Fire Alarm Design Made Easier

I have put together a collection of  great homemade tools that I have been building for fire alarm design in Cad since 2007.
Over the years these tools have evolved and gotten better looking with deeper detail, yet increased design speed while keeping a nice uniform appearance to my fire alarm designs.|
The videos and pictures below are some of the earlier on  functions. I have created so much more and still maintain a (better than) fair price for such a large collection of design tools.
Click the link below if you want to just skip right to  the tools, or continue reading the article to get a better understanding. More recent videos are in the link to the  fire alarm design tools website.
Fire Alarm drafting files for sale

Detail

This Fire Alarm Template, along with all of the addons mentioned, there are also a few items and hidden gems. Such noting in the printed fire alarm lay out, you will see original date that each specific job is started, and the date it was printed. This protects the fire alarm company and the fire alarm designer. Gives the designer proof of date of file creation and print out, if there is ever any wonder if someone else has messed with the fire alarm design. at the same time, you will also  see the name of the person who printed the drawings. So if Dave grabs Bill’s file and edits fire alarm system and prints this fire alarm system out, Dave’s name will be on the printed file along with that date. If Bill goes back and prints that fire alarm layout, the drawings will now have bill’s name back on the drawings. Where this protects the company, is the date of file creation and date of printout. if you add that to the date your fire alarm drawings are submitted to plans review plus date of notification of acceptance, you have further support of your contract if the customer has any issues with your productivity time.

Titleblock

There is also a location with in the fire alarm template, with in a block that allows you to insert project numbers and permit numbers. The intention of this option is permitting purposes. County/City/State project numbers and building permit numbers to be specific. I did this for the occasional issue that would come up when our Plans and permitting department would have the random act of luck, and just not have everything with him. I make sure he has the permit number and project number in the exact same spot every time.
Also there is a spot to type in the AHJ. City/County/State information goes there. There is also a spot to note if the building is fully sprinkled (fire sprinkler existing) or not. Some jurisdictions this is needed. So when Permitting  guy is at the plans review office, the answer to that question is readily available.

For organization efforts, there is a location to add the salesperson’s name. For the occasional moment when no one knows who sold a specific job, and no one wants to claim it. That person’s name is right there on the fire alarm drawings locked in a block. helps prevent many disputes, and possible conflicts of interest.

Candela

The candela tool is made for ceiling mount and wall mount visual notification devices. So a fire alarm designer can know exactly what candela setting the device should be. This helps with battery calculations and voltage drops.

Also allows you to not have a mess load of full on technicians at a location and allows the chance for a trainee/helper to get his hands on experience with less people standing over him while he works. This was to reduce failure at plan review in the city/county/state. This turned out to have many benefits for the company. This allowed us to work on a lower budget and kept us all free from common errors.

Legend
The legend has a space to show device count for new,existing and relocated devices. Helps with ordering. If there are certain devices in the legend that you are not installing with this design, you can just look for this symbol’s name in the layers menu and just click the light bulb to the left and turn that device off. This also helps if you have to make major edits( but the “already placed” fire alarm symbols will be fine where they are), you just turn them off for a moment, make your edit, then turn them back on.
If you made it this far here’s some free samples
Cad blocks

Gimp Brushes

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***THERE IS AN UPDATED VERSION OF THIS FIRE ALARM TEMPLATE
and here is the fire alarm template version from 2015 (Videos showing function) <– NEW***
Also please notice I added a fire sprinkler template and an access control template with symbols.
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2009 , I created this post about a fire alarm autocad file I was giving away. I was steadily making changes to the cad file. Adding blocks, different fire alarm symbols, legend, battery calculation spreadsheet, Candela measuring tool, smoke array tool and many functions that just made the job easier. Every time I would get a new idea, I would add it to my template. After much time, I decided that I have way too much work in the thing to just give it away. So if you were not here through the beginning phases, Sorry.
(Here is the 2015 version of the fire alarm template)
Along with a fire sprinkler template and an access control template.

The fire_alarm.dwt file is no longer on the server for free, but here is where you can purchase it. Fire Alarm drafting files for sale.