How to Organize Project Folders

[CADgirl]

My company is growing a lot right now and we're trying to get organized before we bring in more people. One of the things we have to address is how our project foldrs are set up. Currently we just have the file and then a folder with the dwgs and each of the revision folders- pretty basic.

 

We had a meeting the other day and my boss had some ideas for the job file structure-

 

A folder with the original drawings.

Another folder named "review" that the drafter saves his finished drawings in.

Then the engineer will review the drawings and then move them to a folder named "current drawings."

When there are revisions to be made the engineer can make a revision folder and put in there which drawings need to be changed along with the pdf from the customer with his markups. (then the drafter saves them in the review folder and the engineer reviews it.)

When they submit the drawings they will save the pdf's they submitted in a folder named "submitted."

And then we will have an excel spreadsheet with all the info on the drawings. Like which revision each sheet is on and all the other info you need.

 

Basically we have to organize it so that the engineers and drafters can work together and both know what's going on with each job.

 

I hope what I just explained makes sense.

It just seems like there is a lot of moving of the drawings around. I was wondering if anyone had suggestions on how to set this up. Or how your company does it.

In my last job I was the only CAD person so I just did it however I wanted and so I have no idea how this should be done.

 

Thanks!

[Tuns]

That seems fairly organized to me. There will always be a lot of moving files around if you're going to be organized with it. You can probably put the excel spreadsheets right under the main job file. That's what our company does because everything else is already put in a specific folder. It makes finding them a little quicker at least.

[PotGuy]

I'd recommend also saving the dwg. (and purge + bind x-refs) when issuing a drawing.

 

This was you can take an object of a previous revision and plonk it into your latest CAD drawing.

[ReMark]

I think moving the files from folder to folder is not a good idea. Somebody forgets to do it or somebody misplaces a file and your system doesn't work.

[Tyke]

The more complicated a system is the more difficult it is to manage. If you are going to rely on all participants observing the rules all of the time, then it will fail! You need one person who is responsible for the whole system with enough authority to see that it always working properly. Your idea of an Excel spreadsheet is basically the right way to go, but for anything more than a two man band it is totally inadequate. You need a database system from which you can produce reports and find at the click of a button the current status of any job which is on the go or in the archive. The person to run it needs loads of experience and a thorough knowledge of your business, software, hardware, staff and close contacts with all of your clients. This is not a job for the faint hearted and many have failed, but many have succeeded very well. This job has a title, maybe you've heard of it, its a CAD Manager. It is also a full time job in a medium sized company, not something that can be done on the side. If you find the right guy then he will be worth many times more than the salary that you pay him. I know, because I did that job for many years and in many ways regret moving on into higher management posts.

[ReMark]

For the right amount of money Tyke will leave his current job, join your company, set the whole system up and run it efficiently. So let the negotiations begin. Be very generous because Tyke will have to move to Nashville from Saxony.

[Tyke]

  ReMark said:

For the right amount of money Tyke will leave his current job, join your company, set the whole system up and run it efficiently. So let the negotiations begin. Be very generous because Tyke will have to move to Nashville from Saxony.

 

I first need an agent in the US ReMark, how are you fixed? With modern technology I could do it all remote without even leaving the country, except for setting up the hardware and I always wanted to visit Nashville anyway.

[ReMark]

That's true, you could set it up remotely for just the right fee. They can fly you over to set up the hardware and you can set aside a few days to take in the sights and sounds of Nashville. I know a couple of people who live there; they can show you around.

 

My agent fee is quite modest (1%). You get the CADTutor forum member's discount.

 

Could they manage everything using Vault?

[Tyke]

  ReMark said:

That's true, you could set it up remotely for just the right fee. They can fly you over to set up the hardware and you can set aside a few days to take in the sights and sounds of Nashville. I know a couple of people who live there; they can show you around.

 

My agent fee is quite modest (1%). You get the CADTutor forum member's discount.

 

Could they manage everything using Vault?

