Delusions of a CAD Manager
Things that you think are true but are not

According to Wikipedia, a delusion is commonly defined as a fixed false belief and is used in everyday language to describe a belief that is either false, fanciful or derived from deception.

I think that sometimes CAD Managers suffer from delusions.  Either they are fabrications or foisted upon them by others.  Some may come from simply having them repeated for so long that they appear to be true. 

Let's take a look at a few and see how they stand up to some scrutiny

No news is good news

This one is born from the the concept that if no one is complaining, then everything must be working right.  Consider yourself lucky if this is ever true.  I have found that when I am not hearing any complaints, it means that people are just doing whatever they want to do.  They are not following the standards.  They are making up fancy workarounds.  They are doing whatever it takes to get the drawings out the door.  And they are not telling you about it.  Understand that silence is usually a bad thing.

My standard is bullet proof

Oh that this one were true.  Or better yet, that no CAD Manager really believed this or said this.  No CAD Standard is perfect.  There are so many things that can make you standard not work to the fullest.  You have overlooked things, not updated it for some time, or just not bothered to modify it when the software has changed.  There are so many ways that your standard can be less than perfect.  If you think it is perfect then you will be tempted to never review it, which over time makes it imperfect.

All my users are following the standard

No they are not.  Not even the best user in your firm.  There are so many reasons to not follow the standard that I could not even begin to list them all.  It could be that they do not understand what is in the book.  They may not care what is in the book.  They may not know what is in the book.  They may not know how to do what the book is demanding of them.  The list goes on and on.

The standards are in place, my users know what to do - I do not need to check up on them

Everyone needs to be checked up on.  I don't care how good you are, we are all still human.  We make mistakes, forget the little things and just plain get it wrong.  Every firm that I have worked for has had a very well developed process for quality checking their design.s  I think that every CAD Manager should have a Quality Check for CAD.  A list of things to check at each milestone in the design.