You either cannot see my position or you do not want to see it,
Oh, I see it, I just disagree with it.
my point is that we have many times thrown away 4 or even 5 complete revisions and started back with a previous state.
And that is often the case? Nothing in the intermediate versions is required?
This is the RULE when dealing with most people,
I think that's the problem. It may be the case with the few folks you deal with, but it is NOT the for "most" by far. I've worked with clients on everything from carports to 90 story commercial buildings and I've NEVER had a client trash 4 or 5 complete revisions. "MOST" are considerably more frugal than that, at least the ones I've dealt with over the last 30 years are. If I had a client that trashed 4 or 5 complete revisions, he'd better have a check-writting arm that's in shape.
More often than not a client will key in on a specific area, I can cut and paste a revision from an earlier incarnation faster than I can redraw it. You can too if you are truthful to yourself. That IS why we have wblocks, so we don't have to redraw everything every time.
Quite truthful, and again two different topics, let's try to confine it to one at a time.
Now you are starting to sound like the CAD manager you are .... trust me ... nothing is that simple EVER ..
Taking the cue from you and your "just cut-n-paste" scenerio. You're quite right it is never that simple, neither is the "cut-n-paste".
Oh, BTW, you're right I am a Cad Manager, have been for over a dozen years. But I also log an average of 50 hrs a week as a production designer, and have been for over 30 years (20 with ACAD). So I am very familiar with what it takes to push a design out the door.
if it were you could have anyone use AutoCAD but you can't.
Anyone CAN use the tool to the limits of his/her training.
The most common misconception is that you just move a wall ... what about the plumbing? electrical? HVAC? Cabinet design? all of those things will need to be addressed...if not you will have serious consequences in the field.
Same goes for your cut-n-paste method. You just can't paste the kitchen from Rev 2 into the floor plan for Rev 5 if Revs 3 and 4 have changed the adjacent spaces.
So you don't backup your drawings?
Again a different topic, one at a time, please.
do your designers not SAVE their drawing once they do it? It takes absolutely no more time to save a file as FP1_R2.dwg than it does as FP1_R1.dwg so that argument is invalid you too MUST save your drawings....
Changing file names is not an option if you're trying to be efficient using XREF's. Now if you wish we can discuss the advantages/disadvantages of their use, but that is another topic as well. So for us to maintain the previous revision, we'd need to save the drawing, and ALL it's associated XREF's as well to a different location. I was being generous when I said 20 seconds. The little area paving drawing I'm working right now has 17 XREF's. Getting all those to a separate directory properly named would take a little longer than 20 sec.
difference is that if in 6 months I need to get something from a previous version, rather than redraw it, I can cut and paste, saving me untold manhours, while you would have to redraw it.
you're exaggerating again.
We operate off of CD-RW media, each client has one CD,
One CD would barely hold one of our files. That's not true, it'd hold about a dozen and a half, so for the project I'm on now, I'd need... ummmm... lesee... carry the two... ummm... 2,000 CDs... ummm... no thank you.
(BTW, on another topic, have you been paying attention to the flack about poor disk longevity with CD-RW? You may wish to check it out.)
it is checked in and out of the fire room at the beginning and end of each day, now perhaps that IS overkill seeing how the most common loss of data is user error and hardware malfunction, but here in the south, particularly where our office is located, fire is a real threat, particularly during the summer months.
We're fully networked, and utilize mrrored servers in remote locations and daily tape back-ups of both.
I don't have 200 users, I have 6 users, if we spend 20 seconds saving our drawings (which you do too) an average of 4 per day, that equates to about 40 minutes a week or about 35 hours a year .... to discount your $40 billing rate (that is NOT what you paid)
I wouldn't do this for only $40 an hour, but that's me. The billing rate is what the client is paying us for each hour burned, regardless of what we pay the guy that burns it.
lets say $12.00 per hour for a cad jockey ....
Jenkies Scooby, we pay entry-level more than that. Heck, my secretary makes more than that (but then she has to keep ME in line).
You have admitted that you indeed also mantain drawing revisions in PDF format... even if it is for space constraints, you too are doing the exact same thing I am, except your files say .pdf on the end and mine say .dwg on the end ...
Hardly, the PDF are created during the batch plot sequence and added to the contract ZIP file automatically. It requires no user interface. I could batch some sort of eTransmit function to collect all the necessary support files for each drawing at each revision, but that would add serious time to the process.
and my dwg files are seldomly larger than 250k ...
It's been years since we've seen a file size that small, not since r12 anyway.
(I'd have to get a pdf writer for each user, or burden one user with the task of doing all of the pdf plotting)
Nope, see above.
I think your argument has been proven to be incorrect.
Hardly, it's only proven to be "not what you desire"