CAD standards manual

[Anonymous]

A company has multiple offices, each with their own CAD standards
manual, arranged using a common outline. Approximately 75% of the
content of this outline is the same for each office. For the other 25%,
each office has their own standards (Please no lectures on how each
office should be the same..... been there, done that....)

Does anyone have any experience with methods to publish this data so that:

A) It's available on a web page (on the company's Intranet)
B) The entire manual (on a per office basis) can be printed if necessary
C) There is no duplication of data. If a change is made to a section
that applies to all offices, that change is done once, in one place.
D) There is an ability to filter differences per office. For example: If
an employee from Cincinnati is temporarily working in Indianapolis, he
can look at ONLY the differences in CAD standards for Indy as compared
to Cincy.

I'm thinking of some sort of application that would keep topics in a
database, then when a particular office's manual needs viewed, a query
is run on the DB, pulling up all the applicable topics.

Any experience with something like this?

TIA


--
R.K. McSwain
http://rkmcswain.blogspot.com

[Anonymous]

"R.K. McSwain" wrote in message
news:5246662@discussion.autodesk.com...
< For the other 25%, each office has their own standards (Please no lectures on
how each
office should be the same..... been there, done that....)>

Actually, I agree that branches often need their own "identity". After all, if
they could be exactly the same, why are they separate to begin with?



A & B are accomplished by creating the manual in word and then saving as a pdf.
PDFs are easily linked to a website.

C and D could be covered by different "chapters" in the document.

PDFs are searchable. Make a decent TOC, and you are off to the
races............

[Anonymous]

I'm in the process of doing that now, all web based, reading Access and SQL
databases, and hope to have it changing content per office in the not too
distant future.

The data access part is surprisingly easy, IMO. I use PHP, but I've done it
with VBScript, as well. Either work fine. VBScript is kind of neat in that
you can write code in Acad's VBA IDE (Intellisense doing some of the work),
then the port to VBScript is generally painless.

I don't have the office specific stuff ironed out yet, but I have a few
ideas (session variables, etc. with PHP) that should make it fairly easy to
implement.

If you have an SQL server, go that route, now with your data. We have a few
things requiring me to use Access files, which I'm dreading. The updates
will a pain and some folks are going to grumble, because to keep peace in
the entire system, we're going to have to limit who has access to makind
modifications.

Feel free to email directly if you'd care to see samples, etc. I'm a huge
fan of the whole intranet/content from DB scenario. It takes a little
planning and learning the scripting part (not hard), but it's worth the
effort. If possible, maybe find a web 'hobbyist' who actually enjoys it and
wouldn't mind taking on a little extra responsibility if you don't want to
mess with it yourself.

"R.K. McSwain" wrote in message
news:5246662@discussion.autodesk.com...
A company has multiple offices, each with their own CAD standards
manual, arranged using a common outline. Approximately 75% of the
content of this outline is the same for each office. For the other 25%,
each office has their own standards (Please no lectures on how each
office should be the same..... been there, done that....)

Does anyone have any experience with methods to publish this data so that:

A) It's available on a web page (on the company's Intranet)
B) The entire manual (on a per office basis) can be printed if necessary
C) There is no duplication of data. If a change is made to a section
that applies to all offices, that change is done once, in one place.
D) There is an ability to filter differences per office. For example: If
an employee from Cincinnati is temporarily working in Indianapolis, he
can look at ONLY the differences in CAD standards for Indy as compared
to Cincy.

I'm thinking of some sort of application that would keep topics in a
database, then when a particular office's manual needs viewed, a query
is run on the DB, pulling up all the applicable topics.

Any experience with something like this?

TIA


--
R.K. McSwain
http://rkmcswain.blogspot.com

[Anonymous]

What do you use for your Intranet?

Do you, or have you explored, implementing Sharepoint in
Win2003Server if that is what you all use? there is a free
version that's part of 2003Server that is good for this, or
there is an expanded add-on product for multi-sites. All
done with basic HTML pages and links, works great ere for us
(but we are only one site and one satellite, not several
large locations).

