Drawing Register

[tomspenguin]

I am only conducting the experiment on myself to start with, and then rolling it out onto a few people who will give me good general feedback, instead of just handing it to the dinosaurs as it were. All of the feedback I could post, so may well do so.

 

I like the idea of the redline. I have read up swiftly on the software and will also trial this in another instance. I think I may save this one for a different set of personel who we use for outsourcing some of our manufacturing (it would help them because they dont all have autocad).

 

Thanks for the luck, Im sure I will need it.

[Murph_map]

Thanks Murph.

 

I turned the code into an lsp.

 

I'm not sure how to process it into the excel file like you want me too? (apologies for my lack of knowledge and skills there)

If the file TEMPLATE was on my desktop and my user name was toms how would I need to re write the code?

 

Replace this : (setq file (open "C:\\UserLog.csv" "a"))

with this : (setq file (open "C:\\Users\\Tomdesktop\\UserLog.csv" "a"))

Then in your ACADDOC.lsp add this line: (Userlog)

Make sure the lsp you saved also gets load for every dwg. This may help if you are new to lisp and loading them.

[bennyboy86]

hi tomspenguin

 

I am a QA manager of a small group of drafters aswell, the way we track what people are doing is this:

1. give them a set of drawings with markups

2. make them highlight as they complete markups

3. make them do a print out of the corrected drawings

4. myself or the engineer who marked them up checks over latest set.

 

this seem to work really good for us, not many times things get missed and you can clearly see who is doing what, standard of work and the time it takes.

 

i also do random QA checks of drawings to check layers, linetypes etc are to our standard.

 

I also do a check pre construction issue, using the batch standard checker that got installed with autocad.

 

hope this helps,

 

i know it looks alot but once you get into doesnt take much out of my day to do checks.

[tomspenguin]

Thanks Benny Boy,

 

I do print outs and write over the top of them for people, I cant go anywhere without my pink marker pen!!

Have you ever used design review before?

 

Sometimes I send work out to freelancers and I think I may start trying it out as a process, rather than scanning in documents and then sending it to them with hand drawn annotations on it (when I'm tired my handwriting becomes hieroglyphics).

 

Either way I have got to find the time to check over drawings, its certainly easier to look into detail when everyone has gone home or in the morning before everyone gets in with a cup of coffee!

 

I think it would be good to do random QA checks.

Do you ever have a problem with 2 people trying to operate on the same drawings and needed access to the same file?

[tomspenguin]

Hi ReMark,

 

The drawing register is not going to work. I think that the use of a redline system is the way forward to action changes.....so I have a few questions if you have some time to answer them,

 

I have downloaded CADwizz and got the trial for 15 days so will learn that as a process but why do you not use design review? It seems like they are very similar pieces of software and design review is free.

 

Also, how do you handle multiple users on the same file with CADwizz, or do you strictly stick to one drafter per drawing?

 

Many thanks for your help before and giving me another avenue to go down, the drawing register doesn't work because I have too many dinosaurs here forgetting to close drawings and the renaming of files then conflicted with the registered names on a time sheet. Cataloguing the notes also became a mess without a set of rules to follow needed to be drawn up, such as not abbreviating tasks and how vague or detailed a description should be. All in all, without a completely sync'd system that requires entry, and with a fully specified method of entry a drawing register will be extremely difficult with AutoCAD.

[ReMark]

Design Review wasn't even a gleam in AutoDesk's eye when we switched from Myriad (another viewer) to CADwizz. At the time CADwizz was the only viewer that had a "save as" feature where one could save DWG files in previous release formats.

 

I am the only dedicated CAD draftsman/designer at the company. The three other AutoCAD users are engineers (electrical, process and structural).

 

Re: Drawing register system. I could see where one might have problems instituting such a system. You need full management support and departmental discipline to really use the system to its fullest advantage.

[Organic]

It is another layer of bureaucracy as far as I am concerned. It is pointless anyway as perhaps only 20% (including myself) of people bother to make entries.

[PotGuy]

I can understand the reasoning behind this: You want to know what people are doing in a file so that any changes can be traced.

 

To draftsmen, without good implementation and reasoning will appear to be an unneeded layer of management, as Organic points out.

 

Figuring the implementation out to draftsmen will be the lynchpin of getting it to work.

[PotGuy]

Bill,

 

The issue is not new, but there's been no change in the 'gotchas' that kill most attempts.

 

One cannot account for an undefined metric... Take for example, the definition of 'work being done in a drawing'.