 

Discount You're on board ReMark. We just need to get in touch with COWgirl , sorry I mean CADgirl who seems to have done a bunk since her OP.

[ReMark]

I think she went back to 1) report the bad news to the boss about how complicated this is going to be and 2) get a big, big bag of money to hire you.

 

Have you used Vault at all?

[Tyke]

  ReMark said:

Have you used Vault at all?

 

Nope. I don't many who have. Our AutoCAD dealer kept trying to push it a few years ago, but nobody here in the area took it on. He's given up on it now and never mentions it. I must ask next time I'm in there. Everybody seems to favour their own grown systems.

[CADgirl]

Thanks for all the input everyone! (and the comedy.)

We probably do need a CAD manager. I'm just afraid that if I bring that up in the next meeting they will have me head that up (given Tyke's too long commute) and I won't know anything about what I'm doing! But I guess that's how we learn. . .

 

But there are definitely some good suggestions.

 

And side note- I am for sure not a COWgirl. I am a Southern California girl through and through!

But I will say even though it's small, Nashville is an awesome city.

[Tyke]

  CADgirl said:

Thanks for all the input everyone! (and the comedy.)

We probably do need a CAD manager. I'm just afraid that if I bring that up in the next meeting they will have me head that up (given Tyke's too long commute) and I won't know anything about what I'm doing! But I guess that's how we learn. . .

 

But there are definitely some good suggestions.

 

And side note- I am for sure not a COWgirl. I am a Southern California girl through and through!

But I will say even though it's small, Nashville is an awesome city.

 

Well ReMark there goes your commission, you can't say we didn't try. I don't know anything at all about electrical, so perhaps it not too bad that I missed out on the job.

 

Seriously, if you are going to take on the job there is a lot of hard work in store for you, you need crystal clear goals, a consistent policy, be able to take a lot of criticism (as you will always be the bad guy) and listen to the advice from others (such as us) and most importantly, filter out from that advice the bits that are relevant to your company and implement them. I found it extremely important to be always aware of the need of the team. I don't know how big your company is (or will be) but there are also advantages for the CAD Manager's role to be separate from the IT Department, as there will be conflicts of interests at times. You will also need the full backing of your boss all of the time.

 

See you in Nashville sometime

[Jim H]

Vault would be worth looking into. It does pretty good at version control. One file with a history of revisions/ progress. I work remotely, so with Vault+VPN, I can work on a local copy, update it to vault, and someone in the office can look at the same thing. I keep files checked out when in progress so no one can mess with them, but they can always open up the latest version read-only if they need to. Vault is not limited to dwg's as well. You can install an add-in for excel, pdf, etc.

I'd suggest also considering dwf's for your engineers to review. It can keep them (or others) from mucking up your nicely prepared cad file.

[RobDraw]

  ReMark said:

I think moving the files from folder to folder is not a good idea.

 

I agree. It seems good on the surface but in practice it will fail and when it does, it's not going to pretty. It will probably be just before a deadline, leaving you hours of work that needs to be re-done in less than one.

[Organic]

  CADgirl said:

My company is growing a lot right now and we're trying to get organized before we bring in more people. One of the things we have to address is how our project foldrs are set up. Currently we just have the file and then a folder with the dwgs and each of the revision folders- pretty basic.

 

That sounds okay to me. Better than the system being proposed.

 

  CADgirl said:

A folder with the original drawings.

Another folder named "review" that the drafter saves his finished drawings in.

Then the engineer will review the drawings and then move them to a folder named "current drawings."

When there are revisions to be made the engineer can make a revision folder and put in there which drawings need to be changed along with the pdf from the customer with his markups. (then the drafter saves them in the review folder and the engineer reviews it.)

When they submit the drawings they will save the pdf's they submitted in a folder named "submitted."

 

Problems I see occurring:

- Engineer won't move the drawings from 'review' to 'current' folders. Will either not bother and it doesn't occur, or will tell the drafter to do it.

- Engineer won't make a 'revisions' folder as above.

