Keeping track of drawings.. What works?

[Ralph2]

Hello
How do "other" companies keep track of there drawings? Before AutoCad our shop had paper drawings, when a draftsman made a revision it was a fairly involved process and a new "paper" copy was properly documented in our log. Now, with AutoCad we are getting a folder full of names. When a drawing is first made it is assigned a catalog number and properly entered in a book. But... revisions are ever so easy, and likely the revised copy has a name change to reflect the change (pump1 rev1.dwg) but that is the end of it. So it is not ever reflected in our catalog and if it was would make for a very cumbersome list.
So, what works for other machine shops where we get both customers drawings and contract out drafting needs.
Thanks
Ralph

 

[smcadman]

I am interested in what other companies do to keep track of their drawings also. Currently we have drawings kept by the month, let's say January. Then in that folder we have a folder with a customers name. Then in that folder, we have drawings.
So basically its:
Month Folder>Customer Name>Drawing(s)
We put the years on CD, such as 1 or 2 CDs for 2001, etc. But it's a pain to cross-reference a drawing. I have been thinking of maybe organizing them in Excel or something.
I have heard of some companies saving the drawings in jpg files to quickly search them without ACAD.

Flores

 

[rKeyTek]

We use master files & sheet files.
The master files are living files where constant changes are made.
The sheet files have the borders and annotations associated to the sheet. This would be revision numbers, general notes, etc...

When we issue a file, we plot it out and scan each plot and attach a transmittal which comes from a database. The database contains information about each sheet. After filling in the fields we hit enter and a form spits out in a transmittal form.

Electronically
We use pack & go and zip all the files and label the zip file with the issue date.
And finally store the zip file in a "ISSUED FILES" folder.
.
There's other middle steps related to checking and quality control but these are the cliff notes.
.
Hope that sheds some light.
Rich

 

[Ralph2]

Hello SMCADMAN
I made up a Access (actually in the process of) data base. Made a form to reflect what we had in our catalog and this is working very well for the "paper" copies. It is the electronic copies that I am having troubles with, and thus the request to see what others do. Anyway in my Access database form I can shell out to a drawing viewer. So when a user finds a drawing, by clicking a command button the drawing opens. I looked long and hard for a suitable viewer, VoloView from AutoDesk would work (its free) but then I would be limited to only AutoCad files. I found a very nice viewer from

http://www.slickwin.com

called Slick!
This is a very reasonably priced viewer (150$$ US) with the advantage that it will open, view, print, red line a large number of drawing formats. A lot of our customers send scanned drawings in a tiff format and Slick will open them, and many more.
In our case it does not help but Slick also has a "data base feature" if the only drawing files we had to index were electronic this would be all we needed.
Regards
Ralph

 

[RiBeneke]

I have recently found a drawing management product called 'Columbus' from Arup Consultants. It is free, and can view all file types, and produces its own Explorer - type interface where you can manage details. I have not yet used it enough to be able to give a qualified opinion.

 

[smcadman]

I looked into Slickwin, but it seems that it is only a file viewer. It looked good, but I liked the price of Columbus (free). I am currently downloading it but it is a somewhat large file (28.3 Mb.) so it helps if you have high speed internet. It says that it is a document management system so it sounds like it will satisfy my needs.
As far as using Excel to organize files like I had mentioned earlier, Access would have been a better way. It's a bad habit I have (using spreadsheet software to handle databases).

http://www.oasys-software.com/product/dm/columbus/

Flores

 

[borgunit]

We are in about the 3rd month of our trial with Columbus and it helps a lot. If you are looking to not spend any money and just want a interface that can "sort" your jobs into Explorer like folders (even if the files are all over the place), this works pretty nice. It comes with viewers for most file types and and does not require you to change your existing structures. Some thoughts.

 

[DesignerMike]

We actually give each and every drawing a part number which is generated by our production software system. The system has the part number, a searchable description, and the associated "routing" to work it's way through the shop work stations. All the costs of material and labor are added to the cost of that part number, so at any time I can tell you how much is costs me for each individual part, and the sub assembly it is used in, and it's sub assembly, all the way up to the finished product. I can tell you where that part was used, and, with a little effort who it was shipped to. The software actually generates my BOM on the drawings, our company runs of the production software, not the drawings. If something is routed wrong and the drawing does not show it, you get what was routed, not what is on the drawing. The system automatically generates the requesitions, PO's, and sub-jobs and ties them to the main Job number for accounting. It can be a pain, but I can find every drawing and every part that was used for every job in less than 15 minutes since we started using the system (going back to '89 or so). The software used to be called syteline, now is Frontstep, and I think it is going to change again. It takes a big commitment and you need a lot of patience to make it work, but it controls everything from inventory to job costing, to employee timelog, to ordering the toilet paper.

 

[DesignerMike]

I forgot to mention Engineering change notices, Revision levels, drawing locations, drafters, Vendors, price quotes, cutomer lists, customer drawings and manuals

 

[Ralph2]

Thanks to all for your thoughts..... No real solution for me here unfortunately. DesignerMike has probably the best process going but is far too complicated for our shop. rKeyTek seems to have a system that is more professional than what we could possible ever hope to achieve........
The thread turned into "what do you use to view drawings", important enough, but my question was more in line with "how do you name various versions, revisions etc." ( or so I intended.)
So, for the time being, will keep up the "shoe box" approch. Dump it all into a folder and hope to be able to find it later.
Thanks again.
Ralph

 

[CADCAMMIKE]

I just found a great freeware add-on for explorer, to help organize drawing files. It allows you to add notes to file names that can be viewed in explorer.

http://www.flash.net/~jmosier/FileNotes/

I have been using it for a last 2 weeks, and it has made finding drawings and sorting revisions a lot easier. Usually I only keep the latest revision on the server and previous ood version are stored on CD. I use myorganizer to store comments and a directory list of each CD so I can easily find which CD the file I am looking for is on.

http://www.kingofmath.com/Freeware/myorganizer/