--
Dean
--

[Anonymous]

This is a huge problem in my company as every office has its own standards
and it makes collebration between offices very
difficult. Personally I'd push for corporate wide standards

--
Dave

"R.K. McSwain" wrote in message
news:5246662@discussion.autodesk.com...
A company has multiple offices, each with their own CAD standards
manual, arranged using a common outline. Approximately 75% of the
content of this outline is the same for each office. For the other 25%,
each office has their own standards (Please no lectures on how each
office should be the same..... been there, done that....)

Does anyone have any experience with methods to publish this data so that:

A) It's available on a web page (on the company's Intranet)
B) The entire manual (on a per office basis) can be printed if necessary
C) There is no duplication of data. If a change is made to a section
that applies to all offices, that change is done once, in one place.
D) There is an ability to filter differences per office. For example: If
an employee from Cincinnati is temporarily working in Indianapolis, he
can look at ONLY the differences in CAD standards for Indy as compared
to Cincy.

I'm thinking of some sort of application that would keep topics in a
database, then when a particular office's manual needs viewed, a query
is run on the DB, pulling up all the applicable topics.

Any experience with something like this?

TIA


--
R.K. McSwain
http://rkmcswain.blogspot.com

[robincapperw]

I author in MindManager (master), use free viewer for read only access + export to html for intranet & word for printing if requried.

http://rcd.typepad.com/rcd/mindmanager/index.html

[Anonymous]

On Mon, 24 Jul 2006 22:22:12 +0000, David Allen wrote:

>This is a huge problem in my company as every office has its own standards
>and it makes collebration between offices very
>difficult. Personally I'd push for corporate wide standards

Surely there is someone in charge of all of the drawing offices?

You don't have to operate like a bull in a china shop, but employees
need to understand who owns the company. They might have input, but
ultimately there is an owner (or a manager who has been delegated the
task of running the company) and it is his/her right to make changes
even if it is against all the advice offered. That is all any other
employee can do. If this is not acceptable to an employee, then they
have to find an employer who is willing to be dictated to.

[Anonymous]

Ian A. White said the following on 7/24/2006 6:36 PM:
>
> Surely there is someone in charge of all of the drawing offices?
>
> You don't have to operate like a bull in a china shop, but employees
> need to understand who owns the company. They might have input, but
> ultimately there is an owner (or a manager who has been delegated the
> task of running the company) and it is his/her right to make changes
> even if it is against all the advice offered. That is all any other
> employee can do. If this is not acceptable to an employee, then they
> have to find an employer who is willing to be dictated to.

Agreed, but you also cannot go in on Monday morning and throw books at
people and say "Follow these rules or find another job"

In this particular case, some of the sites were purchased and the
employees retained. Getting them to make an overnight change is
impossible. Actually, get everyone to agree on 75% of this stuff was a
monumental achievement.

Getting them to actually follow the rules is something else. We can't
realistically expect to get there without an efficient method to deliver
these standards. A system is in place, but it has it's problems.


--
R.K. McSwain
http://rkmcswain.blogspot.com

[Anonymous]

Simple: 1 universal PDF for all offices and seperate PDF's for each
individual office with the deviations/variations.

"R.K. McSwain" wrote in message
news:5246662@discussion.autodesk.com...
A company has multiple offices, each with their own CAD standards
manual, arranged using a common outline. Approximately 75% of the
content of this outline is the same for each office. For the other 25%,
each office has their own standards (Please no lectures on how each
office should be the same..... been there, done that....)

Does anyone have any experience with methods to publish this data so that:

A) It's available on a web page (on the company's Intranet)
B) The entire manual (on a per office basis) can be printed if necessary
C) There is no duplication of data. If a change is made to a section
that applies to all offices, that change is done once, in one place.
D) There is an ability to filter differences per office. For example: If
an employee from Cincinnati is temporarily working in Indianapolis, he
can look at ONLY the differences in CAD standards for Indy as compared
to Cincy.

I'm thinking of some sort of application that would keep topics in a
database, then when a particular office's manual needs viewed, a query
is run on the DB, pulling up all the applicable topics.

Any experience with something like this?

TIA


--
R.K. McSwain
http://rkmcswain.blogspot.com

[Anonymous]

The only thing I could foresee with utilizing PDF's is that at some point in
the unforeseen future you'll run into the Undiscovered Country RK...

The place where one (or all) of the offices decides that "their" way of
doing things is better - for them at least - than the "corporate" way.

