Develop Your CAD Standards

1. Develop Your CAD Standards

2. Introduction Aim This presentation is prepared to support and give a general overview of the ‘How to Develop Your CAD Standards’ Guide and should be read in conjunction with the publication. Use of the Guide This guide discusses the importance of CAD standards within the construction industry. Its main aim is answering the ‘What, Why and How’ questions for CAD standards. The guide covers: • What CAD standards are • Why they are needed • How to develop them • Some success stories that describe how some companies successfully developed and implemented standards

3. What are CAD Standards? • Definition • ‘CAD standards’ can be defined as the rules, guidelines and standard operating procedures that are used in the production, maintenance and sharing of drawing information in the electronic environment.

4. Why do we need CAD Standards? Single Company Perspective • Companies need to share CAD data within their departments • It is usually much faster to begin a drawing with CAD standards; template files may facilitate this process • CAD standards bring consistency of data production for the departments within one company

5. Why do we need CAD Standards? Inter Company Perspective • Companies need to share CAD data with other companies • Parties do not lose time for correcting the items that are not matching to the company standards • CAD standards facilitate information sharing between the parties since they have the capability to define the ownership of the data within the supply chain

6. Why do we need CAD Standards? Client Perspective • Companies need to share CAD data with their client • Following construction, CAD drawings are passed to the client for the operation and maintenance of the facility, • CAD standards should not only cover the design and construction but also the facilities management phase

7. What to Standardise? • CAD Standards cover a large area: • Layering, • Text styles, • Dimension styles, • Title blocks, • Paper layouts are only few of the issues that you may need to concentrate on.

8. MANDATORY OPTIONAL What to Standardise? Discipline Element Presentation Sector Status Scale User Defined ı ıııı ı ıııı ı ı … A 742_ M 01__ N F Shower A 244_ D 02BD _ E Stairs Examples to CAD Standards • Layer Naming: Example: By using CI/Sfb classification codes, the layer containing a shower fitting could be named: A742_M01__NFShower Example: By using CI/Sfb classification codes, the layer containing stairs could be named: A244_D02BD_ESTAIRS

9. How to Develop CAD Standards? Available CAD Standards ISO CAD Standards www.iso.ch Institution Specific CAD Standards Select one or combine different sources British CAD Standards www.bsi-global.com National CAD Standards http://www.nibs.org/ • Many standards are available:

10. How to Develop CAD Standards? HOW TO DEVELOP YOUR CAD STANDARDS? Define Goals and Priorities Define Scope Major changes Evaluate Existing CAD Standards Solicit Input from Users Consider Implications of Client’s Requirements Write Draft Document for Standards Circulate the Document for Comment Repeat Process Until Tired Minor changes Revise Draft Based on Comments Train the Users Implement the Standards (Make New Drawings - Convert Previous Projects) Evaluate Your Standards

11. How to Develop CAD Standards? • Define Goals and Priorities: Define your most important goals and develop your standards according to them. • Define Scope: Concentrate on the most important goals and leave lower priority items for the next pass. • Evaluate Existing Standards: Search the national and international market to determine the suitable standards to you. • Solicit Input from Users: CAD users would probably know the problem areas and be able to advise you how to improve the standards. • Write Draft Document for Standards: Developing actual standards involves creating some sort of document, usually in a word processor or HTML format. • Circulate the Draft for Comment: Take the users comments about the prepared draft. • Revise Draft Based on Comments: Iterate this step until you and your parties are happy with the content of the manual. • Train the Users: Train your employees, and your partners if necessary, to get the best results from the implementation of your CAD standards. • Implement the Standards: Once you prepared your CAD standards, the next phase is the implementation stage. It is your decision whether to start using the standards immediately or try them in a pilot project. • Evaluate Your Standards: Remember that CAD standards are not static. There must be a continuous refinement of your standards.

12. How to Implement CAD Standards? • There are several factors that inhibit the implementation: • Lack of senior management support • Lack of agreement about what CAD standards should cover • Departmental or inter-company resistance

13. How to Implement CAD Standards? • Human related problems could be overcome via training programs that describe why standards are necessary. • Managers have to realise the gains that the company could achieve in terms of savings in time and money by implementing CAD standards • Why you want to accept CAD standards should also be described to the CAD users within your company and to the people you work with.

14. Success Stories – Laing Case Study • In a BAA project, the project team decided to implement 3D CAD modelling to improve the poor data management within the project life cycle.

15. Success Stories – Laing Case Study • For 3D modelling to be effective it was necessary to take control of how the data was produced. • As a result of a survey, the project team agreed on certain rules most of which are related with CAD standards. • One of the important conclusions from this project was that if the design teams use an agreed set of rules (CAD standards) during the project life cycle, this could help them work collaboratively on a single set of project data and manage the flow of data effectively.

16. Success Stories – Mott MacDonald Case Study • Mott MacDonald has recently carried out a major exercise to replace its drafting manual. The key goals were to: • Improve profitability • Facilitate work of high quality and consistency • Improve technical efficiency by maximising the use of electronic tools • Simplify the transfer of drawings and staff between offices, in UK and overseas

17. Success Stories – Mott MacDonald Case Study • The document reviewed several existing standards, including the relevant ISOs. • The CAD standard is published in PDF format, which was seen both to be suitable for online viewing via the Intranet, for downloading etc. • The company tried to make the implementation easier for users by an in-house software utility which automatically sets correct styles, and allows easy access to standard symbols.

18. Conclusions • The parties included in the construction process need to share the graphical information in an easy, quick and efficient manner. • For this, a set of standards must be used in CAD environments. • These standards help construction parties use the same language in the drawing deliverables.

19. Conclusions This guide explained three points: • what CAD standards are, • why it is necessary for a company to use standards in a CAD environment, • how to develop CAD standards for a company / project life cycle.

20. Conclusions • There are many CAD standards available in the market e.g. British Standards Institution (BSI), International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), etc. • This guide suggests that companies may select these published standards as guidelines or develop their own standards and apply them to the project environments. • Although the selected standard should be consistent for the whole project life cycle, they should be open to change for other projects.