TheSwamp
CAD Forums => CAD General => Topic started by: Shelley on June 18, 2008, 10:23:40 PM
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I was wondering if I might be able to get some help.. My company is currently looking at the way Drawing Revions are done. We work with
Architectural and Electrical Drawings.
I was hoping to find out what other companies do.
What do you do as far as your file structure? Do you just keep with the original file name, no matter what revision? Do you keep a copy of the original (or previous revision)? If you do how do you manage this?
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We keep a copy of the original and the new file is suffixed with Rx where x is the revision number.
Before I am lambasted for doing this, let me explain why ...
We deal directly with the client, as such the homeowner is subject to change their mind several times before the final product is delivered. Also, we keep the revisions for a record of revision history, it has been helpful a time or two when the client insists we changed something when we didn't and we have the drawings to prove it.
It also helps us revert to a previous state of drawings, as is common when the client says, "I want you to do this" then after they find out how much extra it will cost them to build, they decide to return to the previous incarnation.
We also use revisions as sales tools. If a plan went through 3 or 4 revisions, and the client likes the base plan, we can show them several permutations and get a better starting point for the new client, thus in the end, make fewer revisions.
Of course our policy is to make all revisions in the preliminary phase and only do the construction documents once, although that is sometimes not the case.
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In these days of Lawsuits for ANYTHING, you should ALWAYS keep any & all Revs.
That being said, we only change the Rev #s when they leave our office to anyone outside of our office.
The filenames stay the same, only the Rev # changes.
If that same dwg is used for another job, it becomes a new dwg - even though the job # is the only difference.
craigr
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I used to have an "Archive" routine that would do just that. Select a button, fill out the description, and then it would increment the rev block, and then save the file to an archive folder under the project name (H:\Archive\ProjectName\ProjectDrawing.R3.dwg), as well as save the file to the work in progress folder (P:\Projects\ProjectName\WIP\ProjectDrawing.R3.dwg). When the project is complete, the folder on the P drive is deleted, and the archived folder is maintained. This was all tied to a database as well to minimize any human errors.
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I work at / for two different companies, so I have the Contractor method and the Client method here.
Contractor Method
Drawings come in and are filed on an 'Originals' drive as they are requested.
O:\Client\JobNumber\ORIG01\
O:\Client\JobNumber\ORIG02\
O:\Client\JobNumber\ORIG03\, etc...
Our current practice also includes creating and maintaining a CD as a backup plan, but it's REALLY labour intensive and for the number of times we've had to go back to the CD, it's really not worth spending the time to do it. Besides, they should have a better / more reliable backup system for their server in case something happens. This practice is soon to be tossed out the window for reasons mentioned above... and they ARE going to be getting a more reliable backup system in place.
Then they are COPIED to our Work drive
W:\Client\JobNumber\
That's where we modify the drawings while keeping the filename and drawing number the same. All clients have different revision standards, so it depends. (I'll give an example below in Client Methods).
When work is complete, they get MOVED from the work drive back to the originals drive but in a Transmittal directory.
O:\Client\JobNumber\XMIT01\
O:\Client\JobNumber\XMIT02\
O:\Client\JobNumber\XMIT03\, etc...
We then create yet another project CD to file with the hard copy of the project. I don't have a problem with this CD... it's the first one I hate!
Now, the Client Method
This particular client uses Synergis Adept which maintains revision history for each drawing or file that gets modified. File names and drawing numbers all stay the same, but when a drawing needs to be updated, the users sign the drawings out to a work area, modify them and rev them up from (ex.) Rev 5 to Rev 6A. If there are subsequent changes / it goes up to 6B, 6C, and so on until the As Built stage when the Alpha gets dropped and we just go up to Rev 6. The drawing is then signed back into the proper library but you can always access the older revisions if you want.
There are all kinds of ways to do it, but I believe you should always try to keep a copy of what you started with and what you ended up with.
Hope that helps...
We keep a copy of the original and the new file is suffixed with Rx where x is the revision number.
Before I am lambasted for doing this, let me explain why ...
Since you know it's "worth" a lambasting, I'll leave you alone. ;)
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Everytime a set leaves the office, permitting or revision or what ever, I create a folder with the date and title of revision and copy ALL not just the changed dwgs into that folder and change them to read only. Disk space is cheap and we do not save paths on our xrefs so that part make this process easier.
From time to time we have to go 'backward' as it were when the client gets costs of a particular change and decides not to do it. We have a complete set of dwgs of the previous issue to slip into the 'working' folder.
The 'best' way to archive is not the same for everybody, whatever you do, just make sure that you are comfortable explaining it to others and that you can find whatever you need to about previous issues of the project in a hurry.
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^^ what Mike said in his "client" method
Our filenames are the same as the part number - keeps things simple. So they never, ever change.
The document management systems takes care of all the revisions, we don't even think about it any more.
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Sounds like Binky is about as close to our method as one could get ...
Oh and M-dub .. you are doing the same thing we are, you just store them with Adept ... now how do you think adept manages the drawings?
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Sounds like Binky is about as close to our method as one could get ...
Oh and M-dub .. you are doing the same thing we are, you just store them with Adept ... now how do you think adept manages the drawings?
it stores them - without changing the filename - in "hidden" sub libraries which can then be accessed through the relationship browser whenever required
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Sounds like Binky is about as close to our method as one could get ...
Oh and M-dub .. you are doing the same thing we are, you just store them with Adept ... now how do you think adept manages the drawings?
it stores them - without changing the filename - in "hidden" sub libraries which can then be accessed through the relationship browser whenever required
Precisely .. but they are stored as independent drawings, thus you have the ability to revert to a previous incarnation should you choose to do so.
Many places I have worked would just overwrite the dwg and never change the name. Thus you had no records, or a revision history.
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Sounds like Binky is about as close to our method as one could get ...
Oh and M-dub .. you are doing the same thing we are, you just store them with Adept ... now how do you think adept manages the drawings?
it stores them - without changing the filename - in "hidden" sub libraries which can then be accessed through the relationship browser whenever required
Precisely .. but they are stored as independent drawings, thus you have the ability to revert to a previous incarnation should you choose to do so.
