CAD Standards implementation and getting people on-board

[bDOUGH15]

This is the first Company that I have worked for that has "loose" standards. Meaning we have a Template that is supposed to be used but only half the people do use the proper template, even at that people are constantly changing linetype appearances (i.e. color vs. black and white, dashed vs. hidden...). Some people think it is alright to copy from the last project that they did instead of starting new from the template; this casues problems because they are still carrying over garbage from 2000 instead of starting over in 2007. My boss has informed two of us that we are to come up with and fully implement standards Company wide and we are already hearing people say that it will not be done on "MY PLANS". What is a good way to approach this to get a standard implemented and get people using it without being a complete dictator or dividing the office? How should I approach my boss about getting more support on this from him.

We are a Civil firm that has Engineers that believe that their stuff is different than ANY other project ever done. Any advice would be great!

[jaberwok]

For starters you could look at the "similar threads" links at the bottom of this page.

[tedg]

For starters you could look at the "similar threads" links at the bottom of this page.

Yea, what JohnB said!
This has been discussed allot in the forums.
Templates, procedures, standards, tool palettes, get the "Big Guy" to back you up and slap the hands of the offenders!

[.chad]

something else that is helpful is to make things as simple as possible for the end user. if a standard is a pain to use, no one will follow it. if they understand how to use things like dynamic blocks, multileaders and annotative dimensions they will be much more likely to use them in a file.

to push people to use the template you can set it to be the default QNEW file in your options, and repath your template directory to look for your (networked) standards folder with your templates in it.

[Commissar Rod]

My Best advice is to baby step your way into it, and listen to everyone's ideas even if you don't follow them.

[Commissar Rod]

Oh, one other thing I just thought of, Didn't the last Augi magazine have an article about cad standards? I think it was about updating standards but alot of what was talked about can be used to starting new. If your company plans on becoming ISO comliant or any thing else like that, now is the time to read up and start out right.

[bDOUGH15]

We are trying to get ready for the Jump to Civil 3D which requires everything to be standardized. I guess the real problem is to get people to realize that the whole is more important than the parts. I keep getting "you don't understand how we do it differently" and I can not get one certain person to realize that he is not bigger than the Company.