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Finding and Sorting Drawings... How do you do it?


lamensterms

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Hey guys,

 

Just wanted to start a discussion on peoples various methods of managing their drawing libraries. Specifically - if you have a list of drawings which you need to collect, how do you isolate them from your drawing library?

 

For example, as a steel detailer, we use ProSteel - which produces individual .DWGs for each part and group in our models, so we often work on jobs with 1000+ drawings. Often we are asked to provide a batch of drawings for only a certain area of the job. It is quite easy to isolate the required elements in the model, and produce a list of the drawings pertaining to this area... but actually collection these drawings from the list can be quite tricky (especially if using only Windows Explorer).

 

So... my question to you guys is - how do/would you do it?

 

Looking forward to hearing some ideas.

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Maybe grid points over entire site export out to say excel as you create layouts, use the window to search for grid pts, grid + dwg number. When searching remove duplicates from list produced for an area.

 

1000,1000 dwg1

1100,1000 dwg1

1200,1000 dwg1

1300,1000 dwg2

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All of our drawings, whether produced in-house or obtained from outside sources, are logged into a master database. We create unique queries to cull out the drawings we are interested in finding. So a query might be based on a process code (ex. - 02_1), a company name (ex. - Fairfield County Sprinkler) or a drawing type (site plan). Some queries are utilized so often (ex. - P&ID) that they are a standard part of the database while others may be used only once then not used again.

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Thanks for the replies guys.

 

BigAl, do you mean number the drawings by area (each area has a specific number/code)? That is a good idea.

 

ReMark, what is the software that you use for your database? Do you attach tag/key words/letters to the drawings to find them?

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The database was created in MS Access. To view CAD drawings and PDFs the engineers utilize our internal engineering website where the appropriate links can be found.

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Like Remark we have a database based on MS access for recording the master project details, but our drawings rarely go into big numbers 4-5 max. Though I am working on one with 86 layouts. Just use dwgindex to jump to correct layout.

 

I was suggesting above a possible way of recording each layout by its co-ords not sheet name, as you asked how to find sheets for a certain area, the other way may be to have a 2nd dwg with layouts as rectang blocks then xref in a shadow outline of the project then just window area and retrieve the sheet numbers. Easiest way is within layout do rectang block rescale etc to fit then CUT and paste to other dwg original co-ords. You can have multiple rectangs of different size = scale of layout.

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Hey guys thanks again for the input.

 

ReMark - what would the process be for collecting a set of drawings (.DWGs) that do not have any keyword similarities? Is there a way you can feed a list (excel, TXT) file and get it to collect the list drawings?

 

BigAl - my first explanation may have not been clear enough. I am wondering about how to find/isolated a set of .DWGs, rather than layouts. We only use the model layout in each DWG for our shop drawings. One file one drawing.

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Each rectang can still be a dwg name in your seperate index dwg. Just use a selection window and a list of dwg names would be created. Our GIS has all engineering plans as polygons representing the area of interest of a plan so a road intersection would be a cross shape. Depending on search area is how many polygons are retrieved.

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Prosteel allows my to create a list of drawings pretty easily. I'm more interest in a method to isolate the .DWGs (through windows explorer) or another way.

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Within lisp you can use VL to copy a dwg from one directory to another is this what you want ? If so google Bold for command example, you said you have the list just repeat as required.

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Ah, excellent. Thanks for that tip BigAl. I'll check that out.

 

Yes, I can produce a .MDB/.XLS/.TXT list of the drawing numbers from the ProSteel model.

 

Thanks again.

 

Still open to alternative ideas/suggestions as well.

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