I thought I already posted a question but must have fouled it up so my apologies if this is a duplicate.
We are a small shop and hoping to learn from small and large operations about how you handle your file management for particular jobs, designs, output files to the machine, and so on. Mainly with regards to how you handle the housekeeping/deleting of files.
We have a very varied workflow. We can be running kitchens or commercial cabs for a period, then be into custom one-of's, molding and trim packages, then completely off the wall 3D work. With storage being so cheap I have typically always setup a job folder for a given project, saved everything from drawings, shop drawings, notes, and so on. Then we output toolpaths to the CNC in a cloud folder created with the same job name. This gets a bit daunting after a while in that how do you handle when the files sent to the CNC get deleted? Do you save them? Does the operator delete them when they are run? Do you delete all files when the job is complete? How long do you keep the job files after the job is complete? Do you archive them in a remote backup? Do you do this manually? Automatically? How?
I worry about deleting much of anything especially with regards to the job folder of course which will have changes and so on even for a long period after the job is complete (legal coverage)? Do you archive all your drawings permanently to keep your active file tree's as clean and compact as possible?
Sorry for the length. Just trying not to reinvent the wheel.
Thanks