How to Use Typed Plans in BricsCAD BIM

Quick answer: Typed Plans are customized templates for drawing types, based on filter rules set against an entity type’s value or property in the 3D BIM model, expanding on the general templates concept covered on this hub’s templates for generated drawings page. They customize model entity graphics independent of assigned layers or layer states, making them transferable across projects with similar entity properties, useful for enforcing office drawing standards, government requirements, and consistency across detailed design and permit packages.

Where Typed Plans Are Stored

Typed Plans store either at the BIM project level, manageable through the BIM Project Browser (create, rename, remove, or edit), or in the Support folder, which the Project Browser can’t manage since it doesn’t belong to any specific project, use TYPEDPLANS and the BIM Typed Plans dialog for those instead.

The BIM Typed Plans Dialog Box

1. Type TYPEDPLANS, or click the Typed Plans icon in the Ribbon panel.
2. Click the plus icon to create a new template, defaulting to the name “New Typed Plan” with its text highlighted.
3. Rename it while the text is highlighted and press Enter to save (hover a Typed Plan and click its context menu button afterward to duplicate, delete, or rename it further).
4. Click a listed Typed Plan’s name to open the BIM Typed Plan Editor dialog and edit it.

Typed Plans at the Project Browser Level

In the Files tab of the BIM Project Browser, click the plus icon at the bottom right for two options: New Typed Plan (opens the BIM Typed Plan Editor directly) or Import Typed Plan (opens a dialog to browse to an existing one). Typed Plans store as .tp folders containing two JSON scripts (one for tag customization, one for drawing customization) and a Settings.dwg file holding the settings those scripts reference.

Once created or imported, a Typed Plan saves into the BIM project folder’s TypedPlans subfolder, accessible through the Files tab, where right-clicking one offers Open Folder (opens it in File Explorer), Rename, Duplicate (default name “Original Name – Copy”), and Delete. Double-click a listed Typed Plan to open it in the BIM Typed Plan Editor.

Editing Typed Plans: Overrides

The first editing step defines overrides, which change entity properties to customize the Typed Plan, add filters, and add new override rows via Create new override (or Add new override once one already exists).

The overrides list works as a top-down filter: BricsCAD checks each entity against override 1, then 2, then 3, and so on, stopping as soon as one filter matches, so their order matters enormously. Start with the most specific filter lines and broaden as you go down, leaving the final line generic (with no filter expression at all) to catch everything else.

User-defined properties can only be used as a Typed Plan filter when the BIM Project’s database is stored as an External BSYSLIB file, expanding the Project and Central database concepts covered on this hub’s BIM data structure and BIM project info pages.

Drawing Overrides: The Four Customization Types

Drawing overrides control how elements look in your model drawing, with four distinct customization types available (some only apply to appropriate entity types like Wall, Slab, or Roof):

Section result customization (add via the context menu’s Add customization dropdown), covering six specific visual regions:

• Background (green outline): the elevation outline of the cut object.
• Intersection Boundary (red outline): traces the cut area.
• Intersection Fill (blue hatch): the area actually being cut by the section plane.
• Elevation Fill (orange hexagon hatch): the area bound by the elevation outline (Background).
• Hidden Lines (pink outline): geometry below the intersection fill.
• Cut away geometry (yellow outline): geometry above the section plane.

Center line customization: controls how the centre of planar or linear entities displays. For a planar entity like a wall, this means its centre plane; for a linear entity like a beam, its centreline. There’s no default visibility setting for these, and they don’t normally appear in section results.

Symbol customization: add a symbol layer customization value containing part of the desired layer name, “BRX” matches the default BRX_2D layers, the same system covered in depth on this hub’s templates for generated drawings page. This searches within the specific component entity the template applies to, and can’t exchange or share 2D symbols across different entity types (you can’t replace a column’s symbol with one from a furnishing element table, for example).

Ply Customization: shows only certain ply types in a plan view, structural plies only in a structural plan, for example. Add ply customization filters entity plies using one or more parameter filters, with Structure function and No structure function as predefined main categories; add more filter rows to combine multiple parameter conditions.

Drawing Customization Styles

For each customization added above, style five characteristics: Visibility (on or off), Color, Linetype, Lineweight, and Linetype Scale.

Applying Templates to Viewports on Sheets

1. Navigate to the sheet drawing containing the viewport you want to apply the template to.
2. Open the Properties panel and select the viewport (via PROPERTIES or the Properties panel icon).
3. Under the BIM properties section, find the Typed Plan property and choose your template from its dropdown.
4. Hover over the viewport, open the Quad, and choose Update Section from the Model tab, confirming the same workflow covered on this hub’s generating drawings page.
5. The viewport refreshes with your Typed Plan’s graphical changes applied.

Accessing Customization Templates

By default, these templates store in a Customizations subfolder at C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Bricsys\BricsCAD\V26x64\en_US\Support\Bim\Sections\Customizations (the AppData folder is hidden by default; this path is also accessible via SECTIONSETTINGSSEARCHPATH). Redefine this path via the Section settings search path setting if your customization files live elsewhere.

New customizations built with the BIM Typed Plan Editor save into a Customizations subfolder at that path, each as its own folder containing, at minimum, Settings.dwg, tag-customization.json, and drawing-customization.json. Settings.dwg stores every value created in the Drawing Overrides tab as layers, so any custom properties used as filters need to be reflected there too.

Since these folders store locally on the machine where they were created, sharing a Typed Plan with users on other machines means copying the entire folder and its contents to the same location on each one.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I use a custom property as a filter in a Typed Plan override? Only if the BIM Project’s database is stored as an External BSYSLIB file, not an embedded one.

Why does the order of my override filters matter so much? BricsCAD checks entities against the list top-down and stops at the first match, so more specific filters need to come before broader ones, or they’ll never get checked.

Can I share a 2D symbol between different entity types with Symbol customization? No, it only searches within the specific component entity the template applies to, symbols can’t be exchanged across different entity types.

Where do newly created Typed Plan customization files actually get saved? A Customizations subfolder inside the Support folder’s Bim\Sections path by default, each template as its own folder with Settings.dwg and two JSON files.