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Thread: Venting, or asking for suggestion to coordinate between offices

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    Certified AUGI Addict cadtag's Avatar
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    Default Venting, or asking for suggestion to coordinate between offices

    I'll start with a vent -- since before the pandemic hit, at least half of my time has been spent cleaning up messes created by cad people who are not longer part of our operation (thankfully gone!!) Some were marginally competent at best, some were very competent but had zero interest in working with company standards or collaborating, etc. Bottom line for me, is that most of the hours spent on jobs has been trying to fix thing that should never have been broken. And this is invariably after the budget is gone, and the deadline is looming, It's just too damn late in the day to do it right/do it over. I'm tired of the ka-ka, and retirement is becoming a more attractive option.

    Now, on to my ask. The organization I'm employed by has had a growth strategy of acquisition. They've gotten very big and are spread across the globe. But they act more like a holding company of AEC firms rather than an AEC firm. Little corporate interest in enforcing or promoting corporate standards -- as long as the individual shop have good numbers, all is good in the C-Suite. One job in particular was farmed out to another office (mostly because they didn't have very much local work). Rather than paying any attention to the template I provided, or any of the documented corporate standards, they've gone off in a very chaotic direction. Using Sheet set manager, but doing nothing with it, ignoring NCS sheet numbering in favor of something that doesn't work well, (e.g. sheet numbers are 1 through 33), Layer naming seems to mix old school survey, with third grade names or truly morphed NCS sorta-like-NCS, and things are drawn on layers that don't fit -- eg pavement stripes and concrete slabs on the same layer, Xref's attached on a DIM layer. Pagesetups exist, but only for their hard copy (plot by window at a scale of 1 to 2.10. And I don't even want to get started on C3D objects and Dref organization, nested XRef attachments, duplicated Xrefs, and object/mtext color over-rides.

    95% submittal is next week, but design is more tike 50%, and budget is around 110% burned. So this job is hosed. Can't fix it without a work of redoing and re-organizing.

    So, what suggestions are out there to prevent this sort of mess from happening again and again?

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    Default Re: Venting, or asking for suggestion to coordinate between offices

    Pet peeves with outside drawings include:
    1. Drawing anything on layer Defpoints or layer 0 except for block entities.
    2. Assigning properties to objects instead of bylayer except for block entities which should be byblock. How a drawing displays and plots should always be controllable by Layer States.
    3. Pagesetups set to plot by window instead of layout with standard paper sizes. I've seen Pagesetups for plotting half-size 11×17 instead of 22×34 but never anything as messed up as what you described.
    4. Missing Plot Style or references. I've received drawings set up with referenced title blocks missing with layout viewports displaying model space but with nothing in paper space.

    Only suggestion I can think of is reminding whoever allowed it to get to the point it reflects bad on the company as often as possible until they assure you it will never happen again.
    Of course since I spend more time fixing drawings from others than drawing them you'd probably be better off getting recommendations from someone else.

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    I could stop if I wanted to Comach's Avatar
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    Default Re: Venting, or asking for suggestion to coordinate between offices

    Trying to fix all problems at once is time-intensive with potential impacts on the project schedule. It comes down to prioritising the key issues and only fixing the main ones that affect the quality of the output documentation for downstream purposes. At the end of each project, there should be a lesson learned, what works and what does not work. No one will thank you for spending excessive time fixing problems that don't directly affect the quality of the output.
    I was in a similar position once with a company that had one CAD manager (me) with 350 designers/engineers in 4 countries using 12 different CAD systems. It took 5 years to achieve a permissible level of compliance whilst at the same time developing CAD strategies for BIM before it became a thing.
    Patience is the key and one further point is to have CAD leads on each of the teams to advise and assist them to adopt the requisite CAD practices. No job is worth getting stressed out over.

