I've found the majority of our existing drawing files do not abide by the strict upload requirements for this module. We cannot require all of our Architects, Subcontractors and Consultants to name their drawing files a specific way so that the discipline gets assigned properly. This would require us to first rename everything before uploading EACH TIME ie for each set and each revision. We have one project that does not have a space between the dashes of the pdf files and none of them will upload.
What would be better is we upload, assign dates and Drawing Set as we do now, but also assign the discipline in same window. This allows our consultants to keep their file naming as-is yet still able to separate by Set and Discipline.
Mercedes Green
| Company | Skygrid Construction Inc. |
| Job Title / Role | Technology Strategist |
| I need it... | 1 month |
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You should look into getting Bluebeam. We use this program to rename full drawing sets including hyperlinking all drawings within 5 minutes. It might be a short term solution until a change is made.
For a suggested solution I would propose a staging grid where one or more drawings could be loaded with the ability to set the key attribute values of discipline, distinct sheet number and drawing revision number. This staging grid would need capability to fill, copy and paste the discipline, sheet and version number across multiple drawings. The original file name would always be preserved as received from the engineer or architect. Once the attributes are set in the staging grid the drawings would then be committed to the drawing table.
I was just at a Consultants meeting where 3 Architects, 1 Structural and 1 Electrical were in attendance. When I was showing them the Drawing Management module they liked it, but when I told them they had to use a very specific file naming convention, their looked at me in horror. It would be a full-time job to have someone rename every drawing file for every revision.
What I would recommend would be an import process versus a drag and drop process. When you import, you choose a delimiter (Space, comma, dash) or fixed width like you do with Excel. You can then choose which columns are the Sheet Number then the rest would import as the Sheet Name. The imports would have to be done per Discipline (ie choose Architectural, Issues Date, Drawing Set as values) but we do that anyway since we never get all drawings from each Discipline at once.
We work with large utility companies that have strict standards. We have to comply to their naming scheme. The first characters are abbreviations of the job title or job number, discipline, followed by the sheet number and rev depending on the company. We haven't found a way to overcome this in Team.
I couldn't agree more with Mercedes comments. Imposing a specific naming convention on the drawing names just doesn't make sense in the construction or engineering world. When I showed TEAM to our engineering group they summarily stated that having to conform to a predefined naming convention wouldn't work. I like the idea of at least setting the discipline attribute at the drawing level or better yet in a grid that would allow you to set for all or a set of drawings when uploading. In addition, you should be able to edit the discipline attribute at any time after uploaded. Need flexibility here.
Then repeat all of that renaming by EACH Discipline. Quicker to just use Documents since it accepts them as-is.
Some of our Architectural drawings do not start with an A at all. There is no extra work at all if we simply drag and drop then fill out the Discipline from a list. We already have to fill in the 2 date fields and a Drawing Set, so having a 4th drop-down to pick the discipline is quick and easy. Could the programming use the Discipline if filled out and the file naming convention if null?
I've done a quick scan of Architectural Drawings from 10 Projects we have listed on our file server. Only 1 of these projects' drawings would upload. We would have to rename every other projects drawings each upload.
1. Most start with the date then Arch is in the middle. There are no spaces anywhere but uses underscores.
2. Starts with A. Combo of dashes and underscores but no consistency with spaces between dashes so those would fail.
3. Starts with A but no spaces between dashes.
4. Starts with A but dash between A and sheet number. Inconsistent dash spaces between sheet name so the ones without the space would fail.
5. Combo of starting with project name or date.
6. These would import.
7. Starts with A but separated by a period so would fail (A0.00) etc.
8. Some start with a date some start with full Architectural word.
9. Start with full word Architectural with no sheet numbers.
10. Starts with 37027 then dash then A8 then period.
Maybe this is just a Canadian thing, however, we also don't want to start having to enforce rules with our architects on how they name THEIR drawings. The goal would be for them to upload as they do now in Documents so THEY would have to do all of this renaming.
How different are your file naming conventions? We'd really like to make it less work to upload by supporting as many options as we can. Does anyone have other examples they can share of your Discipline/Number convention?
I do agree we'll need a way to manually fix things that won't always match, but would really like to do our best to prevent you from having to edit every item as you upload it, if we can.