items that we are then going to total up and round to the nearest pipe length.

[Troy DeGroot]

I’ve built tools for customers before who wanted to round each length to the pipe length, then total after that. It makes sense so you don’t end up with (30) 1′-0″ sections pasted together for the last section. Like always, start with the end in mind, in this case, how materials are purchased.

[David Cutler]

@matt-hackman did you come up with a good solution for your saw cutting question?

[David Cutler]

@matt-hackman thought of your original question while using the “multiply” markup feature the yesterday. Thinking this might be a good way to equally space your sawcut lines across an area. You would still need to trim the ends if it is an odd shape, but it is a quick way to cast a series of markups across an area at an even spacing.

[Troy DeGroot]

Once you get all the vertical lines drawn, copy the group and rotate to quickly build the horizontal lines and complete your grid. Then yes, you would have to trim them all. You could group the entire grid and save it to your toolchest for next time.

[David Cutler]

I see your “save to toolchest” for next time and raise you by suggesting saving it to a “scaled toolchest” so you can use the tool even if the scale is different. 🙂

[Matt Hackman]

Please describe this scaled toolchest…

[David Cutler]

You can set the scale of any toolchest. Simply click on the settings gear and then select “set scale”.

I have a few “scaled” toolchests based on the scales my drawings typically are set at. What is neat is if you have a markup that is say 10 feet long on a 1:20 scale sheet when you paste it to a 1:10 sheet it will automatically self adjust to the markup to the new scale.

This is really handy if you have a proposed condition drawing and 1 scale, and an existing condition drawing at another. You can take a snip of the proposed drawing, save it to a scaled toolchest and then apply the scaled snip markup to the existing condition drawing creating a scaled overlay. Bonus tip is to colorize the snip and set it to it’s own layer allowing you to clearly see the snip and toggle it on and off.

[Matt Hackman]

I have yet to need to try this since the multiply tool came out but that would be a good option!