New CAD Standards for an old company

[Lee Roy]

I've made a standards manual here. It's our bible; but it leaves openness where needed. I didn't say, "These are the only layers you can use." Instead, "Here's the layer naming guidelines, follow them and be as logical and short as possible while still being descriptive." Everyone picked it up VERY quickly and easily. Things that everyone wanted to argue and change to their liking (ctb, fonts, dimstyles), I either put in a read-only folder, or specified in acaddoc.fas

 

Like I said earlier, utilizing acaddoc.fas and numerous other lisps, it's very time consuming and difficult to not comply with the standards I set forth. acaddoc.fas resets to the standard text styles, dim styles, ctb's, units, precisions, file locations, etc. Anything that can be set, is set, every time a document is opened. Furthermore, for government-type entities who have standards that we have to draw by, acaddoc.fas recognizes that and changes accordingly.

 

I didn't say "This is how you have to draw, period." I instead made it more like, "You can choose to draw how you want, but it's going to be a real headache." Even the most opposing draftsmen have conformed without a word. They actually like how most everything automatically sets itself, now.

 

I use .fas instead .lsp because we have some self-taught programmers in our office that like to play with things, and did; I don't want my lisps changed. ACAD reads it just the same. My .lsp files are on a thumb drive, backed up to a private folder on the network and on my home computer. All that anyone, besides me and IT, have access to is a bunch of .fas files.

 

I've been at this position for a year, and I'm still not done.