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A Useless CAD Standard – Part 4

Another issue that will render your standard pretty much useless when you may think it is not.

A Useless CAD Standard is…

Not Read

Your users are not reading your CAD Standard.  They may have never read it, or they may not have read it recently.   You take the time to write it, print it, publish it, and distribute it— but no one reads it.  It is useless because people do not know what is in there.

Avoiding this trouble:

Make sure that everyone has a copy.  You may have done so when it was first published,but what about new hires.  Do they have a copy?

Hold training classes on it.  Actually provide training in your standard.  Tell people what is in there.  Go over it one page at a time.  Tell them what and why you selected each standard.

6 Comments (Open | Close)

6 Comments To "A Useless CAD Standard – Part 4"

#1 Comment By Jimmy Bergmark On November 13, 2008 @ 6:24 AM

You have probably mentioned this before but one thing that is important is that when you make new updates of the manual you need to make it easy for everyone to find what is new. Use different means like having a revision log showing what is new or why not a RSS feed for it.

#2 Comment By J On November 13, 2008 @ 10:20 AM

Seriously? What is the point of this article? There is absolutely no meat (read details) to this skeleton of an article. Seroiusly, how did you get a TenLinks link for this? Do they even check what is posted here?

#3 Comment By CADDManager On November 13, 2008 @ 11:44 AM

J,

I would agree that this one is short and (hopefully) sweat. Sometimes my articles are short and others are longer. I hope that collectively they are useful to all and individually useful to some.

#4 Comment By B On November 20, 2008 @ 12:19 AM

As a consultant for engineering firms, I have to be honest and say that you really offered nothing beyond the blatantly obvious, especially with this last installment: if employees don’t read their CAD standards, give them another copy and make them read it? That sounds like its straight out of the movie ‘Office Space’. I’m sure you didn’t mean for that to sound so simplistic but I don’t know of any engineering firm, big or small, that doesn’t give a copy of their standards to new employees, and many go through orientation classes that cover these as well. I have yet to do work for a firm that doesn’t have mountains of printed-out engineering standards, consisting of many different revisions, which alludes to the real issue.

In my experience the main problem is not laziness on the part of the engineer but lack of modern, well-planned engineering processes and standards that are the direct cause the most expensive problems. That’s where the general public really needs some guidance – how to phase out old processes and implement new ones without losing productivity (the most important part otherwise what is the point) as well as to ensure that the standards being used are the latest approved editions and not something that an engineer got when he started with the company 30 years ago.

#5 Comment By X On November 20, 2008 @ 6:29 AM

Groovy. Glad you have something to do. We all need a hobby. Sheesh.

#6 Comment By CADDManager On November 20, 2008 @ 9:07 AM

Boy am I getting hacked on this one…

Busy or not, I hope to not post something again that does not meet your (and my) level of expectations.

Mark