Many places I have worked would just overwrite the dwg and never change the name. Thus you had no records, or a revision history.
and that is pretty much suicide by dwg format
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heh .. yeah ... they claimed it was to prevent "bad" drawings from getting released to production. I called it stupidity...
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Record files in PDF only. One dwg file, the current one, name never changes.
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heh .. yeah ... they claimed it was to prevent "bad" drawings from getting released to production. I called it stupidity...
?? why?
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Uhh.. yeah, what Hendie said. :)
The only thing I don't like about the drawings going in the hidden system folders is that they pop up in search results if you're using the Windows search utility.
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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."
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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.
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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.
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Ok, but what if you NEED that native format? What good is a PDF going to do you?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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??
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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.
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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?
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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.
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Well, whatever floats your boat.
I'm floatin' on outta this one. :)
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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.
Word up, Homeslice!
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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?
don't have one, not even a dull one. just an observation.
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.
what you and I do are worlds apart you have thousands of files my part is less then 100. I would not even dream of doing what I do here where you are. Just saying that it was easy for us here is all and works quite well. believe me when I tell you that I would love to do these stores only once, just not the nature of this beast though. Retail is fanatical about being "up to date" between permit and grand opening there are no less then 3 milestones built into the process for making changes to the store layout. There was one occasion where they were saw cutting the floor 10 days before grand opening to get a specific shelving unit in a specific spot.
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.
Autocad looks in the current folder first. by putting the base files and such in the same folder as the working files, all is good no matter where we are, home, work, laptop on punch list reading of a archive cd a year down the round when they change the layout of the joint. We can get away with this since we do not have tons of files and with a little filename management it is not as cluttered in the folders as one might think.
think I got the quotes right this time, thanks for bearing with me on that.
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Ok I am not sure I see the problem with changing the File name and adding R# at the end of the file name.
At my company we only have a typical hard drive with windows explorer and folder and files and they do a network backup weekly. We have as a company decided that we will have a folder per Job number. Under this folder there are three folder 1) for recieved drawings (there are dated folders under here so we know which floorplans are the lastest) 2) Record Drawings 3) Working Files (under here is a folder called Archive)... While working in the Working Files Folder, when I have a revision I do change the file name and add a R# at then I move the Original Drawing to the Archive folder. At the end of a project you might have several drawings in the archive folder with the same name but different R# behind them. All the while the most current drawing revision is in the Working Files Folder (one level up from Archive). Also Note that we keep all Xrefs in the same folder as our drawings therefore removing the whole lost path issue. The only time we have the lost path issue is if we change and Xrefs name which is not common for us. Also Note that some of the Jobs we have are 50 pages and each page is a file.
I have a Coworker who is doing the lets not change the File name way but its Because he has a script to print the drawings in order and changing the file name make the script error out. He said what he does is when he has his first revision he make a folder under archive called Rev 0 and copies the files into that folder then makes his changes to the working file folder set.
Which way is better? I feel my way is and I have a co-worker who say his way is? Can you give me some pros and cons on both ways that you all see?
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Which way is better? I feel my way is and I have a co-worker who say his way is? Can you give me some pros and cons on both ways that you all see?
We have done it both ways, but I think copying the entire folder is winning out. We can plot the entire folder without incident, plus it keepsthe project "together" .. keeping in mind that most of our projects have less than 15 pages, some as few as 3, the average is about 12.
Our entire project is less than 3megs for even the largest of projects, so drive space is not an issue. We keep the DWG files merely for the ability to quickly and easily retrieve them for editing.
There are pros and cons for both ways, but in the end, you need to do what works best for your company, instead of trying to duplicate something someone else does.
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Ok I am not sure I see the problem with changing the File name and adding R# at the end of the file name.
That kills every other file on the project that uses that file as an XREF.
Also Note that we keep all Xrefs in the same folder as our drawings therefore removing the whole lost path issue. The only time we have the lost path issue is if we change and Xrefs name which is not common for us.
Wait a minute, first you say you don't see a problem changing a file's name then you say its not common. One of us is confused.
Also Note that some of the Jobs we have are 50 pages and each page is a file.
Wish we had all that extra time on a project to spend jumping around ten or twenty times the number of files we have now.
Which way is better? I feel my way is and I have a co-worker who say his way is? Can you give me some pros and cons on both ways that you all see?
Neither
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what you and I do are worlds apart you have thousands of files my part is less then 100. I would not even dream of doing what I do here where you are. Just saying that it was easy for us here is all and works quite well.
Okay follow me close on this one, nobody called me on it before so I'm thinking it was missed.
I still have one guy working one model at a time, just like you. If it makes sense for me touching thousands of files (one at a time by one guy at a time) it makes sense for you working one file at a time.
believe me when I tell you that I would love to do these stores only once, just not the nature of this beast though.
You guys have trained your clients to do that to you because you haven't made it cost them enough to change.
Retail is fanatical about being "up to date" between permit and grand opening there are no less then 3 milestones built into the process for making changes to the store layout. There was one occasion where they were saw cutting the floor 10 days before grand opening to get a specific shelving unit in a specific spot.
Make it cost 'em and they'll quit doing that.
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.
Autocad looks in the current folder first. by putting the base files and such in the same folder as the working files, all is good no matter where we are, home, work, laptop on punch list reading of a archive cd a year down the round when they change the layout of the joint. We can get away with this since we do not have tons of files and with a little filename management it is not as cluttered in the folders as one might think.
But all the xrefs have to be frozen at the same point as the revised file you're attempting to save, nothing about that file can change or the file using it as an XREF is no longer frozen. So let's say next week you need to revert back to the older revision, that means any file that file used as an xref must revert to the olde revision as well. That might be okay as long as the rest of that file can revert, but if you need to revert only the South end of the unit but the North end stays at the later release, you're screwed.
think I got the quotes right this time, thanks for bearing with me on that.
Not a problem, I've slopped a dripper once or twice myself.
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Our entire project is less than 3megs for even the largest of projects, so drive space is not an issue.
geez that's our averge file size for a single file. Just how long could it take to redraw the last revision to one file if their so small?