 

What is defined as time to be counted, and time not counted? Creating entities? Any time that is not Idle? What about deleting entities?

 

 

 

If I 'work' in a drawing for 3.5 hours, and then proceed to select all and hit delete before a Save, there is no resultant production value, but there was work put in... Without a solid metric by which to account for this, and other scenarios, I see no way for an ad-hoc initiative being successful.

 

How is time accounted for if one opens another drawing as read-only for reference... Time is spent researching, comparing, etc. to ensure that the work done in another drawing is accurate, but the time was in a read-only drawing, etc.

 

 

 

... Definitely not the simplest development issue.

 

Found this quote from a similar Thread a few Months back.

[tomspenguin]

Hi Potguy,

 

Thanks for bringing up the old threads.

 

I looked through alot of them from other forums too.

Its all the same contentoous issue but its not changed since all of these threads were left.

 

The conclusion I have come to, is to record your own independant notes and go over them.

The digital way to do this is with a redline technique (which is like a virtual highlighter anyway) so you can check your own progress.

 

If you can save or record in some way all of your amends (we have a previous folder here which is a dedicated catalogue of previous work) then your time should easily be accounted for and the changes made should be easily re-collectable in multiple means.

 

I just thought it was worth bringing it back up in case a new further thinking idea came about to do with registering only access to drawings..and recording simple notes.

 

It think for the one job where we don't xref but send a drawing around out of house we will use design review.

Does anyone know of any glaring issues with this as an idea? Or of any glaring advantages of design review? I will be completely new to it and have until April to become very competent at it.

 

Thanks again Potguy

[Organic]

I've always thought of drawing registers as indexes of CAD directory's, not tools for recording where you spent your time and what you worked on.

[czc]

I've always thought of drawing registers as indexes of CAD directory's, not tools for recording where you spent your time and what you worked on.

 

Sounds like a timesheet could be used. Would just need to be detail about what you did.

[Organic]

Sounds like a timesheet could be used. Would just need to be detail about what you did.

 

We use both. The time sheet management software is used exclusively for billing, while the drawing register is pretty much redundant.

 

In my opinion, drawing registers are pointless. They are simplify red tape in place to meet some management/quality standards although are not used well in practice. They may be filled in some time although no one then uses that data afterwards.

 

In my experience their use falls into one of two categories:

a) Simple/medium projects no one even looks in the drawing registers. Some are completed, others not, it depends on the staff. Staff can be forced/disciplined if they don't complete them, although when no one reads them, there isn't much point...

b) Big projects, some will look in them, although most of the time the entries were never detailed enough/logged correctly in the first place (if at all) and it is quicker to go ask the people responsible or to just randomly open all the drawings to find what you want.

[mwade93]

Here is what I use. I made this to make my CAD time sheet really easy.

 

[ATTACH]43919[/ATTACH]

[tomspenguin]

mwade93 any chance that you could re send that file? its coming up as invalid and I cant my hands on it, cheers....

[tomspenguin]

To let you know I have solved a Drawing Register for a Simple Purpose of referencing whom was last to activate and save a file.

 

We are using the Insert Field marker added onto Paperspaces, which marks a date, time and User on the bottom of paperspace and then stamps it on a non plottable layer.

It only saves the most recent user and time and dates, but does not allow people to save without registering there name within the file.

 

It means no time logging but the finish of a file which is perfect and has a small element of user register.

 

I will trial it over the coming months and then provide some further feedback on this application.

[Luis Ternou]

I did nog read everything here so far and maybe already shared but did you think about a document management system like Bentley ProjectWise? We use it with AutoCAD 2012

[tomspenguin]

Luis I just did a quick read up on Project wise and I'm not sure how that is going to work with creating a register. Can you give a brief explanation for the benefit of the forum and myself please?

[ReMark]

Is there going to be a cost-benefit analysis when this is all done to prove or disprove the theory this was all worth it?

[Luis Ternou]

Maybe this will explain how you can force your employees to register/log their work in Projectwise:

http://communities.bentley.com/products/projectwise/content_management/b/weblog/archive/2011/12/02/enabling-the-required-comment-prompt-in-audit-trail-of-projectwise.aspx

 

With a documentmanagement system you can log/register/record/secure/find etc. almost anything you want.

Some other EDMS:

http://cad.about.com/od/CAD_Standards/tp/The-Five-Best-Edms-Packages.htm

 

Regards,

Luis