Searchable Drawing Index

[RickyS]

Hey guys,

 

We are installing a new NAS this week to house all our "completed" projects & I've been asked to implement some sort of searchable drawing index, possibly with hyper links to open the drawings. I've had a lot of thoughts as to how this can be done, HTML doc, spreadsheet, etc. I have also thought I may be re-inventing the wheel here. Has anybody had a similar request and possibly cracked this nut already?

 

Thanks

[BIGAL]

Any of those mentioned would work also database. We use a commercial product normally takes a couple of minutes to find a dwg, its based around a MSacess database does billing etc but no link to open dwg's.

 

One suggestion though if you call your projects "Freds rear shed ver 4 cabling drawing" you will never find it becasue you have to remember it was freds first, you need to have a multiple index system something like project number, client name, address, project type better to have more than less.

 

A couple of examples, We get internally other staff asking us for a plan for "smithy's reserve" my answer is I have not lived in this town all my life and dont have a clue where "smithy's reserve is" and our drawings are not indexed under a common name but rather by location, also the reserve had been renamed about 10 years ago.

 

2nd oh its a "waterfront plan I think stage 2 something about boat ramp changes" found this one after about 2 hours of searching because it was not entered into the system and I was looking for a dwg by name only (very long name) and not by project name where they would have at least been grouped together. Had to open multiple dwgs to have a look inside them to find the right one.

 

It really depends how deep you need to go most of our projects are between 1-10 sheets so a single entry is ok if architectural say 300 sheets then you need a better database recording system to find an individual drawing, DWG+sheet No+Rev+description in search.

 

If its simple recording start with excel you cant go wrong can be exported into something else later on.

 

Almost forgot theres a number of posts here about linking excell to dwgs and recording dwg details from the title block.

Edited January 17, 2011 by BIGAL
excel link

[RickyS]

Thanks for the Quick reply BIGAL,

 

We give each Project a unique job number, then we list its location city & state so.... so far so good. Here is where it gets sticky. I work for a manufacturer that creates custom products on a per job basis. We really have two categories of drawings, the first thing we do is create architectural drawings for owner approval (6-18 sheets typical), once they are approved we create fabrication drawings (standard stuff..cut,punch, weld etc.) To start with we'll focus only on the architectural stuff, why you ask? This our major request, management, sales, accounting, etc wants easy access.

 

We currently have an excel sheet with hyper-links that works, but with the new NAS we will be multiplying the data available by 5x or more. Your later point is a good one too, what if we want to look for some specific characteristics of a job, say size? This will ultimately get into a data entry question as well ie who will be in charge of "logging" the pertinent information into the system. Excel may be my best option, we have it installed on all the pc's, and all our users have basic knowledge of how to use excel.

 

I'm still wandering if there is a "better" or really "slick" way to pull this off? I'm sure others have had to deal with this same issue.