Topic: Audit Drawing Proceedures.

[hudster]

I have been assigned the task of writing a proceedure to audit every drawing  my office produces to ensure they fully comply with the CAD standards manual prior to issue.
We have had issues with engineers using wrong fonts, linetypes, colours etc.

But I'm struggling to think of where to start.
Bearing in mind our drawings are primarily services drawings.
Can I have peoples input in where to begin.

[daron]

Begin with a list of your standards. Personally I feel for you. Take it one drawing at a time and leave you gun at home.

[pmvliet]

I would start with file names.
This is easy and easy to spot the bad files.
You can do a directory listing to excel and put it in spreadsheet form where you can do with it what you want.

Then maybe look into wrong fonts etc. You can use Etransmit or reference manager to bring forward fonts, colortables etc that may be not to standard.

I don't envy you one bit. You do need a game plan. What are the key elements you need to be checking for?

pieter

[hudster]

fonts, layer names, colours, linetypes, osnaps, drawing readability, text size, text rotation, xref insertion, corect use of abbreviations, file names and correct labelling of standard details.

It's my own fault, I asked for a promotion and this is a trial of my managerial abilities.

I should keep my mouth shut

[pmvliet]

How many files/jobs do you have to do?

In order to take control, you need to work hand in hand with a job that is just starting and get it moving on the right step. it is not easy and a lot of times you will have to work ahead of your design team to have the tools they need available.

Pieter

[hudster]

I need to audit every new drawing plus 10% of all the drawings for existing projects, plus all drawings other drawings prior to any issue, so I have in the region of 500 drawings I have to audit, before I even start on the existing projects and drawing going out.

I've managed to break it down to the following tasks.

1. Check layer naming, colour & line type conventions.
2. Check for specified fonts and text heights.
3. Check all entities are on appropriate layers.
4. Check all title blocks are filled in correctly.
5. Ensure all items are not partially hidden by the viewports.
6. Purge and bind all drawings prior to Issue.

The British Standard on drawing exchange states.

1. check all layer allocations and other agreed conventions are adhered to.
2. Purge all files of any unnecessary data.
3. Ensure data sets are complete within the individual file set and that no reference exists to files which are excluded from the transfer set.

I think that plus my ideas should just about cover it.

But with the time I'm going to spend auditing drawings there won't be much time left for me to produce any.

[sparky]

I've benn reading up on VLISP and there are these things called "Reactors".  This will perhaps come in handy for enforcing your standards.  Checkout www.afralisp.com - VLisp tutorials - "Reactors" Chapter for a few simple examples.

As for Auditing - Script pro can run multiple LISP routines on multiple files that could ceck for Layers, Text Styles, Title Block Attributes, and carry out purges and X-Ref binding.  As for Viewport view completeness - can't see how you'd do that except if exact Views for appropriate viewport modelspaces have been saved. Would have to do that "manually/visually" depending on the drawing practices of your Drawing Office.

As for checking whether entities are on certain layers... if they are definable as objects, e.g. they are Named Blocks (perhaps with attr.'s), X-Refs, or such...you could change their properties and get them on the correct layers.  But if they are just lines, circles, arcs, poly's etc. surley the only person who knows what layer they should be on are you are the Draftsman?  Unless your layer naming Standards defines particular entities to particular layers.

I would suggest you try write some code to enforce correct Layer standard usage.  Also you could use the ScriptPRO/LISP combination to count numbers of "UFO's"  within each drawing and who created them.

If you're really MEAN you could start being the tough guy around the office with that kind of info!!!

[t-bear]

Hudster....
I'm not real bright about this stuff but IF your layer/colour standard is bylayer,  this shouldn't be too hard to check.  Anything that ain't bylayer is a no-no...if you are assigning multiple colours to a layer, you might have a problem.  I certainly don't envy you, amigo!  Lots of luck.