Cad Managers
Here is something I posted on the autocad forum.
It was suggested I come here to see what you have to say
see the post below to see what everybody has had to say so far on the autocad forum
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/autocad-forum/draughting-standards/m-p/8194398#M944585
Does anybody worry about draughting standards anymore.
Way back in the 1980's our drawing office use to keep a copy of BS 308 parts 1 to 3
Since then I have never seen a copy of a draughting standard.
I believe BS 308 has been superseded by BS 8888, I have never seen a copy
The South African Standard is SANS 10111-1 : 2011, I have never seen a copy .
The ISO standard I believe is ISO 128, I have never seen a copy
None of these are available as PDF copies on the internet.
Does anybody, these days, bother keeping a copy of the relevant draughting standard,
in the drawing office, and if so which one, do you use your own country's standard or the ISO one?
Michael Kovacik
2d & 3d Autocad and Inventor designer/draughtsman
.
Draughting/Designing (Manufacturing) (31 yrs)
-Drawing Board (3 yrs)
--Cad (28 yrs)
---Cadkey (4 yrs)
---AutoCAD 2d & 3d (16 yrs)
---Inventor (4 yrs)
---Autocad and Inventor Simultaneously (4 years)
---(and recently Autocad/Inventor Customisation)
.
Authorised Autocad & Inventor Professional
Authorised Autodesk Trainer
.
Higher Diploma Mechanical Engineering
Autodesk Product Design Suite Ultimate 2018
Autocad 2018, Inventor Pro 2018
(personal licensed copy)
.
Johannesburg, South Africa
.
(Impossible only means you haven't
found the solution yet)
We kinda follow ANSI here. I might have seen the book at my last job. It can be purchase from ANSI.
Our company has been in existence in this industry for almost 110 years. I've been here for 26 of those years. We've always had drafting standards (board --> autocad --> revit) from the printouts/paperwork I've seen.
We've *never* paid money to utilize a drafting standards system that was created by whoknowswho. Instead what we do is use a combination of industry-accepted drawing standards in our region (i.e. - accepted by the people who read the prints to build from them) and our vast experience in this industry (A/E).
Our standards are periodically gone over and adjusted/tweaked as needed by a small group of users who actually do the drafting/modeling, with occasional input from company management. We have a well-established "this is the way our company's deliverables are supposed to look", and those standards are always tweaked while keeping that in mind.
In the past we've had printed/bound books with our drafting standards (I still have the first one I was given here, printed on an old dot-matrix printer), and nowadays we have a pdf on our network drive that gets updated as needed.
Coming up with a company-wide standard in our office is a bit complicated at times as we do all disciplines in-house and so any standard has to take all of those different needs into account.
If someone is not following the drafting standards a best as possible (Revit screws with that somewhat as there's things that autocad could do on paper drawings that Revit simply doesn't do as well, or at all), we "name and shame" them in front of the other drafters 😉
pkolarik
Thanks for your input
Our standards are periodically gone over and adjusted/tweaked as needed by a small group of users who actually do the drafting/modeling, with occasional input from company management. We have a well-established "this is the way our company's deliverables are supposed to look", and those standards are always tweaked while keeping that in mind.
We don't have any standards yet. I am trying to persuade drawing office management as well as drafters, but I am a lone voice in the wind.
Also the "this is the way our drawings are supposed to look" has not been established either, again I am pushing, so far to no avail.
If someone is not following the drafting standards a best as possible (Revit screws with that somewhat as there's things that autocad could do on paper drawings that Revit simply doesn't do as well, or at all), we "name and shame" them in front of the other drafters .
The naming and shaming wouldn't work here, as there is no set way of doing anything or set appearance for company drawing (except for the company titleblock), also there would be too many valid excuses , ie no central block library, no standard ctb plot styles, some use annotative scaling, other don't etc, etc
Also we are allowed by drawing office management to work in whatever way we wish, thus making it a little bit difficult to check other drafter's drawings.
We have 9 people including the 2 managers drafting in autocad 2d. I am the only drafter also working in autocad 3d and Inventor.
Mike
@MikeKovacik4928 wrote:pkolarik
Thanks for your input
Our standards are periodically gone over and adjusted/tweaked as needed by a small group of users who actually do the drafting/modeling, with occasional input from company management. We have a well-established "this is the way our company's deliverables are supposed to look", and those standards are always tweaked while keeping that in mind.
