Re: CAD Drawing Standard/Drawing Office Procedur

From: <Christopher>
Date: Tue Jul 18 2000 - 14:12:00 EDT

>I've decided to produce a CAD Drawing Standard/Drawing Office Procedures
>Manual for our office as I've found that all my predecessors have had
>different ideas of how to do the drawings. Which makes it hard work when I
>want to use an old drawing and it would help show any new guys the way we do
>things.

You might want to give this some serious thought. If you do it wrong, you're going to be adding one more bad system to wade through. You should probably be asking yourself what specific deficiencies really need standardization, and what problems actually need solving. If there's a real cost associated with, say, non-standardized line widths or text sizes, standardize on the widths and sizes that eliminate the cost. If it's only a cosmetic issue that only results in something which 'looks better' forget it and concentrate on real issues.

Same with drawing number systems and similarly for layering. Engineers have a real tendency to make up superbly clever numbering systems that codify everything perfectly for the most recent project, but which don't work for the next project or make filing tricky enough so that misfiling easy enough so that misfiled drawings were endemic. So be careful that your system isn't more clever than the people who use it, and doesn't take more time to learn than it takes to fix mistakes.

Ask yourself why you need a standard that's different from your current practice. If the only answer you can come up with is 'because everyone has one,' you don't have a reason. Unless your office is a chaotic shambles with no system whatever, chances are excellent that your practice is enough different from someone else's that simply copying another's practice won't solve your problems.

Christopher Wright P.E. |"They couldn't hit an elephant from <a href="/group/PipingDesign/post?postID=wDKZt8bcDY0dcI30Ffne2SLWr9MYFhTdqi0sCWpRHw9ykTeYl9jhRnBrzrK9wxL6p80AnfINDGvjb6u9">chrisw@skypoint.com</a> | this distance" (last words of Gen.

___________________________| John Sedgwick, Spotsylvania 1864)

<a href="http://www.skypoint.com/~chrisw">http://www.skypoint.com/~chrisw</a> Received on Tue Jul 18 14:12:00 2000