standard file naming conventions

[aubry27]

So....My company has ZERO CAD standards in place, and I have been tasked with coming up with one and implementing it. (No big deal right? LOL) I am having difficulty in coming up with a file naming convention. Currently we serialize our buildings after they are built, but we do a lot of "proposal" types of drawings which are not given a serial number until after the project is awarded -currently everyone is just naming it whatever they feel is appropriate. I want to make this as simple as I can for everyone to follow and have it make sense, but I am at a loss as to how to go about this. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks for reading my post!

Heather

[jaberwok]

Doesn't your sales department assign some reference to proposals?
For many companies, the proposal number later becomes the project number (saves have two separate registers) with, maybe, a change of prefix.

[aubry27]

They do but it started a year ago and has no basis and is not followed through by anything.

[Opie]

We typically prefix our drawings with the first job number assigned to the project. It may be changed afterward, but that is a rare occurance. The suffix usually represents the type of drawing.

[TerribleTim]

Yea, that part is tough. I'll admit, ours is a little sketchy at best. Ours is in a state of change right now, moving to a system that names sheet files using "ProjectNumber-SheetNumber.dwg" (i.e. "D0943-A2.1.dwg") but I have yet to figure out a solid way of naming all the "other" stuff like xref files and detail drawings and so on.

Oh yea, and then we are moving into Revit. At least there I only have the one file to name. So it's just a simple "ProjectNumber-ProjectName" deal for now.

[tedg]

The way we name our files (like others have mentioned) is "Project Number, Drawing Number".

We use a system similar to the National Cadd Standard.
However, this only applies to projects that we are setting the standards, we do work for clients that empose file naming standards upon us.

So for us, we use a 7-digit project number, and then the file name per NCS.
1234567_A-101.dwg (plot sheet of architectural first floor plan)
1234567_A-FP01.dwg (xref base for architectrual first floor plan)

Sometimes, depending on the need, we don't use the project number in front of the "Sheet" file name because we use a field (of the file name) for the Sheet Number.

[scourdx]

A good guideline to start is National CAD Standard manual if you don't want to start company CAD standard from scratch.

http://www.buildingsmartalliance.org/index.php/ncs/

Our company adopts it because our firm constantly acquiring smaller Architectural and Engineering firm.

[bobrub74]

Check U.S. NATIONAL CAD STANDARDS under file naming or sheet naming. It will give you good tips.

[s_morgan_b]

I'm stuck in the same boat here.

I've got a number of crazed individualists that need to be "standardized" so that we can find drawings (usually the received kind as the general naming convention in the office mostly makes sense).

But, again, internal controls also need to be established. I'm not a CAD manager - I've enjoyed the rank of "CAD Monkey" for years now and I'm just not prepared to deal with this level of . . . well . . . chaos.

Oh, and I get to implement C3D 2010. Some people have been using 2008/2009 but the bulk of us that do survey work are still using Land.

Where does one start???

[cadtag]

for 'received' filed, we keep a RECEIVED folder under the project, and create subfolders in that to hold everything CAD related that comes in. The subfolder naming is what works for us -- it's a two part name, YYYYMMDD-WhoFrom, so always sorts chronologically, and the names are pretty obvious since we typically deal with the same subs/primes.

for example, if I get in a building plan from the architect today, all the files will got into a subfolder under \\012345\044-BlueNine\RECEIVED named 20100210-ADARCH. Letters of tranmittal get tiled in the appropriate paper file folder.