Topic: Revision Help Please

[M-dub]

heh .. yeah ... they claimed it was to prevent "bad" drawings from getting released to production. I called it stupidity...

?? why?

I'd call it ... something... not sure if I'd say "Stupid", but hey, whatever works.  To each, their own.

I heard a radio commercial for some online backup service and their motto was something like "It's never too late to protect your files until it is."

[Keith™]

heh .. yeah ... they claimed it was to prevent "bad" drawings from getting released to production. I called it stupidity...

?? why?

Because we controlled all plans, they were released when production signed for them, and because frequently we had to revert back to previous incarnations of the drawings. Remember, this is also all "in house", and there are no outside vendors or clients receiving our drawings, only our production team.

Imagine you designed a plant with the understanding that a specified area should be a specific way. The owner or engineer or hell anyone comes back and says ... hey, we think the previous design was better, we are going to go back to the previous design.

I realize in your office that may be unlikely, or you just charge the client to redo the work, but we were/are our own client. Thus it is in our best interest to not have to redo work that has already been done.

[CADaver]

heh .. yeah ... they claimed it was to prevent "bad" drawings from getting released to production. I called it stupidity...

?? why?

I'd call it ... something... not sure if I'd say "Stupid", but hey, whatever works.  To each, their own.

I heard a radio commercial for some online backup service and their motto was something like "It's never too late to protect your files until it is."

"Protecting" a file is completely different from keeping old files in native formats.

[M-dub]

Ok, but what if you NEED that native format?  What good is a PDF going to do you?

[CADaver]

heh .. yeah ... they claimed it was to prevent "bad" drawings from getting released to production. I called it stupidity...

?? why?

Because we controlled all plans, they were released when production signed for them, and because frequently we had to revert back to previous incarnations of the drawings. Remember, this is also all "in house", and there are no outside vendors or clients receiving our drawings, only our production team.

Imagine you designed a plant with the understanding that a specified area should be a specific way. The owner or engineer or hell anyone comes back and says ... hey, we think the previous design was better, we are going to go back to the previous design.

I realize in your office that may be unlikely, or you just charge the client to redo the work, but we were/are our own client. Thus it is in our best interest to not have to redo work that has already been done.

So you make it easy for guys to make bad decisions?  and you feel that is in your best interests?  okay ...

Here if the client wants a change, we charge him for it, if he wants to change back, we charge him for it.  In the last two decades we've had to revert a design less than a handful of times because making a design decision in the first place is a very expensive proposition involving a great level of collaboration in the original decision making process, changing THAT design is something only undertaken with extreme concern and again involving a great level of collaboration in the process.  Changing it back is, well, in a word, stupid.  Bouncing back and forth between designs seems counterproductive. It is especially so on a lump-sum contracts, requiring contract renegotiations and change order estimates and charges for each change.

Back to keeping the old files, how do you handle the multitude of background XREF's that continue to change as the design progresses?  Do you lock those as well?  What do you do when part of it reverts and part doesn't?  And what of all the files that use these files as xrefs?  Sounds like a hairball to me, or you avoid using these extremely productive tools to avoid the hairball, again, seems counter-productive.

[CADaver]

Ok, but what if you NEED that native format?  What good is a PDF going to do you?

Why would I 'need' the native format of an old revision?

heck I can't even imagine wanting it, much less needing it.

[M-dub]

Ok, but what if you NEED that native format?  What good is a PDF going to do you?

Why would I 'need' the native format of an old revision?

heck I can't even imagine wanting it, much less needing it.

That, I can't answer.  Want and Need are definitely two separate issues.

Varying degrees of catastrophe could be a reason for needing it.

[CADaver]

Ok, but what if you NEED that native format?  What good is a PDF going to do you?

Why would I 'need' the native format of an old revision?

heck I can't even imagine wanting it, much less needing it.

That, I can't answer.  Want and Need are definitely two separate issues.

Varying degrees of catastrophe could be a reason for needing it.

Are you talking about backups?? or keeping old revisions??

[M-dub]

Are you talking about backups?? or keeping old revisions??

Both, I guess... In my world (being the key phrase), there is a fine grey line between the two.

[Keith™]

So you make it easy for guys to make bad decisions?  and you feel that is in your best interests?  okay ...

You cannot characterize the decisions as bad ... they are merely decisions .. we deal with them and move along ... I get paid to produce what the client wants .. period, end of story ... I don't get paid to convince the client what they want is inadequate, incorrect, or plain silly. That being said, I can maintain thousands of archived drawings for less than I can pay someone to redraw that which is already drawn. That my friend IS in our best interest. Revisions cost money .. we charge $150 minimum per page .. you want to back up ... fine ... that will be at least $150 .. now I can take that $150 and put it in the bank and have Joe copy the previous revision to the current folder, add a revision date and print it out ... OR I can have him sit down and change all of the stuff back to what it was previously, taking a 2 minute job and turning it into potentially several hours. That is being smart ... we don't charge less ... we just don't have to work as hard the second time around.

