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A CAD World without Standards

What would a CAD production environment look like if it did not have a CAD Standard?

Every User for Themselves – Every person will tend to focus on what works for them. They each tend to do what is best for them to get their job out the door without worrying about the needs of others or the impact of their choices on other users.

No communication – sending files to others will be more difficult since the recipient will not know what they are receiving, nor will each file be similar to another.

Every Project is different – not only will files differ, projects will also. They will be differences that impact plotting and output and even opening files.

Every User is unique – This is not bad in and of itself, but when a user needs assistance or needs to have others work on their files, there is a difficulty in not understanding what has been done with a file. How was it put together? What support files are needed? What layer is correct?

No automation – You will be unable to automate much since data may be scattered and disjointed on every file. One file may have a block named one way and another file may use a different name. Or maybe it is a layer name? Whatever it is, automation can only come from unified standards and procedures.

No ease of use – Getting into another person’s file means that you will have to figure out how it was created, where things go and what is needed to get the job done.

Clients not satisfied – when they get chaotic files, they start getting concerned about chaotic designs. If they find problems in the CAD product, they start wondering what other items may be overlooked in the design process.

Consultants confused – They receive files that have data in differing locations from one file to another or from one version of a file to the next.

Users frustrated – Trying to figure out what the last person has done starts to grind on a users ability to even want to find out. They tend to give up and just match what was there before, thereby continuing the disconnected data and graphics.

No way to know if something is wrong – without a standard, who’s to say who is right and who is wrong.  If you have not defined what “right” is, then nothing is “wrong”.  Anything that gets the file plotted correctly will be allowed.

Having no standards only causes the process and production side of things to slow down.