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Also Note that we keep all Xrefs in the same folder as our drawings therefore removing the whole lost path issue. The only time we have the lost path issue is if we change and Xrefs name which is not common for us.
What this means is Typically we will have a File called E001 that has an xref arch001. When we revise it we are changing the E001 to E001_R1 and it is not common that we have changes to arch001. If I change E001 to E001_R1 it does not lose the Xref.
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Our entire project is less than 3megs for even the largest of projects, so drive space is not an issue.
geez that's our averge file size for a single file. Just how long could it take to redraw the last revision to one file if their so small?
Sometimes, it doesn't matter how long it would take. Some projects are just that terrible that the fewer times I have to touch a drawing, the better.
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Welcome to theSwamp, by the way, Shelley. :)
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To add to what I mentioned in my first post on page 1 about the 'Contractor Method', if at some point of the project, the designers / engineers come in and say "Scrap that work, we're redoing it 'this' way.", we'll often throw a copy of the current 'version' in a folder called "Old Design - Do Not Use" and zip it up. We do this because there is always a chance that they will come back after you've redrawn everything and say "Yeah, uhh... So, the client decided to go with the first design instead.". It has happened on numerous occasions and on one job in particular, we made it up to "Old Design 3". Gotta love indecisive clients with lots of capital to spend. :)
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Also Note that we keep all Xrefs in the same folder as our drawings therefore removing the whole lost path issue. The only time we have the lost path issue is if we change and Xrefs name which is not common for us.
What this means is Typically we will have a File called E001 that has an xref arch001. When we revise it we are changing the E001 to E001_R1 and it is not common that we have changes to arch001. If I change E001 to E001_R1 it does not lose the Xref.
yep one of us is still confused. What happens when arch001 needs revision??
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Welcome to theSwamp, by the way, Shelley. :)
Yes, welcome aboard, Shelley. Don't mind me, no one else does. ;)
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Gotta love indecisive clients with lots of capital to spend. :)
I wouldn't know. Not sure I want to.
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Gotta love indecisive clients with lots of capital to spend. :)
I wouldn't know. Not sure I want to.
Oops... That was supposed to be a sarcastic smiley. :roll: <- Closest thing we've got
No, it's always the clients with terrible drawings and poor standards that are like that. The clients that we enjoy working for usually know exactly what they want.
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Our entire project is less than 3megs for even the largest of projects, so drive space is not an issue.
geez that's our averge file size for a single file. Just how long could it take to redraw the last revision to one file if their so small?
Well, considering most of the stuff we do is circles and lines, it could take anywhere from an hour to 3 days ... depending upon the complexity of the drawing. I have had some that only took a few minutes, but those are very rare.
I have had projects that have taken 3 weeks just to get the floor plans worked out to as close as what the homeowner wants as can be done. Keep in mind we are working on projects where $1000 can be a deal breaker ... and lets face it, people aren't exactly beating the doors down trying to buy a house.
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Our entire project is less than 3megs for even the largest of projects, so drive space is not an issue.
geez that's our averge file size for a single file. Just how long could it take to redraw the last revision to one file if their so small?
Well, considering most of the stuff we do is circles and lines, it could take anywhere from an hour to 3 days ... depending upon the complexity of the drawing. I have had some that only took a few minutes, but those are very rare.
I have had projects that have taken 3 weeks just to get the floor plans worked out to as close as what the homeowner wants as can be done. Keep in mind we are working on projects where $1000 can be a deal breaker ... and lets face it, people aren't exactly beating the doors down trying to buy a house.
And how long do you spend tracking previous revisions that may or may not be necessary later??
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And how long do you spend tracking previous revisions that may or may not be necessary later??
I know you're asking Keith, but I'll give my answer too.
Contractor method: 5 minutes per job... if we don't need them. 30 or so if we do.
Client method (with the help of Adept): Zero... it does it all for us.
How much time does it take you to create all of your PDF's?
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And how long do you spend tracking previous revisions that may or may not be necessary later??
I know you're asking Keith, but I'll give my answer too.
Contractor method: 5 minutes per job... if we don't need them. 30 or so if we do.
Per drawing? per how many drawings? per day? per year?
Client method (with the help of Adept): Zero... it does it all for us.
How much time does it take you to create all of your PDF's?
PDF's are not for recreating design, but for warranty. We're required to warranty all projects for seven years. But that aside our EDMS does it for us.
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And how long do you spend tracking previous revisions that may or may not be necessary later??
I know you're asking Keith, but I'll give my answer too.
Contractor method: 5 minutes per job... if we don't need them. 30 or so if we do.
Per drawing? per how many drawings? per day? per year?
Doesn't matter. One drawing or fifty. Right click -> Copy -> Browse to "Old Design - Do Not Use" folder -> Right Click -> Paste.
Let's pretend you didn't work for a big company for a minute. In fact, let's pretend you worked with Shelley at what seems to be a very small company that has AutoCAD and Windows and that's it. What would you suggest that she does regarding revisions?
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Our entire project is less than 3megs for even the largest of projects, so drive space is not an issue.
geez that's our averge file size for a single file. Just how long could it take to redraw the last revision to one file if their so small?
Well, considering most of the stuff we do is circles and lines, it could take anywhere from an hour to 3 days ... depending upon the complexity of the drawing. I have had some that only took a few minutes, but those are very rare.
I have had projects that have taken 3 weeks just to get the floor plans worked out to as close as what the homeowner wants as can be done. Keep in mind we are working on projects where $1000 can be a deal breaker ... and lets face it, people aren't exactly beating the doors down trying to buy a house.
And how long do you spend tracking previous revisions that may or may not be necessary later??
none ...
The process is:
Client issues revision
Revision goes through project manager
Project manager writes up change order
Change order delivered to production
Production browses to project file, right click, copy, right click, paste, rename
Open project enter revision date, make changes save drawing issue to project manager
Project manager issues to client
Now, if the client wants to revert to a previous incarnation, the process is the same except there is no "make changes" step. Thus we have eliminated 95% of the work related to issuing a set of drawings out of this office.
