Am I *allowed* to change drawing? 2

[baazar]

At my office we design/engineer/model products. For products of greater difficulty we outsource to a mechanical engineering firm. They created all of our drawings for one of our products at a premium cost. I found a red-line dimension that needs to be changed. What I did was update the dimension in the DWG file and updated the revision number. The drawing and the product are our property, but it still has the ME firm's title block. If we were to get them to make this small change, the document would look the same as I my version. Am I wrong in making this change without the services of that firm or since it's our property can we manipulate it as we see fit?

TIA - Bram

 

[GregLocock]

One solution I am very familiar with is to stick their drawing inside a your own drawing. Therefore you get your own title block and revisions table, and the history is obvious.



Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[ivymike]

@greg: yep, did that in an automotive job years ago... would get supplier drawings and slap them inside of a larger-format title block, then assign part number and release.

 

[jistre]

I'd say that if the drawings were part of a deliverables package and the client owns them, then the client has the right to modify as they wish. An unstamped drawing is just that, an unstamped drawing. Realistically, anyone could take the engineering company's title block and slap their own drawing in it, hence why an unstamped drawing is usually not considered a legal document binding the engineering firm or the engineer to near the level of liability a stamped drawing does. However, ethically, the only drawing that may carry the original engineering firm's title and revision block is that original drawing. The onus is on the customer to make sure that any new drawing has a new title block with their company's information and log and containing new revision information with the first entry indicating that the original drawing is the work of the original engineering company, but revisions are the sole work of the client.

If the original drawing bears a signed seal, that drawing must remain as-is, and modifications can get you into big trouble.

In either case, it's vital to maintain a master change log to keep track of changes. I guarantee you that the original engineering firm will have records of what they produced and will not hesitate to produce the documentation of what they produced to protect themselves in the event that the drawings end up in court.

So in short, I'd say:

1) If the documents are the property of the client, change away

2) If changed, they must clearly indicate where the original firm's work ended and the revisions of the client began so anyone using the print knows which entity created what.

3) Revised drawings must carry the client's title block, not that of the original engineering firm.

4) Master change logs must be maintained by everyone

5) Never change a stamped drawing. Period. No exceptions. The professional engineer will protect the limits of his liability, and you will find yourself in a world of hurt if the revision is found out, not to mention what will happen if the unstamped revision of the stamped drawing causes financial or physical harm.

Just my thoughts.

 

[KENAT]

What does the original contract and/or any disclaimer on the drawing border say?

If the drawing had been stamped then I'd be cautious about changing it without a PE's input but I'm not sure about the specific legal issues.

I've seen the added stamp of ownership & rev block type solution. The drawing in a drawing sounds horrible but someone brought it up a while ago and apparantly it is done.

I've also heard of cut and paste of the body of the drawing onto new company format, depending on the circumstances I'm not sure how much I like that one.

Posting guidelines faq731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

(probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484​

 

[eadwine]

One question is this a currently working drawing, i.e. the contractor is currently working with the drawing or is it an archival set that was supplied on completion of the project. If the former, the contractor needs to be notified immediatly. If the latter, the revision needs to be circled
with rev. number and the rev. box setup with the rev. no., change made, date, and initials of individuals involved with the change in the "by", "checked", "approved" blocks with dates. But all this should be covered by your Management of Change Procedures. If they exist.

As for the P.E. stamp, this simply indicates that the original drawing has been reviewed and approved by someone who is officially liscensed (fundamental legal requirement) in the state to practice engineering and that the design fits minimum engineering & design standards as approved by the State.

 

[baazar]

This is an old drawing from a part we just recently started to make again. We just happened to see a dimension that required a small alteration and needed to show that alteration to the machine shop.
What I'm doing now for our own archival process is taking the STEP file and recreating a drawing with our own title block and logo etc. It's a long process but it seems easier than dealing with all this ethical/legal issues.

 

[seymours2571]

Bazzar,

There is no doubt that your company owns the drawing and that your company may make changes as it sees fit.

