As the CAD Manager for our company, I'm responsible for making decisions about things like these. In order to make decisions about our in-house standards, I wanted to research the existing standards created by large national organizations. Then, I would take what I thought were "good ideas" and incorporate them into our standards. The idea was that, even though we didn't formally adopt something like NCS or AIA or ISO, we would use the "good ideas", and also make it so that our drawings were (at least partially) "compatible" with all of those standards, if not exactly "compliant" with any of them.
But that's when I discovered that it isn't exactly easy to get "Standards". I tried to go to the NCS web site, and found that I'd have to shell out $500 to even SEE the standard. And then, I would have to completely buy the thing all over again when it is revised, because they give no credit for owning "earlier versions". I was shocked to find out that they did not allow anyone to download a PDF, or anything like that. That's the reason I started this poll - I was so shocked that someone would not only CHARGE for "Standards", but also charge such a large fee, and also force everyone to repurchase future revisions at full-price. So I wanted to see what others thought, to see if I was alone in thinking this was absolutely ridiculous.
I notice that not one single person thinks that standards should be made available only at a price. Everyone seems to agree that, if you have any hope at all that this standard will really get adopted, it must be made freely-available, at least as a PDF download.
In general, I approve of the idea of standards. In particular, I think standardizing the symbols that appear on plans is a good idea, so that it is easier to read plans. This has sort-of happened already. For example, I basically ALWAYS see a Fire Hydrant look one of two ways.
But overly-restrictive standards are useless. We do work for the Air Force Academy, and they force us to use their modified-AIA standard. But I basically can't use that standard for anything else, because the layer rules are too restrictive, and they force EVERYTHING to look Yellow, Red, or Magenta for our line of work. Almost everything ends up on one of five layers, and linetypes are typically set ByObject and not ByLayer. In fact, their standards turn our drawings into such a mess that I find it easier to create a design survey using our layer standards, and then use Layer Translator to make it look like the AFA wants it.
Another problem is that every "Standard" I've ever seen is layer-centric - the bulk of the standard is how to use layers, what to name them, what color and lineweight they should be, etc. I'm finding those standards almost useless when it comes to Civil-3D, which is Style-based, and has a very different view of layers. Not to mention, it is impossible for a "Standard" to forsee EVERY situation. That's why a standard that focuses on specific details like layer settings is so much trouble.
The one thing that's clear from this poll is that the NCS has a difficult battle ahead to gain acceptance. They are too heavy-handed in their design, and not flexible enough. They charge for access. And the whole idea is possibly fundamentally-flawed, since it is geared so much to "Layers".
I still think the idea of a Standard is a good one, but it must be a very flexible standard. It should keep in mind that the industry will change faster than the standard, so there must be lots of freedom inside the structure. And it should focus on final output, more than on how the output is created. Otherwise, it seems doomed to failure. And it looks to me like both the AIA and the NCS are screaming down that road to failure... The way I see it, the only saving grace for those efforts is that large government agencies like the DOD think they are a good ideas, and agencies like the DOD have the clout to force people to use specific standards, even if the standard is so poorly-thought-out that it is a net loss for everyone...