If a previous project incarnation is never needed, we simply ignore that it exists.
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And how long do you spend tracking previous revisions that may or may not be necessary later??
I know you're asking Keith, but I'll give my answer too.
Contractor method: 5 minutes per job... if we don't need them. 30 or so if we do.
Per drawing? per how many drawings? per day? per year?
Doesn't matter. One drawing or fifty. Right click -> Copy -> Browse to "Old Design - Do Not Use" folder -> Right Click -> Paste.
You just over-wrote last week's revisions.
Let's pretend you didn't work for a big company for a minute. In fact, let's pretend you worked with Shelley at what seems to be a very small company that has AutoCAD and Windows and that's it. What would you suggest that she does regarding revisions?
The same thing I do here. That was sort of my point earlier. If it makes sense for me to do it on these huge jobs, it makes sense to do it on every job because it's still one guy working one file at a time. A big job is just thousands of small jobs a lot closer together. <file size and complexity may be considerably different, but thats still in my favor.>
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And how long do you spend tracking previous revisions that may or may not be necessary later??
I know you're asking Keith, but I'll give my answer too.
Contractor method: 5 minutes per job... if we don't need them. 30 or so if we do.
Per drawing? per how many drawings? per day? per year?
Doesn't matter. One drawing or fifty. Right click -> Copy -> Browse to "Old Design - Do Not Use" folder -> Right Click -> Paste.
You just over-wrote last week's revisions.
No I didn't.
To add to what I mentioned in my first post on page 1 about the 'Contractor Method', if at some point of the project, the designers / engineers come in and say "Scrap that work, we're redoing it 'this' way.", we'll often throw a copy of the current 'version' in a folder called "Old Design - Do Not Use" and zip it up. We do this because there is always a chance that they will come back after you've redrawn everything and say "Yeah, uhh... So, the client decided to go with the first design instead.". It has happened on numerous occasions and on one job in particular, we made it up to "Old Design 3".
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Production browses to project file, right click, copy, right click, paste, rename
And that takes zero time?? come on you know better than that.
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And how long do you spend tracking previous revisions that may or may not be necessary later??
I know you're asking Keith, but I'll give my answer too.
Contractor method: 5 minutes per job... if we don't need them. 30 or so if we do.
Per drawing? per how many drawings? per day? per year?
Doesn't matter. One drawing or fifty. Right click -> Copy -> Browse to "Old Design - Do Not Use" folder -> Right Click -> Paste.
You just over-wrote last week's revisions.
No I didn't.
To add to what I mentioned in my first post on page 1 about the 'Contractor Method', if at some point of the project, the designers / engineers come in and say "Scrap that work, we're redoing it 'this' way.", we'll often throw a copy of the current 'version' in a folder called "Old Design - Do Not Use" and zip it up. We do this because there is always a chance that they will come back after you've redrawn everything and say "Yeah, uhh... So, the client decided to go with the first design instead.". It has happened on numerous occasions and on one job in particular, we made it up to "Old Design 3".
Oh okay, so you have Old design 1.zip, old design 2.zip, old design 3.zip, etc. and making and tracking all these zips takes how long now? how do you know which zip to go get?
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Production browses to project file, right click, copy, right click, paste, rename
And that takes zero time?? come on you know better than that.
No, that takes about 7 seconds ... but you didn't ask how long it took to create a new project folder, you asked how long it took to track previous revisions. Since we don't track previous revision history, it takes zero time.
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Oh okay, so you have Old design 1.zip, old design 2.zip, old design 3.zip, etc. and making and tracking all these zips takes how long now?
Less time than it would take to redraw back to the original I would bet.
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Oh okay, so you have Old design 1.zip, old design 2.zip, old design 3.zip, etc. and making and tracking all these zips takes how long now?
Less time than it would take to redraw back to the original I would bet.
Bingo Bango.
Sometimes I don't even care if it would take longer... Depending on the client / job, I'd rather be browsing through folders and zip files rather than spending another minute working on those God forsaken drawings!
So there! :-D
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Oh okay, so you have Old design 1.zip, old design 2.zip, old design 3.zip, etc. and making and tracking all these zips takes how long now? how do you know which zip to go get?
Lesse .. for us, we receive a drawing with revision dates .. if there are 2 revision dates, we know to use the second revision, if there are 5 revision dates, we know to use the 5th revision. If there are no revision dates, we know to use the original.
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Oh okay, so you have Old design 1.zip, old design 2.zip, old design 3.zip, etc. and making and tracking all these zips takes how long now?
Less time than it would take to redraw back to the original I would bet.
but my point is they don't know how much time they are spending on this effort that may or may not prove of use later.
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Production browses to project file, right click, copy, right click, paste, rename
And that takes zero time?? come on you know better than that.
No, that takes about 7 seconds ...
for every revision of every drawing and there's never an error?
but you didn't ask how long it took to create a new project folder, you asked how long it took to track previous revisions. Since we don't track previous revision history, it takes zero time.
different definition of "track", sorry.
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Oh okay, so you have Old design 1.zip, old design 2.zip, old design 3.zip, etc. and making and tracking all these zips takes how long now? how do you know which zip to go get?
Lesse .. for us, we receive a drawing with revision dates .. if there are 2 revision dates, we know to use the second revision, if there are 5 revision dates, we know to use the 5th revision. If there are no revision dates, we know to use the original.
So you ONLY ever go back just one revision, and its ALWAYs a whole revision?
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Oh okay, so you have Old design 1.zip, old design 2.zip, old design 3.zip, etc. and making and tracking all these zips takes how long now?
Less time than it would take to redraw back to the original I would bet.
but my point is they don't know how much time they are spending on this effort that may or may not prove of use later.
To STORE the old revisions, it takes a couple minutes.
To FIND the old revisions that you're looking for IF you end up NEEDING them, it COULD take a few minutes more.
That is while a job is in progress, dealing with "Minor" revisions (6A, 6B, 6C, etc.).
