teamwork file sharing

Hi,

I'm new at my job, we do cabinets and anythng with wood. Sometmes we have large projects such as a hospital, and there is where I found a problem. We are 5 drafters doing a project and saving files in our hard drive individually. This creates a problem organizing a final submision. How would you teamwork a large project and shared it w/ 5 drafters. Do I need to setup a network and how?

Thanks.

I'd say you need to be networked, can't imagine sharing drawings with out one, Xref's should work good for you guys, then no changes lost and everyone linked together...

For a small office it shouldn't cost much at all to set it up.. maybe another computer to use for a server, you could use an existing one but I don't like it that way..

first and foremost, organize a standard template file preset with all layers, dimstyles, text styles, blocks, mleader styles, etc. to be used by all draftsmen at the start of your project to have uniformity. This contributes a lot to ease of file sharing where each draftsman wll easily adapt in editing each others cad files. Networking is important especially in using xrefs as ghostrider has mentioned.

it is possible to set up a network by linking the existing computers and each being able to read each other's files, but servers are now so much cheaper that it's sensible to have a server based network - where a single backup can be made of ALL files in one go, and stored in a fireproof safe

Now once you've got your server, persuading your five people to actually give up 'their' drawings onto it from their own machines could be more difficult than installing the hardware

persuading your five people to actually give up 'their' drawings onto it from their own machines could be more difficult than installing the hardware

Same thoughts here

even though you may work as a team, each team member may consider whatever he/she has accomplished an intellectual property. it will be a bit awkward for each induvidual to share his/her outputs unless they can benefit from the sharing.

I was thinking more of the perspective of how to ensure they work with the new system, but that's going to take some forward planning and preparation - not just getting a company in to install the network then telling people to use it

changing how people go about their jobs, especially when it's to do with computers, is always a sensitive uphill climb