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I have been put into the CAD manager position at a company with little to no standards. I am excited about my position because I get to create the standards.
I want to start off at the basics "how do i start a project"
What I was thinking of doing is having a prototype folder with all of the xrefs and blocks in that folder. I would then copy the folder and work with this. Do you think this is a good idea? or would it be better to work with libraries, and xref everything in? The problem i see is that is a block changes for a new project, i do not want it updating older projects.
Any suggestions or advice from more experienced cad managers would be greatly appreciated! How do you put together your projects?
Maybe the best advice would be to "pool" your firm's top-dogs for this
endeavor.
I'll just imagine that some/most of them (the top-dogs) have thought this
through.
And while you may get help from "outsiders", it will probably be best if the
in-house staff sees you garnering their opinions as well.
--
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
----------------------------------------------------------
LDT-2K4
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2.2GHz
XPPro 32bit SP2
1GB RAM
Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 128MB
WD 36GB Raptor
wrote in message news:5138098@discussion.autodesk.com...
I have been put into the CAD manager position at a company with little to no
standards. I am excited about my position because I get to create the
standards.
I want to start off at the basics "how do i start a project"
What I was thinking of doing is having a prototype folder with all of the
xrefs and blocks in that folder. I would then copy the folder and work with
this. Do you think this is a good idea? or would it be better to work with
libraries, and xref everything in? The problem i see is that is a block
changes for a new project, i do not want it updating older projects.
Any suggestions or advice from more experienced cad managers would be
greatly appreciated! How do you put together your projects?
Travis- good post. I am in the same position of newbie cad mgr. Also happens to be in civil, which I have no experience in, but a wonderful company. I have some of the hotshots here picked out, but it is hard to pull them out of production to educate me, so I am watching, reading, playing.
What field are you in?
lee
I have pooled the "Top Dogs" and have formed a CAD group that meets bi-weekly. I have their opinions on this subject, but I was just looking for some examples of what others were doing.
To agree with Don - a lot of the challenge in being a CAD manager is finding the right balance between "CAD Standards by Committee" and "CAD Standards by Fiat" (no, not the car, the older meaning of fiat). Neither approach will ever work completely, you need to position yourself as the one person who absorbed all the concerns and accumulated wisdom of the best drafters in your firm, contemplated it, and offered back a coherent plan of attack. You have to have the support of the hot shots, or they will undermine you, but you also have to get them to agree to all do things the same way, which they probably don't right now.
We have done Lunch and Learn sessions and i am getting a lot out of my users. However, what i am trying to find out is how others in my industry and other industries assemble a project. Just wanted some outside examples before I start changing things
Good post, thank you. I seem to have a really dedicated group of users here who welcome standards and want to make things better. it is difficult to get 40 users to all change, but it will happen, im just looking for some input on how your firm puts together a project. WE have come up with a few concepts but i am just looking to see how outsiders do it
I would guess that the architects amongst the group here are too busy at the
moment to offer their advice to a potential "infiltrator"? 🙂
--
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
----------------------------------------------------------
LDT-2K4
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2.2GHz
XPPro 32bit SP2
1GB RAM
Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 128MB
WD 36GB Raptor
wrote in message news:5138832@discussion.autodesk.com...
We have done Lunch and Learn sessions and i am getting a lot out of my
users. However, what i am trying to find out is how others in my industry
and other industries assemble a project. Just wanted some outside examples
before I start changing things
I was responding to Lee, who had problems getting people out of production
to explain things.
I would tell you how we start projectsd, but I do civil work, and figure
someone doing Arch may be able to give you more appropriate suggestions.
wrote in message news:5138832@discussion.autodesk.com...
We have done Lunch and Learn sessions and i am getting a lot out of my
users. However, what i am trying to find out is how others in my industry
and other industries assemble a project. Just wanted some outside examples
before I start changing things
Thanks Terry- appropriate is the key! I am becoming aware of the differences in fields- the arch world doesn't have much use for Leroy 60 or 80!! Being new here, I wonder how to verify if something like that can still fly in the age of standards, my background telling me such small text is no-go, but new to the civil world, it seems to be a norm. Just little things like that. Which is why I asked Tbone what world he works in. This civil firm does so many aspects, survey, planning, engineering. Everything but building things like bridges. In a former life I got a 2 yr degree in arch & civil engineering technology, but it all fell out of my brain somewhere along the way....:) So if you have any words of wisdom, I'm listening.
I no longer work with vanilla ACAD, never worked with ADT, or Revit. ( I am learning C3D.) That said, sheet set is in basic acad and LDT, C3D so I assume you have it. Palettes make good library tools, and sheet sets manage lots of types of data assembly, such as page, view, section, callout etc within a dwg, which may make xrefs necessary for production. Still useful in design for me personally, but in seeing their potential in production, I am making every effort to learn and create the first goby for our standards.
From one architectural ofice - I'm sure others do this in slightly different ways -
I get an email from accounting whenever a new project number is assigned. When I get those, I run a small batch file that duplicates a folder structure from a "template" into the active projects directory. The reason for doing this as a batch file (which is a simple robo-copy script) is that I can copy folder permissions as well. Just dragging and dropping to copy the structure was resetting all the permissions.
Our template directory contains a number of templates for a variety of things - basic model files, sheet files, titleblocks, etc. I push the users to create new drawings from template, rather than copying old drawings, although some of them are having trouble breaking that habit.
I am also pushing for more use of Sheet Sets - and I have a small collection of files that I offer to the staff - a page setups overides file, a titleblock template and a sheet template that are tailored to the Sheet Set Process. That is slowly catching hold, but it's still in its infancy. It would be nice if the process of creating a new Sheet Set from Example copied those files to the project -maybe 2007 does that, I haven't tried it yet. Right now the Project MAnagers are told - teh foles you need are here - copy them to this folder in your project if you want to implement sheet sets.
You know, I am a real fan of lunch and learns, and a huge fan of pizza - but the real challenge to doing them well is to see if you can make it work without the lunch. If you offer to feed people, a certain percentage of the crowd will only be there for the food. If you don't have food, only the people interested in the subject will attend. If you can teach the subject well enough, they will come back. Architects (and engineers, but I'm speaking from an Architectural background) tend to be results driven, and if what you cover in those classes gives them a demonstrably better way to work, they'll come back for more, and drag their team members with them.
Once you have established that the learning part of the lunch and learns is worth it on its own, then add the pizza - that will drag in the last few recalcitrant staff members, and by then you will have an audience in the room that is used to listening to what you have to say.
In LDT you can add the Base dwg files that "need" to be created in each Project by adding the dwg files into your "proper" Prototypes folder. I would use existing dwg files that were setup in the most mundane manner for your firm, and then erase their entities - that way retaining the Current Layer Naming Convention the way it needs to be. I don't know how many Base plans your firm uses, but I would think you could supply all the differing types you use currently.
I worked once for a firm that used:
Topo
Plan
Putil
Xutil
Prof
...among others that escape me at the moment, but I think the point comes across by those I mentioned.
I attached a PNG of the location of my Prototypes as an example for your use.
HTH
--
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
----------------------------------------------------------
LDT-2K4
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2.2GHz
XPPro 32bit SP2
1GB RAM
Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 128MB
WD 36GB Raptor
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