I'm not ready at this point to suggest a "better" way than PDF for you to
handle this, but just realize that anyone with access to a current version
of Acrobat has the "means" to make revisions.

Or are your sleepers already in place for this occasion?

And the sleepers could be a password-protected Adobe file also.

It might take a determined office some more time to make the revisions I
spoke of using Word.

By then - hopefully - you would have at least a glimpse of "change in the
wind"?

--
Don Reichle
"The only thing worse
than training your staff,
and having them leave is -
not training your staff,
and having them stay."
Courtesy Graphics Solution Providers
----------------------------------------------------------
!! Please discuss whatever we tell you with your SysMgr !!
!! They appreciate staying in the loop 🙂 !!

LDT/CD-2K4
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 3800+ 2.01GHz
XP-Pro 32bit SP2
2GB RAM
Dual WD800JD Hard Drives - 149GB Nvidia Stripe
Nvidia Quadro FX 1300 128MB
Dual ViewSonic 19-inch VA902b monitors

"The only Constant is Change".


"neilw" wrote in message
news:5246982@discussion.autodesk.com...
Simple: 1 universal PDF for all offices and seperate PDF's for each
individual office with the deviations/variations.

"R.K. McSwain" wrote in message
news:5246662@discussion.autodesk.com...
A company has multiple offices, each with their own CAD standards
manual, arranged using a common outline. Approximately 75% of the
content of this outline is the same for each office. For the other 25%,
each office has their own standards (Please no lectures on how each
office should be the same..... been there, done that....)

Does anyone have any experience with methods to publish this data so that:

A) It's available on a web page (on the company's Intranet)
B) The entire manual (on a per office basis) can be printed if necessary
C) There is no duplication of data. If a change is made to a section
that applies to all offices, that change is done once, in one place.
D) There is an ability to filter differences per office. For example: If
an employee from Cincinnati is temporarily working in Indianapolis, he
can look at ONLY the differences in CAD standards for Indy as compared
to Cincy.

I'm thinking of some sort of application that would keep topics in a
database, then when a particular office's manual needs viewed, a query
is run on the DB, pulling up all the applicable topics.

Any experience with something like this?

TIA


--
R.K. McSwain
http://rkmcswain.blogspot.com

[Anonymous]

On Tue, 25 Jul 2006 00:42:01 +0000, R.K. McSwain
wrote:

>Ian A. White said the following on 7/24/2006 6:36 PM:
>>
>> Surely there is someone in charge of all of the drawing offices?
>>
>> You don't have to operate like a bull in a china shop, but employees
>> need to understand who owns the company. They might have input, but
>> ultimately there is an owner (or a manager who has been delegated the
>> task of running the company) and it is his/her right to make changes
>> even if it is against all the advice offered. That is all any other
>> employee can do. If this is not acceptable to an employee, then they
>> have to find an employer who is willing to be dictated to.
>
>Agreed, but you also cannot go in on Monday morning and throw books at
>people and say "Follow these rules or find another job"

That's why I said not to operate like a bull in a china shop 😉

>In this particular case, some of the sites were purchased and the
>employees retained. Getting them to make an overnight change is
>impossible. Actually, get everyone to agree on 75% of this stuff was a
>monumental achievement.

There is always an issue in these circumstances, but people must
realise that no matter how much they might like it to be a case of the
tail wagging the dog, management is there to manage. You cannot have a
situation where management (who are paid to do this) decide on a
particular course of action only to find that the employees decide
they want to do it differently. No matter what justification there
might be, it is simply a case of being an employee. I have seen this
in many places during the 30 odd years I have worked, and I can assure
you that when a situation arises where employees decide that they know
better than management, it always ends in tears.

By all means consult with the employees, but ultimately it is
management who make the decisions. Anyone providing advice needs to
understand that it is just that - advice. What tends to happen is that
you get employees offering advice only they assume ALL their advice
will be accepted.

>Getting them to actually follow the rules is something else. We can't
>realistically expect to get there without an efficient method to deliver
>these standards. A system is in place, but it has it's problems.

Implementing new standards is always difficult. It is not that we
resist change, but that we resist being changed. There has to be good
follow up checking and where people fail to comply they need to be
made aware that a standards manual is not a book containing
suggestions. Rather it is a book detailing how their employer requires
the work to be done.

