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A Complete Standards System for CAD
For drawings to conform 100% to CAD standards, you must have a Complete Standards System for CAD.
 Printed standards manuals and custom menus and pick-lists in software are a good start for defining and using standards, but they cannot promote and enforce full conformance to CAD standards.
When you have a Complete Standards System for CAD—each and every one of the criteria listed below—you have a process that ensures your drawings will conform 100% to your CAD standards. There’s no guessing—your process ensures the result.
A Complete Standards System for CAD must do all of these things:
- Create and manage standards, including security. Manage all aspects of standards including: import of existing standards, create new standards, organize them into meaningful sets for your organization, modify and maintain your complete set of standards, and ensure security of your standards so they can be changed only by authorized personnel.
 - Allow controlled access to standards for all groups needing to use them. Anyone who must use the standards—whether employee or contractors, on site or at remote locations—must have access to them. Also, drafters must have access to only those standards they’ll actually use. For example, if someone works on only mechanical drawings, they probably don’t need to see the electrical standards.
- Incorporate standards into drafting tools. Most quality experts agree, you cannot “inspect in” quality after production or manufacturing. Standards must be part of the production process. Drafting tools must make it easy for drafters to create drawings using standards.
- Provide drafters with tools to easily locate and correct non-conformances. A drafter invests time and effort to understand the purpose and requirements of a specific drawing. He or she knows first-hand why and how the elements were drawn, making that drafter the best qualified person to correct the drawing.
- Provide a reliable indication of conformance to standards. A person looking at a drawing can’t realize the benefit of the standards if he or she has no indication or assurance that the drawing does conform to the standards. In addition to knowing that a drawing conforms, a user must know which standard, which version of the standard, and the date the drawing was conformed. Also, if a drawing has been updated, but not re-certified, a user needs to know that too so that it can be re-checked.
- Protect the data integrity of related document control systems. For example, document management systems which are used to control the location, official issuance, and distribution of all critical documents, including drawings.
- Do all of the above reliably, affordably and efficiently, as a seamless part of the drafting workflow. For example, a Complete Standards System for CAD must work with the most commonly used drafting software applications, MicroStation and AutoCAD. And the system must also be affordable; we could very likely use many extra resources to improve conformance, but increasing operation costs is not an option.
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