However, if the contracting firm was providing an engineered design to company as a deliverable...in the event where some sort of failure occurs and it can be attributed to the dimension modified by your company ... then your company would own 100% of the liability and would have no recourse against the contracted engineering firm.

 

[rneill]

I know that the OP indicated that the drawing was his firms property but this is often an area of controversy so I thought I'd throw out some comments on Copyright law. With the limited information provided, I'm not sure I'm in 100% agreement that the OP's firm owns the drawing.

Copyright law dictates that the author of a work owns that work, regardless of who paid for the work to be done, unless the work is a "work for hire". Something is generally only (from a legal standpoint) a work for hire if it meets one of the following two conditions:

1. It was prepared by an employee in which case the employer holds the copyright, or

2. If it was prepared by an "independent contractor" and the contract between the parties specifically provided that this was a "work for hire" and the purchaser would hold the copyright.

I know this doesn't sound intuitive but that is what the copyright law states. A quick google search will bring up a myriad of articles on this and I've copied a link to one ...

http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf

I've had a number of situations over the years where clients have been under the belief that they held copyright on products I've produced (because they paid for the work) when in fact, they don't legally hold any copyright because I haven't assigned it to them in the contract.

If a drawing is P.Eng. stamped then any change would require confirmation by the original P.Eng. or the stamping would be invalidated. I believe that redrawing would also invalidate the P.Eng. stamp since that is not physically what the P.Eng. reviewed, checked and stamped and errors or omissions could have been introduced.

 

[CH5OH]

if a contractor makes you a drawing, you can freely redistribute this drawing unless its in contradiction with the contract terms
the tittle block being his logo is merely advertisement,
however going back to the original drawer makes sence in this way:
if any error on the final drawing, the original contractor kan be no longer held responsible.It would be fuzzy to state the original contractor is responsible for the drawing except for changes/corrections made as visible on last revision.

 

[eadwine]

rneill, You may hold the copyright to the drawing, but I hold the Patent. Ahh... the joys of Intellectual Property Law.

 

[fcsuper]

rneill, if you are claiming ownership of the copyright over products you create for your customers, and the customers are claiming ownership of those same works, I would suggest in your case that you did not have a meeting of the minds which is required for a contract to be legally binding. Without explicit statements either way in the contract, I can't see how either party can claim absolute ownership.

Matt Lorono
Lorono's SolidWorks Resources & SolidWorks Legion

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/solidworks & http://twitter.com/fcsuper

 

[rneill]

fcsuper,

The law is quite clear that in an absence of a specific agreement in writing that designates the work is a "work for hire" and that copyright will reside with the purchaser, the author holds copyright. Consequently, with no explicit statements in the contract, the author holds copyright. I know this is not intuitive but that is the way copyright law is spelled out.

Check the link I provided in my original reply (which comes from the United States Copyright Office) or if this is an issue in any of your work, it would be still to consult an intellectual property lawyer.

 

[fcsuper]

Copyright law isn't the end all and be all when it comes to IP and contracts. Copyright Law has some hard and fast rules, but much of it is not as well defined as many think. If one is designing a product (physical item) based on specifications received from their customer under a contract, and they did not sign over the rights to their IP, then the vendor's work for them could be considered derivative and even a de facto work for hire (whether it is explicitly stated or not), particularly if the contract doesn't say anything at all. It's not as simple as someone who ghost writes a book based on another person's outline (which is the closest equivalent to this scenario, as far as I can tell). The line about who owns what can be very blurry when creating a design for someone else's specifications (particularly if those specifications are particular to the customer's needs). This is what I mean about meeting of the minds. It wouldn't take a good lawyer could give the vendor a really bad headache if they rely on a narrow understanding of Copyright Law without taking other areas of law into account. To further compound the issue, Copyright Law does not cover the design itself (neither concept nor physical component).

Advice is to just say it explicitly in a contract and no worries.

Matt Lorono
Lorono's SolidWorks Resources & SolidWorks Legion

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/solidworks & http://twitter.com/fcsuper