Cad Standards, Details, & Sections

I was recently hired at a small construction company that does commercial and industrial contracting. We are located in a small area only have one person in our CAD department which also doubles as the IT department. My major background is IT however I did work for a furniture manufacturer for a number of years dating back to AutoCAD R14. I have been going back to school for the last year and a half for Architectural Drafting and for this reason I do now have my own details and sections done for my own use. Although my Architectural Drafting experience is lacking I did however already had 10+ years of experience in network administration and IT departments.

Okay to the point of my post. The person who was previously in my position left on less then good terms to put it mildly, which I won't get into all of the details. But when he left he deleted ALL details, sections, blocks, and all standards information when he left. He even went so far as to remove it from all backup drives and backup servers.

Any help or assistance you could offer in the way of ANY details and sections would be greatly appreciated. I have spent countless hours trying to make new details and sections as I have come across what I need but as I'm sure you know. Trying to build a base of details/sections from nothing is both frustrating and ridiculously time consuming.

I'm not new to AutoCAD but I am new to Architectural Drafting using it and am finding it extremely difficult to do my job and will be extremely greatful to anyone who can help me out with this situation. My boss (owner of the company) doesn't care about what was taken when the other person left, he just expects the jobs done in the same amount of time it took the original drafter to do it even though there are no details/sections to quicken the process.

Okay I've gone into way too much detail about my situation but again I'd appreciate any help you can offer.

Thanks in advance!

Dewey Mallette

Check out cben.net for details.

That former employee could be brought up on charges and face severe penalty for such an action.

BOB'27T - Thank you for the site information.

rustysilo - They were just happy to get him out of the company period. Since I was hired I've gone to them with multiple instances of items that were supposed to be here in the company but have disapeared. Including 12 port network switches, network and telephone cable testing equipment and other computer/networking equipment, but each time I was silenced quickly.

Thanks again!

Dewey Mallette

Anyone else have any other links or maybe have some details and/or sections I could get from you?

Thanks in advance!!

Dewey Mallette

What kinds of details are you looking for?

Walls, Bathroom, Building Sections and Details, Foundations,

Honestly anything you would be willing to share. I'm starting

with absolutely nothing at this point. I have done a couple

of wall details but not much else.

Thanks again!

Dewey Mallette

That former employee could be brought up on charges and face severe penalty for such an action.

I completly agree.

We have built our librarys up over a period of YEARS,

to the O.P. I wish I could share some of ours with you, but due to company policy I cannot. But I will definatly keep my eyes open for some.

Do these happen to exist in existing drawings done? We insert them in our drawings each time they are used, so they can be tailored to each individual project if needed.

this is a long shot, but is it possible to write a script to harvest blocks etc from existing drawings?

Noahma - About 50% of the old drawings are gone as well. As I said he pretty well cleaned up everything when he left. I've been trying to pull what I can out but most of the drawings he left that were on the computer were metal building drawings and not the in-house drawings that would have all of the sections. And to make things worse. Some of the drawings no longer work as they had xrefs to files that are no longer here. Thanks in advance for anything you find you can toss my way.

Strix - I'm not familiar enough with script writing to be able to do something of that nature. But if anyone knows how or has a script or could even write one that would do that I'd greatly appreciate it.

DM

Jeez - sounds like you've got one heck of a mountain to climb there - and the office politics I wouldn't wish on anybody

Have a look in the VBA/customisation forum, as I think there's a thread in there with something suitable

If you can't find anything - start a thread in there

http://www.cadtutor.net/forum/showthread.php?t=24721

http://www.cadtutor.net/forum/showthread.php?t=17048

Thanks Strix!!! I've read that and will get to trying their suggestions and also do a new thread because I'm not familiar with VBA or Lisps.

Thanks again!

DM

I'm still trawling my search list and editing that post :wink:

Buy a copy of Architectural Graphic Standards and you get all the details depicted in the book on an included CD. I believe there are even more details available on their website as well. For more information see:

http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Brand/id-1.html

dmallette

Having experiance in IT, you should have known that there are software's availble to recover data losed accidently/formating/ sabotage or any other means. My husband has recovered dats for some people in those cases & I just conformed with him that yes in 90% cases it can be recovered fully or atleast partially.

so google for 'data recovering software' & try it out yourself.

dmallette

 

Having experiance in IT, you should have known that there are software's availble to recover data losed accidently/formating/ sabotage or any other means. My husband has recovered dats for some people in those cases & I just conformed with him that yes in 90% cases it can be recovered fully or atleast partially.

 

so google for 'data recovering software' & try it out yourself.

I tried that after I started. But nothing was found. I use the 'Get Data Back' program which I have had great luck with recovering data in the past.

But it found nothing. The only thing I can figure it that he kept the info either on an external drive or a usb key.

Thanks for the info though!

DM

Thats a bad situation... Good luck. Sorry i cant be of any help.

I Guess the person who left knew enough to wipe all the bak and tmp files too?

Worth searching for those on the off chance...

Dewey,

We have managed to recover some of our drawings through e-mail. Check with the other people in your office and customers/vendors to see if they still have any old drawings which may have the details you are missing. We archive all the architectural drawings we get from the general contractors for future use.