Here if the client wants a change, we charge him for it, if he wants to change back, we charge him for it.  In the last two decades we've had to revert a design less than a handful of times because making a design decision in the first place is a very expensive proposition involving a great level of collaboration in the original decision making process, changing THAT design is something only undertaken with extreme concern and again involving a great level of collaboration in the process.  Changing it back is, well, in a word, stupid.  Bouncing back and forth between designs seems counterproductive. It is especially so on a lump-sum contracts, requiring contract renegotiations and change order estimates and charges for each change.

The last plans that we had to revert back to a previous design was last week. It could have been redrawn or it could have been retrieved from the archived drawings, what would you do? It is much more efficient to retrieve an already existing drawing than to recreate it. You of all people should understand that, considering your comments regarding the "extremely productive tools" such as xrefs. Oh .. and don't think we don't charge the client .. we do .. we just don't have to put out as much effort as you do for that backup to a previous revision. If I can have a designer retrieve a drawing in 3 seconds for the same fee as having them redraw it, I am being much more efficient.

Your lack of understanding this is likely due to your inability to comprehend the vast stupidity of nearly all people who want a home designed. Many times they pay for a revision, only to realize, they don't like it ... so back to the previous revision we go. This is the normal modus operandi in the architectural field, not the exception.

Back to keeping the old files, how do you handle the multitude of background XREF's that continue to change as the design progresses?  Do you lock those as well?  What do you do when part of it reverts and part doesn't?

We use the plan which will require the least amount of time and effort to get to the final product.

 And what of all the files that use these files as xrefs?  Sounds like a hairball to me, or you avoid using these extremely productive tools to avoid the hairball, again, seems counter-productive.

Nope we use them in the architectural field, at least in our office, there are limited xrefs. Outside walls on buildings ... everything else is built upon that ... If the shape of the building changes, then the xref changes, as does all associated drawings. Thus you have a revisioned xref and an original. All xrefs are dynamically pathed.

Incidently, we are talking about a small budget item, mostly less that $300k, some under $100k ... changes are inevitable in the housing industry and must be done as economically as possible.

One more thing .. our archive of electronic drawings have saved our butts in at least 3 cases that I know of ... to the tune of at least $1.2m ... in fact, we are currently fighting a battle over a house built 4 years ago, that supposedly was designed incorrectly. We have the original owners approvals and previous revisions showing where we had done it how they said it should have been, but the owner subsequently changed the plans, we revised, home didn't turn out like they wanted .. we are the bad guys .. now how is that for a load?

[CADaver]

Are you talking about backups?? or keeping old revisions??

Both, I guess... In my world (being the key phrase), there is a fine grey line between the two.

Two completely different things, backups are not revisions and are there to replace a damaged file.  A revision is an issued legal document of a viable file.  For backups, the server backups up all modified files twice a day and keeps those backups for one week.  A weekly backup is made at the end of each week of ALL files and kept for one month, monthlies are made and kept for a year or until the project is archived.  If you have a catostrophic corruption of the file you can go through the backups looking for the last uncorrupted version.  

Revisions are plotted to PDF with the revision number added to the file name and kept in the project "Issued" directory.  The native format of that file may continue to be modified as the design progresses.

[M-dub]

Well, whatever floats your boat.

I'm floatin' on outta this one. 

[Binky]

So you make it easy for guys to make bad decisions?  and you feel that is in your best interests?  okay ...[\quote]
Thats a little harsh, don't you think? 

[/quote]Here if the client wants a change, we charge him for it, if he wants to change back, we charge him for it. [/quote]
Not very client friendly.  If all it takes is about 2 minutes to change back, we tend to simply charge a small admin fee if anything.  I do retail work, it is very fast paced and to make a living at it you have to do alot of it so anything that keeps the client happy with us, ultimately gets us more work from that client.  We made our money when we did the change to begin with, we are not out anything and build a fair amount of good will.  Basically if we save them money, they tend to spend with us in the future, everybody wins.

My attitude might be different if I was doing industrial or schools or something, each 'aspect'(for want of a word) will have different approaches and different needs and reasons for the 'how's' and 'why's'

[/quote]Back to keeping the old files, how do you handle the multitude of background XREF's that continue to change as the design progresses?  Do you lock those as well?  What do you do when part of it reverts and part doesn't?  And what of all the files that use these files as xrefs?  Sounds like a hairball to me, or you avoid using these extremely productive tools to avoid the hairball, again, seems counter-productive.
[/quote]
We don't save xref paths so we can get away with it quite easily since all of the files are in a single folder (named specifically to maintain at least some organization).  This would not work out so well for the folks in other departments here but saving relative paths and copying the folder structure would work just as well, but again their needs may be different from mine.

Not for everybody I know, not pushing it. it is just what we do here and it works for us quite well.

...something happened with the quotes....sorry about that folks...

[CADaver]

So you make it easy for guys to make bad decisions?  and you feel that is in your best interests?  okay ...

