Topic: Evaluating users/drawings

[Kate M]

Most of our drawings *look* okay when plotted, but are still not done correctly, i.e. non-associative hatches, poor block management, weird stuff with dimensions and leaders...but again, you can't find the problems on a hardcopy.

My question is -- do any of you have a process for checking on your drafters electronically? I can trust the other engineers to catch things that look wrong on paper, but I usually don't know about electronic mistakes until I have to actually edit the drawing (revise a detail, move some plan stuff), by which time it's usually too late.

Any suggestions?

[dubb]

if you use autodesk 2004 there is a cad standard command that will allow you to select which parts of the drawing to compare standards with.

lets say you have a drawing setup perfectly. dimensions, text, textstyles,dimscale, and a bunch of variables that need to be set. with that drawing, it can be set to compare the certain values into autocad to check if they are being followed. there was a previous post in here.

did u understand that?

[Kate M]

Yes, but that doesn't tell me if the drawing was done using "good drafting practices" which is more of what I'm looking for. I need to know if people know what they're doing, not if the layer names are right.

[ELOQUINTET]

well i would suggest adapting a standard and using a 3 strikes you're out motto. once a few people get fired i'm sure they'll get the message. that's really the only way to resolve it if it is tolerated it will occur plain and simple.

[Kate M]

That might work at a big firm, but there's only 18 of us, 2 drafters, and the mistakes aren't usually "firing" offenses...I just want to be able to answer when my boss says, "How's so-and-so doing?" I guess I could just spot-check a few drawings, look for stupid errors. Too bad it doesn't work to just say, "Don't be stupid (or lazy)."

[MP]

We check for violations like "xrefs cross project boundaries","xref instance count != 1", "null text count != 0", "high appid count", "invalid layers present", "entities on layer '0'" etc. via a custom application I wrote using objectdbx (affectionately known as 'Carnivore'). Basically it's a tool we use to ensure our deliverables meet the client's spec, though admittedly, it won't catch dumb drafting faux paux like "bozo cad dude did not use object snaps correctly" etc. Perhaps the next version.

[PDJ]

"bozo cad dude did not use object snaps correctly" etc.

OMG!! I wondered what happened to that guy?? He's working for you now??

I've always said, if I ever became an instructor, I'd spend the whole first day on nothing but using O'Snaps.. maybe even the first week!!

Drives me nuts to watch someone just eyeballin the drawing..

[dubb]

i used to work for a firm that had 30 people 4 drafters. any mistakes in drafting was blamed on one guy who was the lead drafter. so he was the only one that took any heat from the big boss (engineer) every one covered everyonelses' butt and it work great like that. like the only person i was working for was my drafting lead. and the drafting lead worked more directly with the big boss.

the way we dealt with drafters and mistakes was to have scheduled drafting meetings/presentation on specific drafting procedures

lesson 1

-setup general notes

lesson 2

-setup floor plan

lesson 3

-setup elevations

....and so forth

with this way we were able to find eachother on the right page...it took about 3 months to go over all the ways of drafting around the office. but we all found the right page

[hudster]

I audit drawings on a regular basis, I open them up and go through every layer, freezing them off and checking for problems.

I also go through a random selection of blocks looking for problems.

If I find a problem, I get the original draughter to fix them.  If they don't I've logged the problems under the QA system, and then the internal auditors are on it., so 95% of the time they fix it.

[jonesy]

I audit drawings on a regular basis, I open them up and go through every layer, freezing them off and checking for problems.

I also go through a random selection of blocks looking for problems.

If I find a problem, I get the original draughter to fix them.  If they don't I've logged the problems under the QA system, and then the internal auditors are on it., so 95% of the time they fix it.

Do you still do this.

We are about to start doing something along this line (the big boss here is eager for me to start this procedure as soon as I can). How does it work, does the boss specify which job to look at, or do you randomly open a drawing and audit it?

We have set up something in our cad manual which lets users know what I will be checking for should they be audited, but do you have a list of what you check so I can compare it with mine (just to see if I have forgot anything). A completed audit form will then go in the project file.

Many thanks

[daron]

...llin the drawing..

No, he works with me. That's my boss.

[daron]

You could always set up a lisp that reacts when someone sets their hatch associativity to 0 to reset it to one and pop up an alert box that says: "I'm watching you. Hatch disassociativity is not allowed in this firm. -Kate". Of course, that won't work until you can do some management programming in LT.

[Wanderer]

I audit drawings on a regular basis, I open them up and go through every layer, freezing them off and checking for problems.

I also go through a random selection of blocks looking for problems.

If I find a problem, I get the original draughter to fix them.  If they don't I've logged the problems under the QA system, and then the internal auditors are on it., so 95% of the time they fix it.

I don't check the work of the other cad people in my company, as they only do drawings for themselves, but, I do manually check 1 drawing from each contractor for every project that is done for us by an outside firm...

yep, it is time-consuming... but, much less so than trying to work their junk into my composite plans.