Growing An Office Wide Template From Scratch

[scavey]

Over time and many projects I plan on growing a template for my office. We do site/civil design and urban development. I want all of our engineers to use the same styles for everything (multileaders, profiles, multitext, etc.) and I have a feeling it's going to continue to grow and change for many years.

 

Should I have everyone's default template settings point to a template file (.dwt) on a server? Or should I roll out new template versions every month and have them update their local template file?

[Dana W]

What many companies do, is to set up a separate job folder on the server for each new job as it is contracted. Within the job folder structure, there should be a sub folder for the CAD drawing files.

In the cad drawing folder at setup time The Drafting Coordinator will do a save as of your templates as working drawings, complete with standard styles, Layers, title block xrefs loaded, etc. When the Cadd operator starts up the drawings, he can use the brand new drawings already in the job folder. If you want standards, don't leave it up to the individuals to behave in a standard manner, it is oxymoronic.

This reduces the likelihood of your drafting crew merely copying an old drawing and erasing modelspace, rather than bothering to search up a template on the server.

[Organic]

Should I have everyone's default template settings point to a template file (.dwt) on a server? Or should I roll out new template versions every month and have them update their local template file?

 

Yes, point the template directory to the template(s) on the server. It will be a lot easier than going around and manually updating it locally on everyone's computers.

 

In the cad drawing folder at setup time The Drafting Coordinator will do a save as of your templates as working drawings, complete with standard styles, Layers, title block xrefs loaded, etc.

 

Why does a 'drawing coordinator' need to do that? If you have good templates already setup than this shouldn't be necessary,

 

When the Cadd operator starts up the drawings, he can use the brand new drawings already in the job folder.

 

It is not hard for the drafter to go file new and start the job from the template... it just seems idiotic to have someone create a blank file/template ready for him.

[Dana W]

Well, never mind then.

[BIGAL]

Just CONFIG "Files" then "Template settings" set your path to the server and set the actual file name of the template this way always opens the latest version of the master DWT.

 

To confuse you can have different startup icons that are set up differently say CIVIL v's Archi with diffrent DWT and paths etc to support the appropraite task.