We also have an Archive drive where we store old jobs. If for some reason, we need an old "Major" revision (5, 4, 3, etc.) it could be as simple as doing a search under that client for that drawing number and sorting the results by date modified. Yet a few more additional minutes.
It really isn't as bad as you're making it out to be, Randy. I'm sure your system works very well for you, but who's to say that other systems don't work well for other people?
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for every revision of every drawing and there's never an error?
Yep ... our projects are self contained in a well thougth out file stucture, simple to navigate and even simpler to expand.
So you ONLY ever go back just one revision, and its ALWAYs a whole revision?
No, if you look at my comments, you will see that we always use the base drawing provided to us. If the client has had 12 revisions and then suddenly decides to revert back to the original floor plan, then the original becomes revision 13. All revisions between are gone ... if they decide to implement some of the ideas from rev 7, then we can copy/paste the changed items, saving a huge amount of time.
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Shelley, you still with us? :)
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More reading material:
http://www.theswamp.org/index.php?topic=22825.0
http://www.theswamp.org/index.php?topic=3964.0
http://www.theswamp.org/index.php?topic=13214.0 (Posting it even though Randy might make me eat crow, I'm sure he has a recipe that will make it taste better.)
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Randy might make me eat crow, I'm sure he has a recipe ...
You are likely correct .. he has one for just about everything else ..
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Randy might make me eat crow, I'm sure he has a recipe ...
You are likely correct .. he has one for just about everything else ..
In my defence, that post in particular was in regards to a designer who took it upon himself to search for the drawing, print it and present it to the client. He didn't look to see which folder it came from... he just took the first of many results which happened to be many rev's old. If he had done it correctly, he would have asked someone in the CAD room to find him the latest and greatest.
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Yep I am still here. I keep jumping in and out to see what has been said.
No matter what is said we will keep a copy of the previous revision. I dont think its wise not to. Especially when working with Electricals that like the words Back Charge. It will be in DWG format we will not PDF it. I am getting a bunch of new Ideas. I still do not see any harm in changing my files names (at least not for what we do). I think this would be the best way for my company. Less confusion for people accessing files that typically dont.
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Yep I am still here. I keep jumping in and out to see what has been said.
No matter what is said we will keep a copy of the previous revision. I dont think its wise not to. Especially when working with Electricals that like the words Back Charge. It will be in DWG format we will not PDF it. I am getting a bunch of new Ideas. I still do not see any harm in changing my files names (at least not for what we do). I think this would be the best way for my company. Less confusion for people accessing files that typically dont.
I personally don't like the idea of changing the file names, but DO see it as an option.
I would prefer to see the 'Master' with no suffix.
JTS-5204.DWG
JTS-5204_R2.DWG
JTS-5204_R3.DWG
and so on
I haven't worked like that before, so I don't know... maybe I'd quickly change my mind.
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Oh okay, so you have Old design 1.zip, old design 2.zip, old design 3.zip, etc. and making and tracking all these zips takes how long now?
Less time than it would take to redraw back to the original I would bet.
but my point is they don't know how much time they are spending on this effort that may or may not prove of use later.
To STORE the old revisions, it takes a couple minutes.
To FIND the old revisions that you're looking for IF you end up NEEDING them, it COULD take a few minutes more.
That is while a job is in progress, dealing with "Minor" revisions (6A, 6B, 6C, etc.).
We also have an Archive drive where we store old jobs. If for some reason, we need an old "Major" revision (5, 4, 3, etc.) it could be as simple as doing a search under that client for that drawing number and sorting the results by date modified. Yet a few more additional minutes.
It really isn't as bad as you're making it out to be, Randy.
Time is money. Can we agree that a few minutes per drawing times, say six thousand drawings might get expensive?? counter-productive?? But its only a couple of minutes per drawing??
If it might be questionable for sic thousand files, it might be questionable for six files. Maybe its time to question the entire work process.
I'm sure your system works very well for you, but who's to say that other systems don't work well for other people?
And exploding dimensions works for whoever ... some ways are just better than other ways even if the old ways work.
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then we can copy/paste the changed items, saving a huge amount of time.
How much time compared to the time you spend making and wading through multiple revisions of the file?? what's 'huge' and what's the cost?
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More reading material:
http://www.theswamp.org/index.php?topic=22825.0
Well thats just silly
http://www.theswamp.org/index.php?topic=13214.0
What did that cost??
(Posting it even though Randy might make me eat crow, I'm sure he has a recipe that will make it taste better.)
I wouldn't do that to you, not you ... and yes, I do. Actually it's for "Wild Bird, Medium"
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a designer who took it upon himself to search for the drawing, print it and present it to the client. He didn't look to see which folder it came from... he just took the first of many results which happened to be many rev's old. If he had done it correctly, he would have asked someone in the CAD room to find him the latest and greatest.
Now multiply that by four hundred designers ... One File.
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Yep I am still here. I keep jumping in and out to see what has been said.
No matter what is said we will keep a copy of the previous revision. I dont think its wise not to. Especially when working with Electricals that like the words Back Charge.
I love Back Charge, you change it, you pay for it ... HEAVILY. So heavy you'll think several times before changing it. You'll think several times before you make the original decision because you know it will be REAL expensive to change it.
I still do not see any harm in changing my files names (at least not for what we do).
If you don't use 'em as XREF's maybe not. But renaming files will kill and XREF, not to mention the time it takes.
I think this would be the best way for my company. Less confusion for people accessing files that typically dont.
All the more reason for PDF's, folks who typically don't access the file, shouldn't.
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I currently manage about 4400 drawings that cover 7 years of projects, some of those are duplicate projects, many recycled for new clients. Each project is given a project number, that is what we use to "manage" the clients. Last year was 341 files, not all were drawings, for 16 clients .. about 21 files per client. They are now archived and we only access them IF we need to utilize the drawing for a new project, or some other innocuous reason. We don't use actively use them.
The 7 seconds it takes to create a new project folder (which could be automated if I were so inclined), pales in comparison to the amount of time it would take to actually redo work previously completed. Why should we redraw something if we can potentially and most likely reuse it in the future. Incidently that is part of the reason we create block libraries, so we can have a variety of items available to use without having to redraw them each time we needed something.
