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Overcoming Barriers to CAD Standardization Using S-MAN Advance Systems

Barrie Mathews

A recent 210 page study conducted by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) calculated the total losses in efficiency for US industry resulting from lack of interoperability using computer-aided design (CAD), engineering, and software systems at 15.8 billion dollars in 2002. One of the contributing factors to the interoperability problem is diversity in CAD standards which inhibits the transfer and use of drawing data among the participants in the design stage and the use of as-built drawings by owner/operators.

The stakeholder groups interviewed for the NIST report all indicated that a more seamless exchange of data would shorten design time, and it is an established fact that there is inadequate standardization of how things are represented in CAD drawings. 

CAD drawing standards need to be organized around what you are designing rather than for using the functions of a particular CAD program.

Slow Adoption of New Technologies

Some firms have moved ahead while most are lagging behind using the methods of the past. For example, new tools such as named plotstyles that can represent real world objects for defining print properties have been available in the last 5 upgrades of AutoCAD. However, more than 90% of AutoCAD users are estimated to be still using colors to define printing properties with a choice of color that represents the CAD function such as line width and density. Layers are used to represent objects but groupings vary as many firms use them to excess in also defining tiny elements for different line patterns, line weights, and colors. The latter is now the job of "unlimited" named plotstyles using a standard table with all properties set "By Object" and alternate standard tables that can be selected at plot time to override the properties set in the drawing as desired. This makes it easier and safe to define standards that set the printing properties of some elements by the object when it is reasonable to do so.

Free Standard of Best Practice Now Offered for AutoCAD Management

Softco Engineering Systems is helping to cure the lack of adequate standardization. Its S-MAN Advance Systems is a standard of best practice for AutoCAD management. Its methodology is all spawned from an Object Coding System more extensive than layers where you independently document all the real world objects you are working with, and define your CAD system around that. Real world objects will never change while technology advances. Pipes are still pipes, glazing is still glazing, roof is still roof, text is text, named plotstyles handle all the properties put on paper, and your layers define reasonable assemblies of objects.

How S-MAN Advance Systems are Designed to Help

When you have more commonality in how AutoCAD is implemented and used, operators can see eye to eye on CAD standards. S-MAN Advance Systems offer you a go-between that also provides standard procedures for scaling, layout, detailing, and annotation. When user's follow these identical procedures and work their CAD system around real world objects, they can agree on universal industry standards for other particulars such as layer names, colors, linetype names, lineweights, and plotstyle names. 

To promote the standard more widely, Softco provides FREE license to use the S-MAN Advance downloads and they are easily accessible from many popular CAD sites.

Free User License Agreement for Multiple Stations and Branch Offices

The License permits you to install, deploy, and use an S-MAN Advance System on multiple workstations either by installing it on each computer or by configuring multi-station access over an internal network based on your CAD Manager's installation. You are also permitted to distribute non-compiled source files and user definable content to be used by branch office deployments provided the branch office has obtained their own copy of S-MAN Advance direct from Softco Engineering Systems or an Authorized Dealer. This enables you to implement identical CAD standards for CAD operators in branch offices owned, operated, and directed by the user or its parent company. To copy and distribute the entire package to branch offices requires special agreement in writing from Softco.

How the Standard Works

When you install S-MAN Advance, an organization of folders is installed under an SMAN root folder, and a DATA root folder. The sub-folders are for your CAD manager to develop, store backups, maintain, and deploy all source files under classified naming conventions. These files document and define the setups of the CAD standards you need, and the names of the system files and organizational structure are the same for all industry versions. When you see how to manage and use one implementation, you can easily manage and use the systems for other disciplines.

The installation for each industry discipline provides you with its own S-MAN shortcut which starts AutoCAD and loads the resources you have developed for that discipline. Tutorials walk you through the process of developing or upgrading to a well organized, high level, and fully documented implementation that produces consistent output who ever uses the systems.

There are more than 45 free productivity tools that standardize the way you work. There are single click system resets, importing and exporting of standard layering systems, importing standard textstyles and dimstyles, and special tools to manage viewports in any drawing unit. You can switch units and scales for different viewports, and draw standard annotations automatically on correct layers grouping annotations by the associated objects. Other tools apply standard plotstyles and lineweights according to color when you migrate to Named Plotstyle drawings.

Each system comes with step by step tutorials on setting up your AutoCAD system beginning with the S-MAN model system. In each package there is also an industry specific Cad Manual PDF file. You can print out the CAD manual and use it as a template with standard forms to either document your own system, or just use it as a turnkey operation to get you started at a higher level of development.

Turnkey CAD standards plug-ins, editable documentation templates in MS-Word, CAD manual accessories, and other add-on tools are very affordably priced and accessible from your Browser just by selecting "Add-on Components" from Bookmarks in the Cad Manual PDF".

Benefits

Agreement among CAD users on universal standards for CAD data is only possible when the CAD program is configured and used in the same manner. S-MAN Advance Systems make that possible and yet still allow user's ingenuity to add value. In partnership with others working in your industry, S-MAN Advance is building consensus where CAD users have been unable to solve the interoperability problem alone.

The free distribution of open source and wide open architecture in S-MAN Advance also allows a company to integrate the best of their existing standards and tools under the S-MAN umbrella. Defining alternate definition files in S-MAN Advance enables you to conform seamlessly to localized standards and specialized requirements. And by keeping in step with the experience of using new technology, you will be able to get universal agreement on standardization that does not lag too far behind technology.

 

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