The concept of ECO (Engineering Change Order?) varies from company to company. You probably are using software that may or may not allow attached documents such as as red[‑]lined[ ]PDFs. The authority assigned to the person doing the engineering change could be all over the place. They could be an engineer with an advanced degree and serious problem solving skills. They might be a CAD[ ]monkey.
If you indeed are ordering a change to drawings, red[‑]lines work
It's a good question to clarify with the Reviewer or the Owner for the drawing updated requirement, i.e a draft red-lined marker-up or actual drawing revision.
Yes. Have a change board meeting that looks at the redline. The redline needs to be initialed/dated by who is doing the redline. You need a record of what is being changed and by who.
The problem of redlining a drawing is the person who does it frequently neglects the fact that changing one or more dimensions may well force other dimensional changes that they neglect to put in the ECO. I've seen this many times, causing the ECO to be done all over again. It's the tyranny of geometry. Much better to make the change in the CAD system so you can see the results of the changes.
----------------------------------------
The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.
I worked in a place where they had the SolidWorks files controlled by SolidWorks PDM, and a second document system which controlled PDFs and STPs, which were used for manufacturing. If you needed to modify something, you checked the files out of the PDM system, you made the changes and checked them back in. Once you and the other designers were happy, you filled in an ECO to replace the stuff in the purchasing database.
If this were my system, the primary form would be an ECR (Engineering Change Request). Its primary job would be to describe the problem. Attaching a red[‑]lined drawing would be optional. An ECR committee would work out if the problem was serious enough to be worth fixing. If so, a qualified designer would work out the solution, and they may or may not follow the red[‑]line.
In another company I worked at, with aggressively process[‑]driven people, the red[‑]line would be implemented by a CAD monkey, quite possibly demonstrating the problem you describe, above.
I claim that we do not understand the OP's question. He may be askng about a custom software application that may or may not allow red[‑]lined PDF attachments. He (or she?) may be dealing with an in[‑]house ECO process that may or may not be well designed. Do they have an ECR system as I describe, above? Is the ECO generated by someone with a problem? Is it generated by a committee that is responding to someone with a problem? We don't know.
