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How to get the office to understand CAD standards?


carbons2k

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I was recently given the task to be the CAD manager of my office and another satellite office we have. Being with the company for approximately 7 years I've learned that engineers and architects have their own styles and ways on how they want their drawings to look. There have been plenty of times where I get someone telling me to make this line darker, that line lighter or that a piece of text should be a little smaller or bigger. When I tell them that its not part of the office standard I always get the same answer, "I don't care, make it how I tell you, or Ill do it myself." Has anyone ever come across this situation before and how do you handle it? Im in the process of writing office guidelines and a manual that follows the US National CAD standard manual so hopefully we'll all be n the same page. Any help would be appreciated!

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Good luck with that. It sounds like a long rough road ahead of you. Don't expect things to change over night. This has been discussed a few times here so look in the similar threads section below. You will need to get upper management behind you and a policy in place that anything non-standard will be corrected by whoever does the non-standard work. They might get tired of making the changes and do it right the first time.

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Wouldn't the engineers and the architects have somewhat different standards?

 

How to get them to understand? Simple. Tell them the company standards, once agreed upon and accepted by management, will be enforced using the AutoCAD Standards Checker. Anyone who's drawing does not pass muster will have it returned to them for corrections "off the clock". They don't get paid for correcting their own mistakes given that the standard will be available for all to reference on the company intranet. Don't like it? There's the door; plenty of people looking for a job.

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No use having a Cad Manger if you cant enforce the Cad Standards. I would start by creating a manual then have a meeting with all

parties involved to hash out the details. I would create two - one for Arch and one for Eng. For upper management I would stress how you can save the company money if everyone was

doing the same thing. If standards are truly followed you should not be able to tell who in your office did the drafting.

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I have enough trouble getting everyone to use the same VERSION of AutoCAN'T, let alone getting them to make the drawings look the same. You're in for a very frustrating process. Remember that you're dealing with a lot of ego and people who are pretty much set in their ways. All you can do is create a standard to start with, and each time someone doesn't like something about it have them put it to a vote so all parties are involved. If you can come up with something that all or most will agree on, you'll have a much easier time getting them to follow it.

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The endless battle of AutoCRAP and "Standards". Gotta love it.

 

As a CAD manager I've found that the best thing to do is standardize certain things, and leave the rest alone. Here are the items I standardize with the use of Templates and Tool Palettes:

 

  • Titleblock, View Title Blocks, Keyed Note Blocks, things to that nature.
  • Fonts... set to Arial or some other TTF font, not SHX fonts.
  • Common content that is used day in day out, such as Blocks and Typical Details.
  • Use Templates for pre-existing Layer setup with Lineweights applied, and all styles set and in place.

 

Then what I do is to strip any CTB file that has pre-existing lineweights defined. Change everything to ByObject. I do NOT care what color you use for layers, you set the Lineweights in the Layer Manager and be done with it so nobody argues about it, ever.

 

The use of Templates and Tool Palettes makes the "standardized" items easily accessible which makes it a positive thing for the drafter/designer/engineer using AutoCRAP. This doesn't "enforce" standards but more "promotes" standards.

 

The rest, unfortunately, is a management issue. Sometimes cracking the whip is the only way to tighten people up.

 

-Tannar

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