We don't have any standards yet. I am trying to persuade drawing office management as well as drafters, but I am a lone voice in the wind.
Also the "this is the way our drawings are supposed to look" has not been established either, again I am pushing, so far to no avail.
If someone is not following the drafting standards a best as possible (Revit screws with that somewhat as there's things that autocad could do on paper drawings that Revit simply doesn't do as well, or at all), we "name and shame" them in front of the other drafters .
The naming and shaming wouldn't work here, as there is no set way of doing anything or set appearance for company drawing (except for the company titleblock), also there would be too many valid excuses , ie no central block library, no standard ctb plot styles, some use annotative scaling, other don't etc, etc
Also we are allowed by drawing office management to work in whatever way we wish, thus making it a little bit difficult to check other drafter's drawings.
We have 9 people including the 2 managers drafting in autocad 2d. I am the only drafter also working in autocad 3d and Inventor.
Mike
Holy cripes. I couldn't even imagine working in a company without at least a standard ctb for printing. That right there would make it nearly impossible to have drawings that all look the same across the company.
If you have no buy-in from anyone above "drafter" status in your company then you're more than likely stuck working in those conditions.
Probably the only "out" I can see for you is to create your *own* set of standards and use them on everything you do. With luck, over time maybe the others will start to use what you use and things will get better overall (I've done that here in the past when I introduced Sheet Sets to the company. No one was interested in learning how to use them, so I used them myself and little by little others began using them. Now we use them on every acad project we do)
Good luck. It doesn't sound like a fun setup you have there.
pkolarik
Thanks for your feed back
Holy cripes. I couldn't even imagine working in a company without at least a standard ctb for printing. That right there would make it nearly impossible to have drawings that all look the same across the company
I couldn't imagine any different, I have been in 11 drawing offices over a period of about 34 years, and have
never used a standard ctb for printing.
If you have no buy-in from anyone above "drafter" status in your company then you're more than likely stuck working in those conditions.
No buy in from any one above or even at drafter status
Probably the only "out" I can see for you is to create your *own* set of standards and use them on everything you do
That is exactly what I have started doing.
Good luck. It doesn't sound like a fun setup you have there.
Not exactly ideal, however interaction with you guys on the forum, allows me to keep my sanity,
and talk to experienced cad people that have implemented good cad workflows and procedures,
something I don't seem to be able to experience here!!
Mike
@MikeKovacik4928 wrote:pkolarik
Thanks for your feed back
Holy cripes. I couldn't even imagine working in a company without at least a standard ctb for printing. That right there would make it nearly impossible to have drawings that all look the same across the company
I couldn't imagine any different, I have been in 11 drawing offices over a period of about 34 years, and have
never used a standard ctb for printing.
Dang, that's rough. I'd have to estimate that out of the dozens of firms we get .dwg files from, maybe 1 out of every 15 or 20 or so doesn't have an established ctb (or stb) file to plot with.
If you have no buy-in from anyone above "drafter" status in your company then you're more than likely stuck working in those conditions.
No buy in from any one above or even at drafter status
Probably the only "out" I can see for you is to create your *own* set of standards and use them on everything you do
That is exactly what I have started doing.
Good luck. It doesn't sound like a fun setup you have there.
Not exactly ideal, however interaction with you guys on the forum, allows me to keep my sanity,
and talk to experienced cad people that have implemented good cad workflows and procedures,
something I don't seem to be able to experience here!!
Mike
No problem.
I am now doing things at work and showing them to other drafters and I see a "little spark of Interest".
I think there might be hope yet!
I have automated one type of drawing in inventor, linking spreadsheet to multiple ipt files and a master iam file.
Will reduce my drawing time for that particular type of drawing from 4 to 5 hours down to about 10 to 15 minutes.
I have automated block counting in autocad 2d layout plan views by putting hidden attributes into the blocks
putting blocks on top of each other if there are multiple levels and
then using Bcount to count. This is reducing the manual "counting" time and making the quants checks obsolete
Also experimenting with eattext to excel file to automate a parts list, but getting some type of windows error. I will post this query separately at a later date
Mike
@pkolarik wrote:Holy cripes. I couldn't even imagine working in a company without at least a standard ctb for printing.
I just started at a company that has their .ctb set so that all colors plot "By Object" and all objects are set to plot "By Layer". It has a very Revit like feel to it.