Drawings form Multiple sources (multiple xrefs)

[Gila]

Hi

I'm working for a company that once had some idea what cad standars were and how to deal with drawings coming in from surveyors and architects, etc. However, all of that knolwedge has been lost - it's on a CD somehwere!

The old printed version of our CAD manual (dated 1997) says to "Work separately on any base drawings that have been provided by other consultants an d purge unnecessary information to reduce the number of layers.What a thought - I'm working on one drawing that has 1163 layers.

To continue - "If the file is for reference information only, then the file should be xrefed instead of inserted. If the file layers are unimportant but the vectors are required, then the entire file should be exploded and all drawing elements should be reduced to a single layer prior to insertion."

It all sounds good to me, but this is my first job as a "tech" (actually trained as a designer), so I don't know how to figure out which information is required and which is not. I am supposed to be setting up a base plan for working drawings based on information provided from 3 different sources (all in one file currently with three bound xrefs and a couple of (big/w) blocks) and 599 layers, before I even start to add ours.

Anyway, any help you can offer would be appreciated. I also wonder about overlaying versus attaching. I've read some stuff about that, but have yet to figure out how to work it. My computer is excruciatingly slow, so need to simplify these files as much as possible.

[rustysilo]

Generally I will only use xref for a short period during the preliminary work. Then when all of those xref'd files have been FINALIZED I will actually get what I need out of them and bring it into my master file. This allows me to do what I want with the layering and such without altering the original files. I keep those as a backup record.

It really comes down to what field and application you are working in. For some it is better to xref. For others it is better to insert. And yet others in the civil/survey/gis area may opt to use a Map query as opposed to xref or insert. Sometimes you just have to weigh the pro's and con's of each option and come to the most logical conclusion (which of course usually means: what is the most efficient in terms of production).

[Gila]

Thanks for the response, Rusty Silo.

Now my boss has decided that it might be useful to have some office protocols and standards, and I seem to be the only one who has the time and inclination to work on that project.

I have one CAD standards manual form our Edmonton Office and one from our office from 1997, and a cursory understanding of how some people here generally do stuff (i.e. how they create layers, which they seem to do for every new drawing!). We do have a plot style table. Some people have AutoCAD 2007, some still have 2004.

So what I'm working on is making a drawing template and Title Blocks (using the xref plus block method). But now I'm thinking - shouldn't the title block, as well as all the layers and text and dimension styles and commonly used blocks already be in the template? Do you need a separate template for every paper size or for commonly used scales? Or should one size fit all?

I know I'm a newb and this is an advanced forum, but I would appreciate some guidance.