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 spewed the following useless crap:

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

> Any experience with something like this?

Run a Wiki...

[RevitIt]

We use the intranet for sharing standards, training docs, etc.
Works like a charm

[Anonymous]

On Tue, 25 Jul 2006 13:53:30 +0000, pkirill
wrote:

>"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...

Well, a "CAD standards manual" is just that - a standards manual. As
such it is not flexible. If you want it to be a standard, it has to be
that way.

Make sure that you don't have things in it that you are not prepared
to enforce. It is the 25% non-compliance that is the thin end of the
wedge. Make compromises there and that is the start of problems. You
see, each individual will have a different 25% they feel they can get
away with. In the end you may as well not have anything because there
will be so much non-compliance that all it will do is cause the person
responsible for compliance grief.

[rculp]

"" 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. ""

If you don't handle it then you ARE in compliance, and NO they don't accept less than 100% compliance. If you don't work in applicable areas that statute does not apply and you are in compliance.

The same would be true of a multi-office standard. If you have a standard that covers the drafting of widgets, and one office does not draw widgets, then that standard will not apply to that office. But all standards that do apply require 100% compliance.

[Anonymous]

pkirill said the following On 7/25/2006 8:53 AM:

> 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


Just to clarify. The 75% is not how much "compliance" is done. That
refers to the amount of standards that can be made common across the
multiple offices. Certain municipalities and regulatory agencies require
certain standards that the other locations may not be able to do, due to
their own local requirements.

Regardless, compliance is not our problem. We consult, advise,
recommend, publish, and maintain these standards, but forcing compliance
is up to the departmental CAD managers.

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

[rculp]

"" Just to clarify. The 75% is not how much "compliance" is done. That refers to the amount of standards that can be made common across the multiple offices. ""

Ahhh, see I read that even differently than that or the way pkrill interpreted it. I thought you had gotten your office to agree with 75% of the standards, which is amazing to me. We barely got that many that thought standards were even necessary. Once they understood that I didn't care very much one way or the other whether they agreed or not, it got a lot easier.

One thing that has helped implementation and compliance, around here anyway, is letting the users work out the details of the standards, letting them do much of the customization to implement the standard, giving them a sense of ownership in the standards. Not only are they more apt to comply, but they will see to it that others comply as well.

We try to incorporate into the working atmosphere a sense of full-time teaching. Everyone is always a teacher, and everyone is always a student and this is a team. If anyone fails we all share in that failure, and if anyone succeeds we all share in that success.

All this has helped with the acceptance of our standards where compliance is not optional, its mandatory. If a standard is not applicable to you, then fine, it's not. But if you start to work in that area, then the standard becomes applicable and compliance is mandatory.

[Anonymous]

We see it differently but I think we are in agreement. Each office needs to
comply with 100% the office standard, 75% of which may the corporate
standard - right?


wrote in message news:5248275@discussion.autodesk.com...
"" 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. ""

If you don't handle it then you ARE in compliance, and NO they don't accept
less than 100% compliance. If you don't work in applicable areas that
statute does not apply and you are in compliance.

The same would be true of a multi-office standard. If you have a standard
that covers the drafting of widgets, and one office does not draw widgets,
then that standard will not apply to that office. But all standards that do
apply require 100% compliance.

[Anonymous]

It was all crystal clear in my mind, but on re-reading I was unclear - the
75% I was refering to (and I think that your were refering to) is 75% of the
total corporate standard. 75% of the total standard would apply to everyone
in all offices with 25% being variable per office based on the factors you
stated below.

"R.K. McSwain" wrote in message
news:5248300@discussion.autodesk.com...
pkirill said the following On 7/25/2006 8:53 AM:

> 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


Just to clarify. The 75% is not how much "compliance" is done. That
refers to the amount of standards that can be made common across the
multiple offices. Certain municipalities and regulatory agencies require
certain standards that the other locations may not be able to do, due to
their own local requirements.

Regardless, compliance is not our problem. We consult, advise,
recommend, publish, and maintain these standards, but forcing compliance
is up to the departmental CAD managers.

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

[rculp]

"" We see it differently but I think we are in agreement. Each office needs to comply with 100% the office standard, 75% of which may the corporate standard - right? ""

ummm?? maybe?

100% of what each office does must be in 100% compliance with the corporate standard.

An individual office may or may not do everything that the corporation does as a whole, but 100% of everything they do must comply with the standard 100%.

Better?

