Question
I am working on a numbering system for my company's prints and I have hit a wall. I have not seen very many professional prints and am at a loss when it comes to having all the important information within the title block. Will someone please let me in on what a professional drawing needs to make it easily searchable and have all the info that is required?

I am using both AutoCAD and Visio (the printout looks a little different with each). As for "easily searchable," I think that will have to come with the drawing number and how it is filed.

Forum Responses
(CAD Forum)
From contributor A:
The titleblock should be populated with attributes that list pertinent job info, like job number, job name, contractor/customer/architect, etc. These attributes are filled out once in the titleblock and then replicated for each drawing sheet. You can also add invisible attributes for stuff you don't want printed on the drawings. Drawing properties (and custom drawing properties) can add cool functionality, too.

Typically we'll have a kitchen or some other room that'll have many separate layouts in one file. You can automate the new layout creation process and use rtext (for example) to name and number your sheets.

As for searchability, it's all in your file naming conventions. We follow this format:
NN-MM description (mm-dd-yy).dwg
where NN-MM are the shop drawing numbers,
description is typically a room name (eg: master bath)
and (mm-dd-yy) is the submittal date.

Each .dwg file goes into a Job folder: Job#-yy NAME... You get the idea. The key is to be totally anal about file naming and folder structure, and use leading zeros. That is, 01-05, not 1-5. and 04-13-05, not 4/13/05. This way, all jobs/drawings sort alphanumerically by number and submittal date. Very easy to search using windows. This is the way we do it, and it works flawless.

Have you reviewed the related Knowledge Base areas below?

KnowledgeBase: Knowledge Base

KnowledgeBase: Computerization

KnowledgeBase: Computerization: CAD Computer Related Design



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