ARKIBOKS: How to Issue CAD Drawings

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

How to Issue CAD Drawings

Hi fellow arkiboks, I'd like to ask for a few suggestions / strategies on how to issue a BIG set of drawing sheets for a single project. Right now, we have up to 120++ sheets. It's taking alot of time for us to edit the revision numbers, dates, revclouds, (all those info related to an issue) and to send them out for faster plotting. We are using xrefs for title blocks, plans, etc... and we bind them as inserts. I've tried the etransmit command but I'm apprehensive to adapt it fully with our team since I don't really know yet about its consequences.

The 'Bind strategy' is the cleanest and fastest way I know so far, but it would definitely help if we could adapt a faster and more convenient system for issuing multitudes of drawings.

I wonder how the big firms with projects a lot bigger than the ones we have get by with their issues. Does anybody have a clever idea?

We're using AutoCAD 2000 by the way.

Cheers to everyone!

- Malaya

3 Comments:

At 11:54 AM, ben tumbling said...: You can convert the drawings to LDF format. That is the best way to issue for printing. The files will be smaller and bound.
At 11:38 PM, ben tumbling said...: The LDF format is what most reprographic services use. It is closest you can get to what will be printed out. You can get the driver to convert drawings to LDF (layered document format) for free from most reprographic services (like the widely used Reprodesk for Autocad).
LDF is more for drawings being issued out to be printed.
If you need something that your consultants can view then PDF or DWF (autocad version of PDF) should suffice.
All the drivers to convert from DWG to PDF or DWF are again free. They would just act like virtual printers where an electronic copy is made instead of a hard copy.
A PDF viewer or DWF viewer are free to download by anyone.
LDF however is the closest thing you will get to how you intend a file to be printed (it preserves plot styles, etc.). You can view previews of LDFs through the Reprodesk program.
Autocad is however working on DWF to conform to LDF in their future releases.
At 12:49 PM, Anonymous said...: Speaking of efficiency in issuing of drawings, you can convert your cad drawings to pdf or dwf (design web format)for easy access by your clients and other consultants. The file is smaller and easier to transmit but they can only view the drawings and cannot make any mark-ups/redlines.
For hardcopies, I recommend that you make VIC files out of the plot files of CAD drawings. (You will need reprodesk for this) It's much easier for Reprodesk to work on VIC files compared to LDF. Reprodesk apprentice is the printing software commonly used by reprographic companies here in Toronto and probably in North America. Printing is very fast, it takes only 6 seconds to plot a 36"x48" sheet of paper using an OCE 9800 machine. I used to work as a digital printer here (Astley Gilbert reproductions) but now I am fortunate to get back to our profession working as a store planner/designer.