Are we done yet? - moving the conversation topics away from
CAD
I have noticed that the conversation in the
CAD industry has migrated toward the higher end tools.
Your conversations may have changed from generic CAD to
Inventor, Revit, Bentley Architecture, ArchiCAD, Catia, Pro E,
etc.
What I observe is that the
conversation on CAD is not yet finished. What areas do I think
still need conversations? Here are a few...
-
Standards
-
Basic Functions
-
Interoperability
-
File Exchange
-
Standard File Format
The conversation has moved on, but we are
not quite done.
Let's take a look at the first one...
more to come in the next few months.
Standards
The National CAD Standard is entering the
release 4 phase of development. The voting has begun on
the areas to add, remove or modify. Not many of the large
vendors have included tools that are embedded in the software to
make it "beyond easy" to comply with the NCS. They all
have some form of tool, but not many have tools that "just make
it happen". Maybe I am not aware of the tools that some
have developed, but it would seem to me that if you had a tool
like that you should be shouting about it. How long do we
have to keep thinking about what layer I want to use?
Moving beyond Layer/Level Names opens
another can of worms.
Here is a
good thread on the Autodesk site about what is not in
compliance in one of the products.
The NCS folks have included a proposed
12-Step NCS Implementation Program on their site. How
many of us are doing all of these?
- Reorganize disciplines in drawing set (UDS Module 01)
- Adopt discipline designators/sheet numbering (UDS Module
01)
- Adopt sheet coordinate system/drawing identification (UDS
Module 02)
- Adopt file naming (UDS Module 01)
- Adopt sheet title block format (UDS Module 03)
- Adopt schedule format (UDS Module 03)
- Adopt terms and abbreviations (UDS Module 05)
- Adopt CAD Layer Guidelines and Plotting Guidelines
- Adopt symbols (UDS Module 06)
- Adopt drafting conventions (UDS Module 04)
- Adopt code conventions (UDS Module 08)
- Adopt notations (UDS Module 07)
Here are a couple of Press Releases
The
NCS V4
Amendments Submitted to NCSPC's Vote on March 14, 2007 with
this announcement...
The National CAD Standard Version 4 (NCS V4) ballot opened to a
vote of the Project Committee members on March 14, 2007. The NCS
V4 ballot voting period of 35 calendar days will close on April
18, 2007.
The day before the National Building
Information Modeling Standards version 1 was announced (March
13, 2007).
National BIM Standard™ Version 1.0—Part 1: Available for
Industry Review until May 21, 2007
So my point is - the conversation has moved
on before we have completed the full saturation of the previous
topic. We have not completed all of the tasks that CAD has
unearthed. Has the topic of CAD been discussed and refined
completely? Are you totally on the same page with everyone about
all of the CAD issues?
Are we done talking about CAD yet? I
think not. BIM and other advanced topics have opened up,
but let's not totally close the old issues until they are
resolved. Some of us are more than ready to move on. Others
are not. Some issues may not be attainable in the current
2D CAD formats that have lived for so long. So should the
conversation stop about 2D and now be 3D only. Should we
move away from the old topics and on to new ones. Let me
know your thoughts.
April 2006
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