Zero vs the letter "O" Font

[pdybeck]

What does everyone do to distinguish between zeroes and the letter "O" on their drawings. I have only located one font type that looks halfway decent and distinguishes between them by placing a slash through the zero. The font type is SB Font. This issue crops up when we reference alpha numeric part numbers (from the vendor) on our purchase part drawings. This is really a SolidWorks question and a global engineering drawing question. If I were to decide right now, we would use SB Font on the portion of the note that contains alpha numeric part numbers. I am just looking to see how others may have addressed this issue, as I'm sure people beside ourselves here at my company have already stumbled across this one. If it were up to me, the letter "O" would never be allowed in company part numbers, just like certain letters should not be used to denote revision level. Is there a standard that defines any of this? TIA.

Pete

 

[sbmathias]

<soapbox>

I'm a strong proponent of not having "smart" or "significant digits" part numbers. This is one reason. Another is that almost without exception, significant numbering systems soon run into cases which can't be handled within the definition of the system, so exceptions get made, or some catch-all category is invoked. In either case, the system soon becomes littered with non-significant numbers, which need to be looked up anyway.

I'll be the first to admit that non-significant systems need better ways to find parts than significant ones, but my personal belief is that they are a better long-term solution.

Apologies to pdybeck for this tangent, but it is near and dear to my heart.

</soapbox>