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    Default Re: Venting, or asking for suggestion to coordinate between offices

    I'm going to date myself, but I started using CAD in 1983 and it has come a long way since then. Through the years I've been able to see first hand what is taught in schools and college/tech school. Each place teaches their own way and so it goes with every employee. I am a CAD Manager, but not of 250 people, but only 6. Of the 6, every one of us has our own way of doing things in a pinch. We are a company that goes against all I've learned, which is so frustrating. When we get a job, the first thing the lead (by lead, i mean the guy that signs the checks) says is..."this job is just like this other job, so start with that." Slowly we've been getting the templates up to standard so it would be easier to draw. But no, we always shoot ourselves in the foot each job by grabbing and old messed up drawings and perpetuating the mess. "No time to start over, this is 75% done" no matter if it takes twice as long to fix than to start from the new templates.

    Sorry, more of a rant than I wanted, but my suggestion would be to go with the flow. I know it is frustrating, but try to tackle 1 thing at a time. Most important in my mind is layering. get them to stop using/creating layers like "salmon" "mauve" and use the standard company layer name you give them with a description of what should go on each layer. Give them a performance bonus/small gift/etc. for things they do right and take things away when they do wrong, kind of a +/- bonus system for the end of the project (timing/compliance/correctness/etc.). Overall, it comes down to how correct the drawings are and how good they look. Experiment with different ways to get them to comply.

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    Default Re: Venting, or asking for suggestion to coordinate between offices

    I have been a CAD Manager or CAD/BIM Manager for 20+ years and have struggled with this in large and small firms the whole time. Sadly, I have little concrete to offer, it's not an easy problem to fix. I will share a couple of observations.

    (looking at this after I finished typing, its a bit of a diatribe, I guess I needed to vent too. I look forward to responses)

    - I believe that a big part of this problem stems from the change from hand drafting to CAD, and then from CAD to BIM.
    Early in my career, I worked in a firm that had no CAD (this was mid-1980s, a lot of firms had no CAD at the time). People had been drafting by hand for hundreds of years, your boss had drafted by hand for a few decades, probably, before you started. No matter how good you were, the person supervising you had more experience, and knew exactly what you were doing, and could teach you a thing or two.... But then, CAD came along, and suddenly, we had CAD operators who were often the most junior people in the firm, working away at something mysterious to their supervisors. I recall a friend telling me that he could spend a whole day "ZI ing and ZO ing" - he was running AutoCAD 10 or 11 (this would be about 1987) - probably on a 386, and he had set aliases to zoom in 10% or zoom out 10%. It would take his machine so long to redraw that zooming in several times could kill 20 - 30 minutes of his day. But his boss did not know enough to suggest that he zoom to a window or zoom extents.

    That sort of thing applies to standards. It is a common thing, sadly, for a new person in a firm to say something like "I can do this faster if you let me do it my way instead of following these standards” and the bosses only hear "I can accomplish this one task faster" and stop listening - they are responsible for keeping hours to a minimum.

    Then, just when we reached a point where the people supervising CAD drafters were people who had been CAD drafters, the industry started moving to BIM, and the problem repeats itself.

    The challenge of course is getting people to look beyond the next deliverable. Anyone reading this forum probably knows that a more complete product (set of files) can be produced in less time overall if some standards are followed. But that means looking at the whole life cycle of the project. Not just the current phase, but all the way through final record sets and use of the project as reference in future work. As the OP pointed out, individuals may not stay on the project, or even in the company, for that entire life cycle. So, if your role is just, say, detailing contract documents, and all you are interested in is that one small window of time, you are likely to favor any short cuts that make that one task easier. What benefit is it to you in this case if the layers you use, or lineweights, or whatever, match up with some corporate standard? Even if you like to crib from old details, you are most likely to prefer cribbing from your own library, which probably goes with you from firm to firm.

    For about 3 years I worked in a firm where the owner really saw the value to him of standards - we had a strict filing system, and an even stricter file naming convention. We had a standard for the subject lines of emails. He could be tyrannical about it - more than once, someone was told to rename all the files they had created recently before doing anything else. I found that it took new people about 6 weeks to stop fighting, learn the rules, and do it right the first time. But it made a difference - I could go into any project, and find the file I needed, easily - I knew exactly what everything was. To his credit, he held himself to the same standards, and was open to suggestions for improvements. But that firm was very much the exception to the rule.