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Time is money. Can we agree that a few minutes per drawing times, say six thousand drawings might get expensive?? counter-productive?? But its only a couple of minutes per drawing??
If it might be questionable for sic thousand files, it might be questionable for six files. Maybe its time to question the entire work process.
I get your point.
6 files x 5 minutes = 30 minutes
6000 files x 5 minutes = 500 hours
One thing I think we need to clarify with Shelley is whether we're dealing with minor rev's throughout the course of each project of if we're dealing with project closeouts. The two are entirely different ... in our world, anyway.
And exploding dimensions works for whoever ... some ways are just better than other ways even if the old ways work.
I agree with you here, too. I also think there's a point at which you can go overboard. If I want a boat to go out fishin' in, I might go find myself a nice 14' aluminum with a 40HP Johnson. I don't need a 68' yacht with three 200HP motors. Bad analogy, maybe, but do you get the point I'm trying to make?
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a designer who took it upon himself to search for the drawing, print it and present it to the client. He didn't look to see which folder it came from... he just took the first of many results which happened to be many rev's old. If he had done it correctly, he would have asked someone in the CAD room to find him the latest and greatest.
Now multiply that by four hundred designers ... One File.
That's something for you to worry about in your place of employment... not mine. There is still the issue of whether we give any access to our designers at all.
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More reading material:
http://www.theswamp.org/index.php?topic=22825.0
Well thats just silly
Didn't say it wasn't!
http://www.theswamp.org/index.php?topic=13214.0
What did that cost??
Other than a reprimand to the designer in question? Don't know if it cost must other than a couple folks hourly rate for about 30 minutes to correct the problem.
(Posting it even though Randy might make me eat crow, I'm sure he has a recipe that will make it taste better.)
I wouldn't do that to you, not you ... and yes, I do. Actually it's for "Wild Bird, Medium"
Thank-you. :)
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I currently manage about 4400 drawings that cover 7 years of projects, some of those are duplicate projects, many recycled for new clients. Each project is given a project number, that is what we use to "manage" the clients. Last year was 341 files, not all were drawings, for 16 clients .. about 21 files per client. They are now archived and we only access them IF we need to utilize the drawing for a new project, or some other innocuous reason. We don't use actively use them.
4400 files times two minutes a piece is 8800 minutes = 146.6 hrs invested in 'maybe'
The 7 seconds it takes to create a new project folder (which could be automated if I were so inclined), pales in comparison to the amount of time it would take to actually redo work previously completed. Why should we redraw something if we can potentially and most likely reuse it in the future. Incidently that is part of the reason we create block libraries, so we can have a variety of items available to use without having to redraw them each time we needed something.
Don't mix apples and watermelons here, I'm not talking about saving a "good idea" for later use. I'm talking about saving previous revisions becaue 'they' 'might' change their minds and go back to a previous revision <see thread topic>. If your work process is one that frequently leads you to recall older revisions because the client changed their minds, its time to review the work process.
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Time is money. Can we agree that a few minutes per drawing times, say six thousand drawings might get expensive?? counter-productive?? But its only a couple of minutes per drawing??
If it might be questionable for sic thousand files, it might be questionable for six files. Maybe its time to question the entire work process.
I get your point.
6 files x 5 minutes = 30 minutes
6000 files x 5 minutes = 500 hours
One thing I think we need to clarify with Shelley is whether we're dealing with minor rev's throughout the course of each project of if we're dealing with project closeouts. The two are entirely different ... in our world, anyway.
Those are different here as well, and that's not what I'm discussing. I'm talking about saving old revisions and the work process surrounding that.
And exploding dimensions works for whoever ... some ways are just better than other ways even if the old ways work.
I agree with you here, too.
You might want to watch that ....
I also think there's a point at which you can go overboard. If I want a boat to go out fishin' in, I might go find myself a nice 14' aluminum with a 40HP Johnson. I don't need a 68' yacht with three 200HP motors. Bad analogy, maybe, but do you get the point I'm trying to make?
And I guess that's my point ... only different.
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a designer who took it upon himself to search for the drawing, print it and present it to the client. He didn't look to see which folder it came from... he just took the first of many results which happened to be many rev's old. If he had done it correctly, he would have asked someone in the CAD room to find him the latest and greatest.
Now multiply that by four hundred designers ... One File.
That's something for you to worry about in your place of employment... not mine.
Ahh see, my position is that if its a bad idea for four thousand files, its a bad idea for four files. It may take you seven years to get to my four thousand files where it only takes me a couple of months to get there, but the impact is the same.
There is still the issue of whether we give any access to our designers at all.
oh we've had a couple of those ... that's one of the reasons I want ONLY one file.
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There is still the issue of whether we give any access to our designers at all.
oh we've had a couple of those ... that's one of the reasons I want ONLY one file.
If it was entirely up to me and money was not an issue, I would have Adept installed at our other office as well, which would replace "Contractor Method" with "Client Method", but it's not entirely up to me and money IS an issue, so here we are... I'm not saying our method is perfect by any means. Out of all who work there, they will likely agree that I'm the biggest complainer about the system. It does work when done properly though.
You say One File... that's what we have on our working drive, anyway.
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There is still the issue of whether we give any access to our designers at all.
oh we've had a couple of those ... that's one of the reasons I want ONLY one file.
If it was entirely up to me and money was not an issue, I would have Adept installed at our other office as well, which would replace "Contractor Method" with "Client Method", but it's not entirely up to me and money IS an issue, so here we are... I'm not saying our method is perfect by any means. Out of all who work there, they will likely agree that I'm the biggest complainer about the system. It does work when done properly though.
You say One File... that's what we have on our working drive, anyway.
Other than system backups, that's all we have anywhere.
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If your work process is one that frequently leads you to recall older revisions because the client changed their minds, its time to review the work process.
Maybe we should just fire our clients? Heh .. that'll teach 'em to be indecisive .. sorry .. it is about being competitive ...
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If your work process is one that frequently leads you to recall older revisions because the client changed their minds, its time to review the work process.