You cannot characterize the decisions as bad ... they are merely decisions .. we deal with them and move along ... I get paid to produce what the client wants .. period, end of story ... I don't get paid to convince the client what they want is inadequate, incorrect, or plain silly. That being said, I can maintain thousands of archived drawings for less than I can pay someone to redraw that which is already drawn. That my friend IS in our best interest. Revisions cost money .. we charge $150 minimum per page .. you want to back up ... fine ... that will be at least $150 .. now I can take that $150 and put it in the bank and have Joe copy the previous revision to the current folder, add a revision date and print it out ... OR I can have him sit down and change all of the stuff back to what it was previously, taking a 2 minute job and turning it into potentially several hours. That is being smart ... we don't charge less ... we just don't have to work as hard the second time around.

Difference in scale between what you do and what we do.  Our rates to the client are over $150 an hour, not a page for revision.  A change in design for us impacts hundreds of drawings so we don't want changes and have set it up to severly (SEVERLY) discourage changes in design.  We don't have "Joe" on a project, we may have four hundred "Joes" on a project handling several thousand files a week.  Just tracking that many old files on the chance they might change would not be cost effective for us. 

The last plans that we had to revert back to a previous design was last week. It could have been redrawn or it could have been retrieved from the archived drawings, what would you do? It is much more efficient to retrieve an already existing drawing than to recreate it. You of all people should understand that, considering your comments regarding the "extremely productive tools" such as xrefs.

Its even more efficient to never make the revision.  It seems you guys move into 'final' detail phase a lot earlier than we do.  We spend time up front getting the buy in from the client with skeletal 'preliminary' layouts.

Your lack of understanding this is likely due to your inability to comprehend the vast stupidity of nearly all people who want a home designed. Many times they pay for a revision, only to realize, they don't like it ... so back to the previous revision we go. This is the normal modus operandi in the architectural field, not the exception.

That, and I think the number of zreos on the end of the costs may have a bigger impact on my side of the issue.  We make 'em pay large for the original design and even larger for revisions.  Add to that the schedule impact, missing a startup by a single day can cost the client $millions in lost profits.  Changes are discouraged at every level.

Back to keeping the old files, how do you handle the multitude of background XREF's that continue to change as the design progresses?  Do you lock those as well?  What do you do when part of it reverts and part doesn't?

We use the plan which will require the least amount of time and effort to get to the final product.

Incidently, we are talking about a small budget item, mostly less that $300k, some under $100k ... changes are inevitable in the housing industry and must be done as economically as possible.

There it is.  $300k won't buy washers for our average project.

One more thing .. our archive of electronic drawings have saved our butts in at least 3 cases that I know of ... to the tune of at least $1.2m ... in fact, we are currently fighting a battle over a house built 4 years ago, that supposedly was designed incorrectly. We have the original owners approvals and previous revisions showing where we had done it how they said it should have been, but the owner subsequently changed the plans, we revised, home didn't turn out like they wanted .. we are the bad guys .. now how is that for a load?

having been involved in several litigations over drawings, I'm surprised the native format files are admissable.  That's a reason we keep PDF's digitally signed and dated, plus a hard-copy of that PDF.  'Fixed' formats <less easy to modify> are more readily accepted in court cases, than native formats that we as users can easily manipulate.

[CADaver]

So you make it easy for guys to make bad decisions?  and you feel that is in your best interests?  okay ...

Thats a little harsh, don't you think? 

Yep, thats why I said it.  Your point?

Here if the client wants a change, we charge him for it, if he wants to change back, we charge him for it.

Not very client friendly.  If all it takes is about 2 minutes to change back, we tend to simply charge a small admin fee if anything.  I do retail work, it is very fast paced and to make a living at it you have to do alot of it so anything that keeps the client happy with us, ultimately gets us more work from that client.  We made our money when we did the change to begin with, we are not out anything and build a fair amount of good will.  Basically if we save them money, they tend to spend with us in the future, everybody wins.

Considering the thousands of files we produce for a single project we would burn considerably more than the two minutes just tracking the old files well enough to find the version we needed.  We keep the client happy by producing his facitility cheaper than the next guy, we do that by managing change aggressively.

Back to keeping the old files, how do you handle the multitude of background XREF's that continue to change as the design progresses?  Do you lock those as well?  What do you do when part of it reverts and part doesn't?  And what of all the files that use these files as xrefs?  Sounds like a hairball to me, or you avoid using these extremely productive tools to avoid the hairball, again, seems counter-productive.

We don't save xref paths so we can get away with it quite easily since all of the files are in a single folder (named specifically to maintain at least some organization).  This would not work out so well for the folks in other departments here but saving relative paths and copying the folder structure would work just as well, but again their needs may be different from mine.

To save the old revision you need to freeze all xrefs used in that revision at that same point.  To recover that revision means you'd have to recover all the xrefs that revision used, which may not be possible without overwriting valid subsequent revisions of those files.