I have been involved in getting drawing offices compliance to ISO9000
series Quality Assurance. Failure to comply here is not just a case of
doing things a little differently. Fail an audit and you can lose your
accreditation. That may mean you are in breach of contracts. Lose a
contract and you could lose your job.

I know it may seem harsh, but that is how it is.

[Anonymous]

neilw said the following on 7/24/2006 9:33 PM:
> Simple: 1 universal PDF for all offices and seperate PDF's for each
> individual office with the deviations/variations.

Thanks, but that fails requirement #3, which is probably the most important.


--
R.K. McSwain
http://rkmcswain.blogspot.com

[Anonymous]

"I know it may seem harsh, but that is how it is."

That's how it is for ISO compliance. When you're just trying to get to a
point of decent inter-office and client/consultant collaboration, the bar is
much lower. There can be no deviance in ISO standards - that's the point of
ISO certification, etc. But when you are charged with creating and
implementing your own standards across multiple offices I think 75%
compliance is a job well done. If you need to be flexible on the other 25%,
and that keeps the staff happy - then so be it. You just have to be careful
on what 25% you flex on and make sure each office knows that they can have
their 25% as long as they stick to it. As long as it's documented, the other
offices can work with it...

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure where you see a problem. If the standards are accessed through
a web page or a central archive there would be no duplication of data. Also,
since each document would contain unique standards information there would
be no duplication within the documents.

"R.K. McSwain" wrote in message
news:5247185@discussion.autodesk.com...
neilw said the following on 7/24/2006 9:33 PM:
> Simple: 1 universal PDF for all offices and seperate PDF's for each
> individual office with the deviations/variations.

Thanks, but that fails requirement #3, which is probably the most important.


--
R.K. McSwain
http://rkmcswain.blogspot.com

[Anonymous]

What does "a" company imply? Not "your" company where you are an employee?

<%= Clinton Gallagher
NET csgallagher AT metromilwaukee.com
URL http://www.metromilwaukee.com/clintongallagher/




"R.K. McSwain" wrote in message
news:5246662@discussion.autodesk.com...
A company has multiple offices, each with their own CAD standards
manual, arranged using a common outline. Approximately 75% of the
content of this outline is the same for each office. For the other 25%,
each office has their own standards (Please no lectures on how each
office should be the same..... been there, done that....)

Does anyone have any experience with methods to publish this data so that:

A) It's available on a web page (on the company's Intranet)
B) The entire manual (on a per office basis) can be printed if necessary
C) There is no duplication of data. If a change is made to a section
that applies to all offices, that change is done once, in one place.
D) There is an ability to filter differences per office. For example: If
an employee from Cincinnati is temporarily working in Indianapolis, he
can look at ONLY the differences in CAD standards for Indy as compared
to Cincy.

I'm thinking of some sort of application that would keep topics in a
database, then when a particular office's manual needs viewed, a query
is run on the DB, pulling up all the applicable topics.

Any experience with something like this?

TIA


--
R.K. McSwain
http://rkmcswain.blogspot.com

[rculp]

"" But when you are charged with creating and implementing your own standards across multiple offices I think 75% compliance is a job well done.""

Well now that depends entirely on the standard being implemented.. Do you think OSHA would accept 75% compliance?

Some of our standards are mandatory, full compliance, no exceptions, no leniency. Thinking about, ALL our CAD standards are that way. The 25% about which we would be flexible, we don't bother with a standard.

[Anonymous]

How about TiddlyWiki? Not sure it fills all your requirements but it sure is
an interesting technology just using one HTML file. Even images can be
embedded.
Take a look at the homepage http://www.tiddlywiki.com/.
Tags can be used to identify what is for the different offices.
Feeds are supported so people can keep up to date with changes.

--
Best Regards, Jimmy Bergmark
Owner/Developer - JTB World - Software development and Consulting
Blog: http://jtbworld.blogspot.com
JTB FlexReport (FLEXnet / FLEXlm report tool) -
http://www.jtbworld.com/jtbflexreport
SmartPurger (Purges automatically) - http://www.jtbworld.com/smartpurger.htm
or download some freeware at http://www.jtbworld.com
More on AutoCAD 2006 and 2007
http://www.jtbworld.com/autocad2006.htm
http://www.jtbworld.com/autocad2007.htm


"R.K. McSwain" wrote in message
news:5246662@discussion.autodesk.com...
A company has multiple offices, each with their own CAD standards
manual, arranged using a common outline. Approximately 75% of the
content of this outline is the same for each office. For the other 25%,
each office has their own standards (Please no lectures on how each
office should be the same..... been there, done that....)