 

  CADgirl said:

And then we will have an excel spreadsheet with all the info on the drawings. Like which revision each sheet is on and all the other info you need.

 

- People won't always fill this out and it won't remain up to date. Even if filled out, the engineers will not use it, check it or rely on it being accurate.

[Organic]

  Tyke said:

If you are going to rely on all participants observing the rules all of the time, then it will fail!

 

This ^

 

You can't force people to use it either. Sure, you can warn and threaten people if it is just one or two, although when most of the team doesn't do it and no one uses it, there isn't much that can be done other than actually firing people over a trivial matter [not an option as then the company loses money in essence in having to train someone new].

 

  Tyke said:

Your idea of an Excel spreadsheet is basically the right way to go, but for anything more than a two man band it is totally inadequate.

 

Plenty of large firms use this method, although as above it doesn't work very well from everything I've observed.

 

  Tyke said:

You need a database system from which you can produce reports and find at the click of a button the current status of any job which is on the go or in the archive. The person to run it needs loads of experience and a thorough knowledge of your business, software, hardware, staff and close contacts with all of your clients. This is not a job for the faint hearted and many have failed, but many have succeeded very well. This job has a title, maybe you've heard of it, its a CAD Manager. It is also a full time job in a medium sized company, not something that can be done on the side. If you find the right guy then he will be worth many times more than the salary that you pay him. I know, because I did that job for many years and in many ways regret moving on into higher management posts.

 

I've only seen systems to that extent in multinational companies.

[ReMark]

As the person who edits the bulk of the process-related drawings at our company the engineers rely on me to make sure edited drawing files are copied to the engineers-only network drive so they may review and mark them up (using CADwizz). I don't trust sharp objects (like Xacto knives) and DWG files to engineers. LoL

[Mike_Taylor]

Have you looked at cloud file management systems at all? We use one here and it is absolutely fantastic. The system we have supports versioning (you can roll a drawing back to a previous version). There are many other safeguards put into place as well.

 

This is the way our system works:

Essentially you add a file into the vault and you are prompted to enter some properties, one being the file type. ALl the other properties are set up based on the file type. For example we have one type called drawing or plan, from there we can enter an engineering discipline (Architectural, Structural, Electrical , Mechanical etc), the next property prompts for more information regarding the drawing type for that discipline (Electrical Master, Electrical Site Master, Interior Simulations etc). You then enter a job number where it auto fills the the customer for us. We have about 40 different document types each having a separate set of properties that are entered based on the information we need to find the document.

 

When dealing with large jobs where we can have several hundreds of documents we can very quickly and easily narrow a search down to one or 2 documents based on these properties.

 

We have this further linked to our billing system and based on the number of hours in our quote and hours we have invoiced it gives a job completed percentage. It also picks up whether an invoice was sent as an extra to the scope of work (work we did but was not included in the original quote) and gives a percentage of how complete the job is based on this.

 

I was not here for our initial implementation of the system so I cannot say how smooth the initial transition was but I am becoming a major part of maintaining it.

 

There are many more features, and some of these may only be available in the system we use (and I am sure there are others out there that may work better for your specific company).

[Organic]

  ReMark said:

As the person who edits the bulk of the process-related drawings at our company the engineers rely on me to make sure edited drawing files are copied to the engineers-only network drive so they may review and mark them up (using CADwizz). I don't trust sharp objects (like Xacto knives) and DWG files to engineers. LoL

 

I remember working as a drafter in a firm a few years back where one engineer would sticky tape on required notes etc onto hand drawn (A1 size) sheets to be drawn up in CAD. E.g. if a few sets of notes was required, he would go and print them from old jobs he had done, sticky tape them to the sheet and then modify them if needed. The notes were standard on most jobs (and all from the electronic library) though yet he would still do the process of printing them out and sticky taping them on... personally I think it is easier and certainly quicker to write on the sheet "general notes" or "water notes" etc to tell the drafter that they should put them on the sheet.

 

I'm not a fan of digital markup software. I prefer a physical copy to markup and work from.