Standards & Philosophy - Part 1

 

Welcome back everyone!

I took a little break from writing after CAD camp to spend time with my parents, who were in town for a few days, but I am ready to start up again.

I want to spend some time talking about CAD Standards from philosophy perspective.

Ask yourself why any company finally expends the time and money to develop a CAD standard.  There are of course many reasons, most of them started something like this.

• "Why can't we get this (insert graphic feature here) to look the same on all our drawings?"
• "What font are we supposed to use again?"
• "What color or layer am I supposed use for this thing?"

These are the type of questions that usually spark the move to develop a CAD standard document.  But the documentation is only the beginning.

The question of standardization generally takes on three parts.

• What SHOULD it look like?
• Does item in the standard increase the overall value of the CAD design?
• How do you minimize the enforcement aspect of the standard?

If the development of a standard is not coupled with discipline to follow it, and apparent value to the drafter, then it is only the beginning of additional problems.  Not the solution to old ones.

In the next posting on Thursday we can talk about these questions in more detail to see how to answer them.