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New Company AutoCAD Standard Practices

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Message 1 of 3
davidevangelisti
353 Views, 2 Replies

New Company AutoCAD Standard Practices

I have very little AutoCAD experience and need some advice in regards to implementing AutoCAD Standard practices for our firm.  I will provide the situation and goals and hopefully someone is able to layout the best tools in AutoCAD to use to meet our goals.

 

Situation:

1. We have increased engineers using AutoCAD from 1 to 3 and now need to implement standardization

2. We use AutoCAD solely for the purpose of creating P&IDs (we may change to AutoCAD P&ID but currently do not have the budget)

3. The drawings from project to project are very similar, so we open an old project drawing and "save-as" and revise the new drawing to new owner specifications.

 

Goals:

1. Template to create new drawings but with standardized settings and tools

2. Creating a library of mechanical symbols

3. Storing the libraries

4. Provide access to these libraries to all engineers

5. Creating some kind of tool pallete for easy access of symbols and blocks

6. Have "administrative only" rights on revision of the template

7. Methods of efficiently documenting all this info, keep info updated, and inform on revisions to practices

2 REPLIES 2
Message 2 of 3
pendean
in reply to: davidevangelisti

Are you the "from 1" person? If not, that's the person that needs to lead this effort.

Do you have a server? Or a shared file drive for all three users? If not, stop now, go buy one, implement it, come back when done.

1. Template: SAVEAS command's dialog box has a TEMPLATE file type you can use after you edit/create the drawing file with all your 'standards' in it. Just make sure that location is centrally located.
2. Presumably the 1-fellow already has one: surely they did not draw everything from scratch every time. Ask them for what they use.
3. Same as #1 above, locate the library files on a shared drive.
4. Same as 3 and 1.
5. ADCENTER command is designed to access the locations of the library files from #3 and #4 above to create ToolPalettes for each user. OR you all could just use ADCENTER command.
6. A template file, created as noted in #1 above, is "locked" from editing since it becomed a DWT file (much like Word's DOT file types). You have to deliberately erase it to replace it. If you have a server you control access to all the files with a simple user permissions setting in the Server OS. if you don't have a server you have to develop sometghing internally.
7. Organization in folders and key locations on a centralized server is all you need: you need one person taksed with keeping it all updated and currrent. Is that you?

Post back with more questions as you dive into it: and hopefully others will dive in with more ideas.
Message 3 of 3
dgorsman
in reply to: davidevangelisti

AutoCAD P&ID is nice for large projects, where the database can be leveraged to modify and extra information.  For smaller projects with limited support, there are a number of lower cost P&ID programs out there that run on AutoCAD with more limited capabilities.

 

Edit: I should probably mention that those low cost P&ID programs either run on full AutoCAD or include an OEM version.  Considering the other drawing files which freqeuently go along with P&IDs and the ability to use network licenses, moving to the full version of AutoCAD should be seriously considered.

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If you are going to fly by the seat of your pants, expect friction burns.
"I don't know" is the beginning of knowledge, not the end.


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