Topic: AAARRRGGGHHHHH!!!! RANT RANT RANT....

[hudster]

Why can't people do things right.

I received a drawing today, 5.5 meg in size, I purged it as soon as i got it, and hey presto 500k.

IS it just me or are some people who claim to be cad technicians just chancers.

Not purging drawings is my pet hate, it takes a few seconds and can make a great difference to the file size.

I recently had a spare few days and purged a lot of drawings in one project folder and saved over 100 meg of space on the server.

And another thing, don't make layer names called 01, 02, 03 etc.  People who work with your drawings don't have a clue what they are, here's a clue, make them descriptive.  i.e. _63_lighting or _63 lighting_text.  at least then I'll know what the layers are.

Rant Over, (Calming down now)...

[hudster]

and another thing.

USE SNAPS.  lines of a building are meant to meet, not just finish in mid air.

and keep things on the right layers, it's what they are for, and incidentally 0 is not a layer for drawing on, it's for inserting on, i.e. xrefs, title sheets etc.

[Craig]

And another thing, don't make layer names called 01, 02, 03 etc.  People who work with your drawings don't have a clue what they are, here's a clue, make them descriptive.  i.e. _63_lighting or _63 lighting_text.  at least then I'll know what the layers are.

I understand. We get dwgs from clients all the time with crap like that. The problem lies in "OTHER" CAD programs that export out dwg files. Some of these "OTHER" CAD programs don't give the user the option to name layers what they want. ANd then again, you just have lazy ass CAD'ers that don't care. What irks me is when we get these dwgs from a client, we setup our drawings using their layer names and just adjust colors for our plotting purposes. Well, when the next round of new and improved drawings come around, all the layer names are different! The whole purpose of using their layer names is we can drop new drawings in and all the colors adjust automatically, but when they rename their layers!!!! Better stop before the language gets me going  

[Craig]

and keep things on the right layers, it's what they are for, and incidentally 0 is not a layer for drawing on, it's for inserting on, i.e. xrefs, title sheets etc.

Hahaha, as you mention that, we just got 30 dwgs from a client and all their dwgs contain 1 layer.....0.
Imagine how thats gonna suck to clean up these drawings  

[Keith™]

Imagine having 50% of you own staff who thinks that "green" is the layer and "wall" is some unknown concept that it takes a PhD to understand.

[hudster]

I have a drawing from an architect who shall remain nameless, its is building layout that has all 4 walls constructed entirely of glass, nice looking building, but the killer is it has almost 2000 separate sheets of glass, and each one has two mullions on either side of it, and each one made up of 1400 lines, and the genius who is their CAD operator decided to explode every mullion, the drawing file is huge and it takes me 2 working days to clean up each set of drawing they send us.

We are currently on revision TT, bearing in mind that we started on revision A and have now been through the alphabet almost twice, i have spend over 9 weeks in the last 2 years cleaning up these drawings.

God I HATE that architect.

[Craig]

Sounds like its time to get with your boss and let him/her know the process you're having to go through so at least your company is being paid for the extra work you are going through. That in turn might prompt your boss/owner to contact the architect and get him to fix this problem on his end. When the arch.. finds out he's going to be billed for extra $$$, he might just get the problem fixed.  

[hudster]

He knows, but as we are getting paid a variation fee each time we have to through this, he's happy.

I can't even delegate this as I'm the only person in the CAD department.

[Craig]

He knows, but as we are getting paid a variation fee each time we have to through this, he's happy.

I can't even delegate this as I'm the only person in the CAD department.

Well, It sounds as though your screwed no matter what. Just look at it this way...JOB SECURITY!  BTW, why not contact the arch's drafting crew and discuss the problem with her/him. Maybe they will correct the problem. it's always worth a shot.

Good Luck

[hudster]

Last time I spoke to him was to talk him through the process of binding an Xref before sending out the drawing.

It was one of those moments, when I just knew he was self taught without having to ask.

[Mark]

>I just knew he was self taught without having to ask
Hey now, don't knock the self taught people before you've got to know them. Some of them know a lot about ACAD.

[daron]

Why would you talk him through binding? Just have him send the referenced files too. Although, it wouldn't be a bad idea to explain to him that the explode command is a bad idea and that he shouldn't use it.

[Craig]

Last time I spoke to him was to talk him through the process of binding an Xref before sending out the drawing.

It was one of those moments, when I just knew he was self taught without having to ask.

Hahaha, yeah. Gotta hate it when you call the client and talk to the CAD folk and when you say XREF, they reply, "Whats an XREF?" That's when you just give up and accept what fate has dealt you  

[Keith™]

Hudster, have you thought of some housecleaning routines to "fix" that stuff for you. It sounds like something that a proggie could do in much less time.

[hyposmurf]

Last time I spoke to him was to talk him through the process of binding an Xref before sending out the drawing.

It was one of those moments, when I just knew he was self taught without having to ask.

If he doesn't know how to bind or how to use the explode tool correctly then he's more likely a Architect who's told his boss yeh I can do CAD.Good that he's making the effort,but can you imagine the crap he's issuing to his clients!