WORKING DRAWINGS HANDBOOK, Fourth Edition

Working drawing management

Working drawing management

It may not be released for construction, however, until it
becomes:

K:Construction drawing. Finally, and where the need for
record drawings justifies it, the drawing becomes:

M:As constructed.

This enables drawings to be issued for information
only, without fear that, for example, the quantity
surveyor will measure from an incomplete drawing or
that the contractor will build from unauthorised
information (5.9).

The method is also of value when a drawing is prepared
as a basis for a manufacturer to prepare his own
component drawing. In this case the architect prepares
his own reference drawing with a status E. This is issued
to the manufacturer, whose own working drawing is
issued to site, the architect’s drawing remaining at
status E.

A typical drawing number, containing all the information
referred to above, would be as shown in 5.10.

CAD considerations

The addition of status coding is a useful adjunct to the
issue of CAD files also, the status reference being
added to the layer naming convention reference

described later. However, CAD introduces additional

requirements. CAD drawings are often plotted ‘in house’,

with each plot requiring little more effort than a couple of

mouse clicks. Very soon you have dozens of prints, each

superseding the previous in some minor detail and

possibly ten minutes apart. It is not practicable to

provide each revision with a unique revision letter.

A practice might also be maintaining multiple copies of

a drawing file on different computers, or in different

sub-directories on the same computer; some may be

back-up copies in case of hard disk failure; some may

represent different stages in the evolution of the design.

For internal purposes a practice will need to know more

about a drawing plot than just its number and title.

One solution is to have a second ‘For Office Use Only’

identifying code printed elsewhere on the drawing,

including the time and date the plot is made plus the full

file name and computer path of the originating CAD file. If

placed in the opposite corner of the print and outside the

margins of the drawing proper, confusion with the ‘public’

title panel should be avoided. In this way the version of a

plotted version can always be identified (5.11). (As a

bonus, this information can also be written to a simple

text file, providing a crude record of drawings plotted.)

5.9 Status coding of a drawing indicates only its status
at the present time. This stamp freezes the drawing at
the point when it relates to the other contract documents
and is invaluable in managing the contract

5.10 A full drawing number, using the system

described. The number within the heavy box is the

drawing’s unique identification and is the minimum

information required by anyone searching for it.

It indicates that the drawing is of a component filling

an internal opening and that it is number 107 in the

series. The K at the left indicates that the drawing has

been released for constructional purposes. The issue

is Revision B