[Anonymous]

This is going to start sounding silly, but I'll take another shot at it just
for fun...

The way I see it, each office has a standard. 75% of that standard is
mandated by corporate. In the areas that these corporate standards cover,
each individual office must be 100% compliant. The other 25% is mandated
internally by each office and may vary from office to office. Each
individual office must be 100% compliant with their local office standard.
So 100% of 75% + 100% of 25% = 100% compliance. And the local (25%)
standard for Office A and Office B will differ and if one applied Office B's
25% to Office A, Office A (most likely) would not be in compliance.

wrote in message news:5249330@discussion.autodesk.com...
"" We see it differently but I think we are in agreement. Each office needs
to comply with 100% the office standard, 75% of which may the corporate
standard - right? ""

ummm?? maybe?

100% of what each office does must be in 100% compliance with the corporate
standard.

An individual office may or may not do everything that the corporation does
as a whole, but 100% of everything they do must comply with the standard
100%.

Better?

[rculp]

"" The way I see it, each office has a standard. 75% of that standard is mandated by corporate. ""

In which the office is required to be 100% compliant.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"" The other 25% is mandated internally by each office and may vary from office to office ""

In which the office is required to be 100% compliant.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"" So 100% of 75% + 100% of 25% = 100% compliance.""

Exactly, at NO time is 75% compliant acceptable.

[Anonymous]

In reading through much of the string here, it seems that there is a lot of focus on "The Standard" and what is to be etched in stone and what can be flexible.
I think there are two components here that really need to be at the base of any so called standard, be it CADD or whatever.
1. Format: and this might be the portion that is identical in each office. The process of putting together the documents and how they should look, what title block, fonts, etc. all fall under format. This part should be the stone.
2. Flexibility: of the Standard may be an individual office thing or it might more appropriately be related to market sector where the branch office is working. After all, wouldn't it be smarter to tailor subsections of a standard based on the needs of that particular market sector (Industrial, Commercial, etc.) than on the vanities of a branch office identity? Plus you may very well find one branch office working several different market sectors as easily as you might have several branch offices pitching in across the net to help loadshare a specific branch. In either case, that CADD standard needs to be adhered to by the whole group involved with the process of putting out the work for that project in that market sector.

The publications issues you list are easy and solutions are bountiful. I would recommend checking out the capabilities of more than a few software vendors and perhaps getting them to let you run a limited time demo version with full capabilities so that you can better know both the limits of the software and exactly what you are looking for in terms of performance, before making the investment.

Fearlessly;
Cantankerous

[Anonymous]

On Thu, 27 Jul 2006 20:16:46 +0000, Cantankerous <> wrote:

>In reading through much of the string here, it seems that there is a lot of focus on "The Standard" and what is to be etched in stone and what can be flexible.

Well, for something to be a standard, it has to be etched in stone
otherwise it is no longer a standard.

I'll give you an example.

I set up the Australian drawing office of a major multi-national
company based in Germany. We would get drawings of their engines from
the German office and there were inconsistencies in the way drawings
were named, the layer names used, the text fonts used, the line
colours used, and just about anything else you could think of when it
came to a CAD file.

Now the German office insisted that they were following their
"standard", only about the only thing that was standard about their
drawings was the fact that it was done using a particular CAD program.

So to use their drawings required an extensive amount of re-work. It
was not even possible to have a lisp or script file that could speed
things up because of the inconsistencies.

Standards are there so that information is consistent.

The key to setting a standard is to know what to etch in stone and
what to leave to the discretion of the user. The biggest problem is
that each individual believes that their way is best and so if you do
not set ground rules you end up with a mess.

There is a lot to be said for allowing an individual to add their
touch so long as it does not impact on others. Many years ago (when I
was starting out), I had to design and prepare the drawings for a
dense phase pneumatic conveying system. Part of it was an instrument
panel. Trying to keep costs down, the instrument panel was a simple
piece of sheet metal with the corners chamfered so that there were no
sharp corners. When the unit was built, everything was OK except that
the instrument panel corners were nicely rounded so I asked the fitter
why he did it that way. His answer was "it looked better with rounded
corners". This showed that he took pride in what he made and that
meant he was more likely to do the other important things properly.

So, a standard is there to make sure that the important things are
done properly and to the standard. Those things that are not important
are in the flexible section.

[Anonymous]

lol
nope
cad is the most unorganized part of my company

--
Dave

"Ian A. White" wrote in message
news:5246894@discussion.autodesk.com...
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.