Does anyone have any experience with methods to publish this data so that:

A) It's available on a web page (on the company's Intranet)
B) The entire manual (on a per office basis) can be printed if necessary
C) There is no duplication of data. If a change is made to a section
that applies to all offices, that change is done once, in one place.
D) There is an ability to filter differences per office. For example: If
an employee from Cincinnati is temporarily working in Indianapolis, he
can look at ONLY the differences in CAD standards for Indy as compared
to Cincy.

I'm thinking of some sort of application that would keep topics in a
database, then when a particular office's manual needs viewed, a query
is run on the DB, pulling up all the applicable topics.

Any experience with something like this?

TIA


--
R.K. McSwain
http://rkmcswain.blogspot.com

[Anonymous]

That's how we are also. But then we just have the one office. If we had
multiple offices, I would require anything in that 25% that affected the
collaboration to be documented so the other offices had some idea of what
they were getting.

And yes, I do believe OSHA accepts 75% compliance. If you take into account
all the rules and regualtions and how some of it is applicable to one
company and not to another then yes. Since we are an MEP firm and do not
deal with the storage and disposal of hazardous waste or materials, I'm
pretty sure we do not comply with the OSHA standards that cover this.
;)


wrote in message news:5247656@discussion.autodesk.com...
"" But when you are charged with creating and implementing your own
standards across multiple offices I think 75% compliance is a job well
done.""

Well now that depends entirely on the standard being implemented.. Do you
think OSHA would accept 75% compliance?

Some of our standards are mandatory, full compliance, no exceptions, no
leniency. Thinking about, ALL our CAD standards are that way. The 25%
about which we would be flexible, we don't bother with a standard.

[Anonymous]

Boy, I don't know. I think I'd have a hard time presenting that to the
staff... "using a new tool, TiddlyWiki, we have published our standards
corporate wide..." Yeah, I dunno...

:)

"Jimmy Bergmark" wrote in message
news:5247742@discussion.autodesk.com...
How about TiddlyWiki? Not sure it fills all your requirements but it sure is
an interesting technology just using one HTML file. Even images can be
embedded.
Take a look at the homepage http://www.tiddlywiki.com/.
Tags can be used to identify what is for the different offices.
Feeds are supported so people can keep up to date with changes.

--
Best Regards, Jimmy Bergmark
Owner/Developer - JTB World - Software development and Consulting
Blog: http://jtbworld.blogspot.com
JTB FlexReport (FLEXnet / FLEXlm report tool) -
http://www.jtbworld.com/jtbflexreport
SmartPurger (Purges automatically) - http://www.jtbworld.com/smartpurger.htm
or download some freeware at http://www.jtbworld.com
More on AutoCAD 2006 and 2007
http://www.jtbworld.com/autocad2006.htm
http://www.jtbworld.com/autocad2007.htm


"R.K. McSwain" wrote in message
news:5246662@discussion.autodesk.com...
A company has multiple offices, each with their own CAD standards
manual, arranged using a common outline. Approximately 75% of the
content of this outline is the same for each office. For the other 25%,
each office has their own standards (Please no lectures on how each
office should be the same..... been there, done that....)

Does anyone have any experience with methods to publish this data so that:

A) It's available on a web page (on the company's Intranet)
B) The entire manual (on a per office basis) can be printed if necessary
C) There is no duplication of data. If a change is made to a section
that applies to all offices, that change is done once, in one place.
D) There is an ability to filter differences per office. For example: If
an employee from Cincinnati is temporarily working in Indianapolis, he
can look at ONLY the differences in CAD standards for Indy as compared
to Cincy.

I'm thinking of some sort of application that would keep topics in a
database, then when a particular office's manual needs viewed, a query
is run on the DB, pulling up all the applicable topics.

Any experience with something like this?

TIA


--
R.K. McSwain
http://rkmcswain.blogspot.com

[KyleDasan]

"Surely there is someone in charge of all of the drawing offices?"

There is someone. And don't call me Shirley

Sorry, I couldn't resist. It's a running joke here..