The Owners' Manual - Issue 12 - Winter 2018

Pet Peeve: Use of Standard Details

One pet peeve that I can think of is the misconception that the Civil “Standard Details“ are good “as is” to insert on a detail sheet for any project. The Civil “Standard Details” are actually not “Standard Details” but are really “Standard Templates” of details. There continues to be this misconception that the Civil “Standard Details” are always good for all jobs. They are not. The details are really templates that need proper selection, review and editing for most jobs. The parties that have the misconception are generally less experienced personnel performing CAD tasks with little supervision during detail selection in the design process.

Continued education and development on the proper use of our libraries, templates and standards is critical to every discipline and skill set. Blindly throwing information into a drawing can equally be worse than missing it entirely. The education of what to use and when comes with experience which can be quickly derailed with a Cut, Copy & Paste as a shortcut in the race to complete deadlines. Please continue to coordinate with your project team during the project development. Quality Control starts with you when the data is first included or generated for our projects.

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Pet Peeve: Saving Reports Report Saving- some people save working files under DOCS/RPT, others save to the discipline folder (ENG-TECH, ENVIRO, etc.). I thought the intent of DOCS/RPT was for compiled reports to be saved under, if they are not going RECORD/OUT yet. CONFUSING.

The intent of the reports (RPT) folder has been blurred between disciplines as how they are currently organizing the data. The discipline / project team should be consistent in its practices and a discussion should be had to ensure everyone is applying the same practice. As for the Record – Out folders, a copy of what is being transmitted via Email should be placed into a matching folder for future reference as to what was sent regardless if that information exists in or at a different location. It is impossible for anyone outside of the IT Department to browse anyone else’s Email for content when the need arises. Having a copy in the Record folder provides the opportunity for anyone to refer too at any time when needed.

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