Submitting Plans

[jeepinaround]

Does anyone submit electronic plans for review to city agencies? We currently submit paper plans for review and redline. I am in a committee to try speed things up and I have been trying to get some information on electronic submissions. I would like to see some of the processes currently in place elsewhere and the file formats used IE... .dwf or.pdf. Our next meeting is Thursday the 6th and I would like to bring it up then. Not sure if this is the correct place but really didn't think it would be any better in DWF area. Please move if needed and I apologize in advance

[glee.94356]

I'm not sure if I have the answers. A project I once worked on utilized PDFs extensively with the client agency. Since they did their own reviews, it was fine but a harcopy was still utilized for the permit set. And as far as I know, even the in house PDF review sets were printed out. I would be interested to see what other public agencies are doing to get to a paperless review process.
The thing about PDFs is that what you see is what is plotted or printed for the most part. It's a good way to archive your submittal set.
However a DWF has embedded information a PDF canot hope to have. Do you want a reviewing agency to see all that information? How much intelligence do you want to provide them with in your submittal? If their reviews were based on hardcopies which carry no underlying intelligence, a DWF may have too much information. Could be good or bad depending on how you see it.
If truly paperless, though, the DWF might be the way to go. PDFs are straight forward dumb files. You still need to print them & the measuring tool is quite useless. If you are able to take full advantage of DWF, that maybe preferable plus the file sizes are much smaller.
That is if the reviewing agency has DWF viewer and you want to fork over for DWF composer. I guess if truly a paperless review process, the savings in plotting and deliveries will more than make up for the cost of any software that gets you there.
I still prefer PDF for client reviews and I'm no DWF expert.

[Wanderer]

Does anyone submit electronic plans for review to city agencies? We currently submit paper plans for review and redline. I am in a committee to try speed things up and I have been trying to get some information on electronic submissions. I would like to see some of the processes currently in place elsewhere and the file formats used IE... .dwf or.pdf. Our next meeting is Thursday the 6th and I would like to bring it up then. Not sure if this is the correct place but really didn't think it would be any better in DWF area. Please move if needed and I apologize in advanceI am going to move this from the Civil General Area, as I believe it would be better served here. Thanks.