Maybe we should just fire our clients? Heh .. that'll teach 'em to be indecisive .. sorry .. it is about being competitive ...
Your work processes have trained them to be indecisive, they've come to expect you to waffle along with them at no real penalty. If you'd rather play with old drawings than move forward, I guess thats your choice.
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If your work process is one that frequently leads you to recall older revisions because the client changed their minds, its time to review the work process.
Maybe we should just fire our clients? Heh .. that'll teach 'em to be indecisive .. sorry .. it is about being competitive ...
Your work processes have trained them to be indecisive, they've come to expect you to waffle along with them at no real penalty. If you'd rather play with old drawings than move forward, I guess thats your choice.
No .. you are incorrect ... society has trained them .. we merely have to deal with them. The vast majority of our clients are one-time clients.
You also keep conveniently forgetting that we do charge a minimum of $150 per sheet to resurrect those old drawings ... something that we can do in less than 30 seconds ... so, by my calculations, if we are backing up to a previous revision that has 10 pages changed, then we charge $1500 for the priviledge of doing so ... the restoration takes maybe 30 seconds most of the time less ... Minus the cost of the supplies to reprint, we are still billing about $180k per hour ... you just can't ignore that ...
You also keep harping about "playing with old drawings" or "tracking" them ... we no more play with old drawings than you play with old PDFs ... If you don't store at least a paper copy of every page released for production .. every page .. not just the most recent ... then you are being infinitely ignorant of the potential for problems.
You happen to store your drawings as PDFs we store them as DWGs ... our DWGs are actually smaller than the requisite PDFs ... yeah, we also do PDFs for the client, although we don't archive them, as they are always watermarked "not for production". We have the added ability to edit the DWGs if we ever need to, and the ability to incorporate unique designs into new works by copy/paste, something you can't do with a PDF, at least not with AutoCAD.
At the end of your project, you end up killing the drawing by stomping it into submission, and then discarding the only smart thing you have ... an infinitely more useful 3D drawing, over a marginally useful PDF representation of the same. Does it work for you? Great ... I would not dream of doing something so silly.
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Currently we just had a project with about 20 sheets. There is a Consultant who did the Design of the Fire Alarm System. My Company is to do the engineering. The Consultant whom the End user hired to put a design together, completely messed it up. It was not to code. We told the Constultant he did not listen. Fire Marshal requested Changes. Now the Consultant issues new drawings. We have to copy our info to the new drawings. Making them Rev 1 Which we leave the Original File and name alone just changing the new one to say R1. They did this three times to be exact. Each of them being a major change and requiring us to make a new revision cause we send out drawings to the installing electrical. We have also been keeping copies of what they send in to us. Some of there drawings do not have all the revisions Clouded. What I mean is if on rev 1 they removed, added and moved some devices, someone forgets to put rev clouds some of the deleted and added ones.
The people who are our weekest CAD people can only print and view drawings with True View. But we have a group of people who we are trying to have do there own small changes. Such as a few devices being deleted, a wire being changed or something being added. These are the people that need to be able to see what revision the drawing is on easily.
I have a co-worker who say treat the Electrical like they are 7th graders that dont know anything. He tries to make sure he dots all his "I's" and crosses all his "T's". We will even go show more than enough info if it means he wont get a phone call. That is what I want to do make it so easy that anyone can see what revision we are on in the blink of an eye. They dont have to open a drawing and look at the Title Block to see the revision. Its at the end of the file name.
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:-o
I am going to withhold a lot of commentary about some things in there that aren't really my business and say only that it sounds like your company has needs more important to consider than the handling of revisions.
I have been hanging back and waiting for these guys to grow weary of promoting the merits of their respective methodology over the others but they are not showing any encouraging signs. The reality is that likely no ones system will perfectly fit your situation, especially considering what you shared of the history and current status of this particular project. Are you searching for a new policy to implement for or do you just need a method to deal with just this project.
CADaver's solution is a marvel and the only sane way to administer projects the magnitude of the ones his clients require. It is also a luxury that can only be enjoyed by firms so well established and respected that they can dictate those terms to their clients.
Like his, my former specialty of land development, had zero need of a dwg file with all accompanying data for every change in design. Changes were made because the design was deemed impractical and once rejected, would NOT be reconsidered. We kept a pdf set of each plan submittal with the project along with review comments to document when and why design elements were revised.
Keith though, has found value in keeping of each superceeded design throughout the process. I can see that as quite valuable for house plans that can be basically duplicated all over with a variety of options and custom features each customer may choose from.
A company that manufactures parts will also find this method desirable because any or all of the parts in a family may be in production for years and a modification may need to branch off form any point in the evolution.
What you need to determine for your situation is what chances there are you will need to go back to any major design change and how realistic it would be to incorporate any changes made after the restore point that need to remain. This will give you the general direction you need to follow and from there we can start hammering out some specifics.
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No .. you are incorrect ... society has trained them .. we merely have to deal with them. The vast majority of our clients are one-time clients.
Sorry by 'you', I didn't mean you personally, but your industry.
You also keep conveniently forgetting that we do charge a minimum of $150 per sheet to resurrect those old drawings ... something that we can do in less than 30 seconds ... so, by my calculations, if we are backing up to a previous revision that has 10 pages changed, then we charge $1500 for the priviledge of doing so ... the restoration takes maybe 30 seconds most of the time less ... Minus the cost of the supplies to reprint, we are still billing about $180k per hour ... you just can't ignore that ...
I'm not ignoring it, I'm saying its too cheap.
You also keep harping about "playing with old drawings" or "tracking" them ... we no more play with old drawings than you play with old PDFs ... If you don't store at least a paper copy of every page released for production .. every page .. not just the most recent ... then you are being infinitely ignorant of the potential for problems.
You keep trying to make this about something else, why?
You happen to store your drawings as PDFs we store them as DWGs ... our DWGs are actually smaller than the requisite PDFs ... yeah, we also do PDFs for the client, although we don't archive them, as they are always watermarked "not for production". We have the added ability to edit the DWGs if we ever need to, and the ability to incorporate unique designs into new works by copy/paste, something you can't do with a PDF, at least not with AutoCAD.
