Electronic commenting on drawings.

[Glen1980]

Thanks for the help Tannar, I'm going to have a play with design review and see how we can use it in our commenting process. Might have to come back with further silly questions!

[Organic]

I still think pen/paper is the best personally. Checking/reviewing plan sets is far easier if I have a physical copy in front of me rather than viewing it as a pdf or CAD file on the screen.

[RobDraw]

I still think pen/paper is the best personally. Checking/reviewing plan sets is far easier if I have a physical copy in front of me rather than viewing it as a pdf or CAD file on the screen.

That's fine for one sheet but Glen (OP) has 18 copies of each sheet of large drawing sets.

That's quite the QE review you got there. There is a lot of room for savings there not only in comsumables but in time managing all those sets for distribution and then gathering it all back together for input. Good luck in getting whatever you come up with implemented. Resistance to change can be a tough nut to crack.

[StykFacE]

I still think pen/paper is the best personally. Checking/reviewing plan sets is far easier if I have a physical copy in front of me rather than viewing it as a pdf or CAD file on the screen.

I agree that red ink and paper is still the absolute best, but as Rob says, it's an alternative for an excessive amount of plans.

[ReMark]

Does everyone absolutely need their own personal copy? Can two people share a single copy and make their comments in different colored ink?

Do you need to print these as "full" size? Could they be scaled to fit a smaller sheet size thus saving paper?

Are some of the people comfortable enough with marking up an electronic version that they would gladly forego having more paper on their desk?

[Glen1980]

ReMark is corret, not everyone requires all the drawings. Sales for example don't look at the structural drawings, but to give everyone personalized sets would take longer to collate and be wide open to errors.

Some of them do share copies but they only get a week to comment so someone wouldn't get the weekend to look at the drawings. I wouldn't have a problem sizing down the drawings but then we'd have to provide them with magnifying glasses!! Some of them complain about the size of the text as it is (I have to put up with a lot of complaining )

Some of them might go for the electronic copies. I don't know if it is possible for them to mark up the same file simultaneously or whether myself or someone else from my team will have to amalgamate them onto a single drawing for the meeting. The other problem is how to summarise all of the comments into sheets of A4 (Text only) so we don't miss any comments.

[SLW210]

I would go the DWF route for electronic mark-up.

[jweigle]

We use Sharepoint for our drawing review.

Instead of paper copies, we have it filed electronically via tif or pdf files.

Once we have a submission ready for comment(bid, permits, design development, etc.) there is an email sent out to the shops(HVAC, Plumbing, Arch., grounds/civil, etc.) with a link directing them to the files. They can grab what sections pertain to them and make comments on the drawings as needed.(Saves from having to print out complete sets per shop when all they really need is 3 or 4 sheets out of the set.)

The best part about this is that the comments and revisions the shops have made are conveintly stored on Sharepoint, then once a meeting takes place to discuss, one person can take all the comments and print them out or have them electronically on file to send to the architect or whoever we are working for.


Just a thought.

[Organic]

If you send people electronic versions of drawings to look at, many of them will most likely simply get annoyed at having to print it themselves (and then make the markups on the paper set).

What you save in paper/ink costs will be offset by senior staff taking longer to markup drawings digitally. It is much quicker to use a pen and draw/annotate what you want rather than trying to do it on a screen via X software/reader.

[Jeff H]

Design Review or Adobe with a tablet also works well but seen external stylus pads used with large screen work well.