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In This Journal - Table of Contents

February brings many of you into the "bleak mid winter" of your year when you are digging out or digging in.  The weather and its resulting problems have been a concern for many areas from Southern California to the Northeast, from Seattle to Florida.  Freezing rain, mud slides, snowfall measured in "feet per hour".  Tragic natural events in the Indian Ocean.  You name it, we have seen it.

I want to talk about another kind of "weather", actually the word I want to talk about is "whether".  CAD Managers have to deal with "whether" all the time.  Whether we upgrade now?  Whether to move to Arch Desktop or Land Desktop or REVIT or Civil 3D?  Whether to sign up for subscription or not?  Whether to allow that rouge user to continue to rock the boat, or whether to face them head on?  Whether to get out of bed each day and drag yourself to work?

Many kinds of whether come in to your work life, not to mention the whether's of your home life.  Decision making and progress are based on how well you handle these and other questions.  Do I have an answer for these kinds of questions?  I do for my environment, but it may not work in yours.  Each of us need to work through these and other issues every day.

Face them head on.  Work them through by taking into account everything you have in your resources.  Think about the impact on your firm, your users and your job.

Then make a decision and move ahead.

Mark W. Kiker, Editor
mark.kiker@caddmanager.com

In This Journal

Pareto Analysis - Selecting the Most Important Problem to Address

ETransmit - Part 3

Tech Tip - ABS Export to AutoCAD

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Pareto Analysis - Selecting the Most Important Problem to Address

Have you heard of Pareto analysis?  It is a very simple technique that helps you to choose the most effective changes to make. 

It is the 80/20 rule.

The method was invented by Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923), an Italian economist and sociologist. He discovered that 80 percent of the wealth in Italy was held by only 20 percent of the population, hence the 80/20 rule.  The idea that by doing 20% of work you can generate 80% of the advantage.  Pareto analysis is a formal technique for finding the changes that will give the biggest benefits. It is useful where many possible courses of action are competing for your attention.

You most likely do this all the time without realizing it.

How to use tool:

Let’s apply it to CAD Production troubles.  To start using the rule, write out a list of the problems you have. If you have a long list, group it into related changes.

Then score the items or groups. The scoring method you use depends on the sort of problem you are trying to solve. For example, if you are trying to improve profitability, you would score options on the basis of the profit each group might generate. If you are trying to improve user satisfaction, you might score on the basis of the number of complaints eliminated by each change.

The first problem to tackle is the one that has the highest score. This one will give you the biggest benefit if you solve it.

The options with the lowest scores will probably not even be worth bothering with - solving these problems may cost you more than the solutions are worth.

Example:

A CAD Manager has been assigned the task of deciding how to increase productivity.  He starts his research to find out what users and managers complain about.

He gets the following comments back from Users and Managers:

	Complaint	Number
1-	Plotting quality is bad	12
2-	Plotter is outdated	7
3-	The CAD Standard is not any good	3
4-	The Staff is not trained as they should be	20
5-	There are not enough CAD Support staff	4
6-	Management is asking too much from the user	12
7-	The PC platform is outdated	20
8-	Not enough RAM	8
9-	Not enough Plotters	4
10-	PC’s are too slow	16
11-	Software is too complicated to use	35
12-	Not enough staff	9
13-	Project schedules are too tight	4
14-	Plotters keep breaking	22
15-	Files are not following CAD Standards	12

The CAD Manager groups these problems together, then scores each group by the number of complaints, and orders the list:

By doing the Pareto analysis above, the manager can better see that the vast majority of problems (77%) can be solved by improving staff skills, correct and upgrade plotters, and upgrade the PC platforms.

Once these are addressed, it may be worth looking at increasing the number of staff members. Alternatively, as PC and Plotter problems are solved, maybe the need for new staff members may decline.

It looks as if comments on project related stress and support staff needs may be rare, and could be caused by problems beyond the manager's control.

By carrying out a Pareto Analysis, the manager is able to focus on training, plotting and PC problems, rather than spreading effort over training, standards, taking on new staff members, and possibly installing a new plotting system.

Key points:

Pareto Analysis is a simple technique that helps you identify the most important problem to solve first.

To use it:

• List the problems you face, or the options you have available

• Group options where they are facets of the same larger problem

• Apply an appropriate score to each group

• Work on the group with the highest score (the top 80%)

Pareto analysis not only shows you the most important problem to solve, it also gives you a score showing how severe the problem is.  Whether you get this formal or not, you still should use some form of this type of process to prioritize your efforts.

Mark W. Kiker

Back to In This Journal - Table of Contents

ETransmit - Part Three

Last month we began to investigate ETransmit...  let's continue...

Transmittal Options

This opens the door to set your preferences and options for organizing the files and folders that are included in the transmittal package.

Use Organized Folder Structure

Sets up the folder structure for the transmittal from the files being transmitted. The root folder is the top-level folder within the folder tree.

Keep in mind:

• Relative paths remain unchanged.
• Absolute paths within the root folder tree are converted to relative paths. Absolute paths outside the source root folder retain up to one level of the folder path above them, and are placed in the root folder.
• Absolute paths outside the root folder tree are converted to No Path and are moved to the root folder or to a folder within the root folder tree.
• A Fonts folder is created, if necessary.
• A PlotCfgs folder is created, if necessary.
• A SheetSets folder is created to hold all support files for sheet sets, if necessary. The sheet set data (DST) file, however, is placed in the root folder.

This option is not available if you're saving a transmittal package to an Internet location.

Source Root Folder
This defines the root folder for relative paths of files, such as xrefs. If the folder does not exist it will be created.

The source root folder also contains the sheet set data (DST) file when a sheet set is transmitted.

Browse
Opens a standard file selection dialog box, in which you can navigate to specify a source root folder.

Place All Files in One Folder
All files are copied to a single target folder when the transmittal package is created.

Keep Files and Folders As Is  - Check this one on
Preserves the folder structure of all files in the transmittal package, facilitating ease of installation on another system. This option is not available if you're saving a transmittal package to an Internet location.

Include Fonts – Check this one on
Includes any associated font files (TTF and SHX) with the transmittal package.

Note:  TrueType fonts are proprietary.. If any required TrueType fonts are not available to the recipient, the font specified by the FONTALT system variable is substituted.

Send E-mail with Transmittal
Launches your email application when the transmittal package is created so that you can send an email that includes the transmittal package as an attachment.  The Notes file is included in the e-mail.  The Report file is included as an attachment.  The files (if Zipped) will be attached also.

Set Default Plotter to 'None' – Check this one on
Changes the printer/plotter setting in the transmittal package to None. Your local printer/plotter settings are usually not relevant to the recipient.

Bind External References – AARGH – Please don’t use this
Binds all external references to the files to which they were attached.

Prompt for Password
Opens the Transmittal – Set Password dialog box, where you can specify a password for your transmittal package.  The files in the ZIP file will be password protected.

Include Drawing Set Data and Files
Includes the sheet set data (DST) file, callout and label block (DWG) files, and the associated drawing template (DWT) file with the transmittal package.

Transmittal Setup Description
Enter a description for the transmittal setup. This description is displayed in the Create Transmittal dialog box below the list of transmittal file setups. You can select any transmittal setup in the list to display its description.

File List
Shows you a listing of the files contained in the ETransmit.  Take the check off the ones you do not want to include

 Next month... ETransmit Sheet Sets

Back to In This Journal - Table of Contents

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