Again, you keep making it about something else, why?
At the end of your project, you end up killing the drawing by stomping it into submission, and then discarding the only smart thing you have ... an infinitely more useful 3D drawing, over a marginally useful PDF representation of the same.
Where in the world did you get that idea?? If you keep making up things and charging them against me this will be less trhan informative.
I would not dream of doing something so silly.
Neither would anyone else, nor would I keep old revisions of files in native formats for the sole purpose of backing up to that revision at the whim of a client. I prefer to coninue moving forward with the design using EVERY advantage of the application withou concerning myself over whether or not I'll be able to retrieve an old revision if I nest xrefs a certain way.
Now for the record:
I am well aware of the legal requirements for the proper documentation of a project, this is not about that.
I am well aware of the proper collection, formatting and storage of data for possible future application , this is not about that.
I am well aware of the need to maintain the integrity of a projects files at completion, this is not about that.
Is there anything else you'd like to make up about my position?
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I am not making anything up ...
So you think $180,000.00 per hour is too cheap? Dude .. you seriously need to rethink your economic strategies.
Please enlighten me .. perhaps you always thought it was about something else, but my point has always been that a DWG is always infinitely more useful than a PDF or paper plot, particularly if I am being paid $180,000.00 per hour to reclaim them for the client. So please, what IS your point .. if your point is that I shouldn't be saving old revisions, then you are incorrect, because I can make $180,000.00 per hour retrieving them. That is 180,000 reasons to save them.
Now, you also have stated numerous times, not in this thread, but elsewhere ... I would provide links, but you know what I am talking about ... that by flattening a drawing you make it marginally useful. A PDF is the ultimate in flattening a drawing, is it not? As a result, a PDF is not nearly as useful as a DWG, or am I wrong again. You have stated more than once that you only save the PDFs of the projects revised drawings, or was I dreaming that too? You also said that you simply revise the drawing and don't keep the previous revisions separate, and unless I am unaware of some ecclesiastical force at work, that means you have discarded (i.e. lost, failed to maintain etc.) the previous revision.
Now, let me ask you a simple question. If you are aware of the proper storage of data for future possible application, why are you hell bent against storing previously revised DWGs for future possible application, when it has been clearly shown that not only is future application possible, but very probable.
Just face it, you have absolutely no clue how the architectural process works and as such, you would likely fail due to either wasted time recreating something that you could/should have maintained as a DWG or you will go broke because your clients will go somewhere else for their product.
While your company may be making millions on these projects, you have to keep in mind that the average price for architectural drawings is about $1.25 PSF .. that means a 2500sf home would pay roughly $3100 .. this is for the ENTIRE project, if you charge much more than that, you won't get business, if you charge less, you will go broke.
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I am not making anything up ...
So you think $180,000.00 per hour is too cheap? Dude .. you seriously need to rethink your economic strategies.
$150/sheet is way too cheap, even if it takes three seconds.
Please enlighten me .. perhaps you always thought it was about something else, but my point has always been that a DWG is always infinitely more useful than a PDF or paper plot,
Just read the entire thread again, and this is the FIRST time you attempt to make that point. Prior to this it was to back up when the client changes his mind. I guess you realized that was insufficient and are now trying to broaden the argument. As I said in my last post:
I am well aware of the legal requirements for the proper documentation of a project, this is not about that.
I am well aware of the proper collection, formatting and storage of data for possible future application , this is not about that.
I am well aware of the need to maintain the integrity of a projects files at completion, this is not about that.
particularly if I am being paid $180,000.00 per hour to reclaim them for the client.
See, that's the argument you've been using up to now. And $180000 an hour for three seconds is still only $150 and still too cheap. As an Army pilot in WWII, my Dad claimed he made $150 a minute ... one minute a month.
So please, what IS your point ..
Made several times but you'd rather play the following sophomoric game:
if your point is that I shouldn't be saving old revisions, then you are incorrect, because I can make $180,000.00 per hour retrieving them. That is 180,000 reasons to save them.
Now, you also have stated numerous times, not in this thread, but elsewhere ... I would provide links, but you know what I am talking about ... that by flattening a drawing you make it marginally useful. A PDF is the ultimate in flattening a drawing, is it not? As a result, a PDF is not nearly as useful as a DWG, or am I wrong again. You have stated more than once that you only save the PDFs of the projects revised drawings, or was I dreaming that too? You also said that you simply revise the drawing and don't keep the previous revisions separate, and unless I am unaware of some ecclesiastical force at work, that means you have discarded (i.e. lost, failed to maintain etc.) the previous revision.
Now, let me ask you a simple question. If you are aware of the proper storage of data for future possible application, why are you hell bent against storing previously revised DWGs for future possible application, when it has been clearly shown that not only is future application possible, but very probable.
Properly collected and cataloging design data is done outside the revision process, otherwise the retrieval of the "good design" would be less effective attempting to search through hundreds of revised files looking for it. The current model is maintained in DWG (or native) format, PDF's are merely 2D representations of that model, just as the Oracle databases are a digital representation of the the material represented by the 3D model. Once any "good design" is properly collected cataloged in our design system, the old revision serves no useful purpose at all and is deleted.
Just face it, you have absolutely no clue how the architectural process works and as such, you would likely fail due to either wasted time recreating something that you could/should have maintained as a DWG or you will go broke because your clients will go somewhere else for their product.
I have no clue how YOUR process works and truly have no desire to find out. If you'd rather spend your time backing up, and can make a living doing so, carry on. I choose otherwise. Now if you want, we can match 1040's and see who's doing better with that or we can move away from personal attacks about who's going broke. Your choice.
While your company may be making millions on these projects, you have to keep in mind that the average price for architectural drawings is about $1.25 PSF .. that means a 2500sf home would pay roughly $3100 .. this is for the ENTIRE project, if you charge much more than that, you won't get business, if you charge less, you will go broke.
As I pointed out earlier, your industry has trained your clients in that manner. Gee $3100 a project ... hmmm... that means it only takes a minute to do the entire project? Cool, you have plenty of time for backing up then.