    So, the best advice I can give is that you will only get people to comply if you can show them how following the standards benefits them. Which generally means giving them at least some short-term benefits. This comes down to a few things:

    - Evaluate your standards, which ones really benefit the firm? Sometimes a standard is an arbitrary decision to make things consistent because consistency is good. But it doesn't have much day-to-day impact. An example of this - on one firm I inherited a large and complex filing structure for projects that went 5 or 6 levels deep. On evaluation, I found that standardizing just the top 2 or 3 levels made sense and helped people get to work on a new project, but deeper than that, it was better to let the folders reflect what was unique about that project. I had little trouble with compliance once I got that point across.
    - Similar to my comments above, distinguish between requirements and guidelines.

    - Automation and customization: My feelings about this have varied over the years, but in the end, people will use a tool that makes their lives easier but will not use a tool that they do not understand (no matter how much work it does for them). So, look very closely at what people are doing that does not match your standards, and see if there is a way you can make it easier for them to do it your way. Seems obvious, but over the years I have seen a lot of custom tools deployed that don't get used because in the end, they require just as much effort as some other approach. For example, I had a script for people to run that would create all the office standard layers - and it took something like 3 or 4 clicks to use it - sounds easy, right? But what people were doing instead was saving a file on their desktops with the layers in it, and they would drag it into their files to insert it as a block. 2 clicks. For that one click difference, everyone used that method. And they shared that file, which did not meet the office standards....

    - Training: You cannot under estimate the value of training. No one is EVER going to read the cad standards manual you hand them - sorry, but it's true. Write them, but as an exercise in organizing your own thoughts. Also, very few people will click that custom icon you so diligently put on their toolbars just to see what happens (I will, but that's why I became a CAD manager, I guess). Get your staff in a room and show that that that button you created will get them to the end of the day faster. Show them again 6 months later, and again if needed. At the end of the year, if your customization and standards help then the people who listened will have good reviews, better bonuses, promotions, etc. Not because they are following standards, but because you helped them do their day-to-day work faster.

    It will be hard, maybe impossible, to get management to sign off on fixing old jobs. And getting people to follow standards without any immediate benefit is an uphill battle. The underlying goal of your standards cannot be consistency for consistencies sake. It must be "here are some ways do your work more easily and faster" - that you can get people to do (still not easy, but possible). Then, when you have people following standards for shorter term goals, and you have some credibility, you can start to add some things that benefit the company in longer term ways.

    I should also add a note about carrots and sticks - making people's lives easier is the carrot. It helps if there is a stick too, but the carrot is the more powerful tool. Remember my story about the boss who enforced standards? It was great, except that the turnover at that firm was horrendous. I think the average tenure was about 3 months. No one likes getting hit with a stick. So, yes, get management to buy in, get them to say they support you. If you can, get them to stop saying "OK" to people who say they can do it faster their way. But bigger sticks, like making people stay late to rename the 1,500 site photos they named improperly - use those sticks very sparingly, they come at a price.
    Last edited by Charles Prettyman; 2021-01-26 at 06:09 PM.

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    Active Member Pontoon's Avatar
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    Default Re: Venting, or asking for suggestion to coordinate between offices

    I am working for a company who decided to do their piping schematics in AutoCAD. This VERY LARGE company generally uses FORAN. I have had to teach myself how to convert the reference drawings to AutoCAD, and then teach the rest of the team. ... how to use AutoCAD. Yup most my team havent touched it at all or havent' touched it in about 10 years.

    We do not have AutoCAD support in-house yet we have a team of CAD folk supporting FORAN.

    I am currently trying to work out if I can actually set up profiles properly to give folk access to templates, blocks etc to help with continuity. I think i may be accidentally setting myself up to becoming an accidental CAD manager again. All help is welcome! I really appreciate this thread.

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