Electronic Shop Drawings 2

[SteelPE]

I work as a consulting engineer as a sole-proprietor . I don't review shop drawings electronically as I find it easier to have certain drawing printed for my review. I know this is a little odd in this electronic age but this is the way that I do things. In my contract to the owner I state that the drawings are to be printed and mailed to me (to avoid the costs of printing the shop drawings myself).

Recently I was asked to review some shop drawings on a building that I designed. I asked my client to print the shop drawings an mail them to me which they agreed to. Now the fabricator is refusing to accept the drawings saying that they need an electronic copy for their records. I haven't had a problem in the past with this method... and I have done previous work with this fabricator before and it has never been a problem. Is this something new or should I just get with the times an start doing this review electronically?

 

[jayrod12]

What we do in this situation is scan our marked up set and send them back.

 

[SteelPE]

jayrod

While that is a possibility I'm not sure I want to do that as I don't have a high speed scanner.

 

[TehMightyEngineer]

A few years ago we started storing all our project records electronically. It's easier to ensure copies are recorded properly and can be found rather than digging through hard files. It's also easier to ensure backups are available in the event of a fire or some other catastrophe. For documents that were printed and then written on we scan the documents to PDF files. However, the majority of our documents are now done with electronic notes in PDFs, it's just easier most of the time.

Anyway, I agree that it worth getting these into an electronic form for the fabricator, and going forward, as you'll probably run into this more and more. You'll probably find it has advantages on your own end as we have found. Large scanners for 11x17, hand scanners, or even D and E size plotters with scanners exist. One client we worked for had a high end photocopier/scanner/printer that could scan about 100 11x17 sheets a minute and then combine and email you a PDF of the document. We asked if we could use it to PDF all our old records but they didn't let us.

If you're working with large scale drawings like D or E size prints then you can probably have them scanned for cheap at the local printer who should have a large scanner. Or you could do what I do and lay them out on the office conference table, stand over them with a camera phone, and just take pictures. With good lighting and a steady hand high-res photos are generally good enough for records I've found.

Maine EIT, Civil/Structural.

 

[TehMightyEngineer]

Also, I recently worked on a project where a state hired engineer/reviewer printed out all my calculations from the PDFs, put hand written notes and calculations in the margins, scanned them in a very poor scanner for the project records, and then recreated all his notes in the original PDF. Incredibly inefficient and he tried to make it up by using really short, unhelpful notes in the reviewed PDF. Try not to be that guy.

Maine EIT, Civil/Structural.

 

[EngineeringEric]

I still prefer paper. I will typically review the paper ones while i leave the digital copy open. I will mark the paperones in red and blue. while i mark in red i just transfer that to the digital via bluebeam at the same time. Then double check page by page afterwards by counting the number of comments per page.

This causes some duplication of work but it is minimal and it provides me with all my dirty-marks and them with what i want them to see. I used to have to do 4 paper copies. one for inhouse and then transfer to 3-sets for architect (they distributed). Now i only do 2 so in the end it is actually quicker... or so i tell myself.

 

[SteelPE]

What version of Bluebeam are you using? Are you using ReVu Standard, CAD or eXtreme? And is it easy to create standard "approval stamps" in Bluebeam? I have contemplated purchasing the program in the past, but really didn't want to spend the money for something I would used so infrequently (I am cheap) and, as state previously, I find reviewing the drawings electronically to be difficult.

I have two other projects that are going to be sent to this fabricator and I predicting problems in the future.

 

[dcarr82775]

I do the same as Engineering Eric. I say let the fabricator do the scanning, or the owner.

 

[bookowski]

SteelPE - You can download a free 30 day trial of Bluebeam. Yes it is easy to create stamps, overall it is very user friendly and worth the price. You mentioned being cheap - if you want to be really cheap you can continue to use the trial version, the only limitation is that it won't save a marked up pdf but you can print to pdf using someting like cutepdf (free) or others and get most of the functionality, but Bluebeam is cheap enough that it's worth just buying the full version.

 

[EngineeringEric]

BlueBeam also lets you get 30 days per version... they are on version 12 so you can go v8,9,10,11,12 and get 1/2 year! or next 5 projects that the fabricator that is being difficult.

 

[ztengguy]

Just use your phone to take a picture, and send them the hard copies as well. Let them decide which is easier to use.

Otherwise, find somewhere you can get them scanned, and just raise your price with this fabricator.

 

[MrHershey]

I prefer to mark up paper. Then will transfer marks as comments in a PDF copy. Takes a bit of extra time but I'll also backcheck my marks, doublecheck things during transfer, and creates an electronic copy for other people (and me if I'm out of the office).

 

[Gumpmaster]

Well, Bluebeam is very cool and I use it now not only for reviewing shop drawings but also for creating markups for CAD. It's a very useful tool.

 

[TLHS]

I like marking up PDFs, but I do checking on paper because then I can do highlighting as I go to mark things off, plus I can do high level checking calcs in the margins and have everything in one place.

Requiring that they deliver you hard copies seems hard to justify given current practices, though, as it tends to add a few days to the process when its not in a normal workflow for a company. If they're 11x17 or smaller, you should really have a printer that can handle that. If it's larger, get a relationship with a local printhouse and add whatever fee you need. It's just a matter of forwarding the email with the drawings on to the printhouse and it makes everyone a little happier. Scanning is the same thing. You just drop off a pile and they'll do it for you. Plus you don't have to hold on to physical copies of hundreds of shop drawing sheets in your records.

The trouble involved is worth it to avoid the hassle to other parties. It lets you keep that goodwill for technical issues that actually matter.

 

[glass99]

We use Bluebeam too. PDF markups are by far the easiest from a filing and distribution point of view.

FedExing hardcopies back and forth has comparable effort and cost to printing and scanning if you want to look at it that way. FedEx = $20, scanning = $1/sheet at the printshop in my building.

 

[kgengr]

I too prefer hard copy for submittal review - but I transfer my marks to the electronic copy to submit. It's been this way in my office for several years now -- I resisted it too (believing it has the potential to cause items to be missed, that the transferring is tedious, and providing a hand sketch to help with a confused steel detail is a 4 step process to get it onto the .pdf) but I scarcely see it done any other way on projects big and small anymore. However, if your client has agreed to your process - perhaps sending your reviewed hard copies back their way and have them do with them as they need to satisfy the fabricator/contractor would be acceptable (scanning, etc.).

 

[StructuralEd]

We are fully electronic now.
I prefer having to print out my one review copy than to have to mark up 6 copies, of say 50 sheets.
Unfortunately the pdf editing software is a bit crude to use and that part takes some time.
I've put the bug in my cadd program developers to consider making a pdf editor more cadd like.

On another note, I wouldn't care if the fabricator refused hardline or not. The Consultant isn't responsible to the contractors so who cares what he wants.
Let him get his own scans.

 

[BUGGAR]

Who pays for it is that who benefits from it. Which is usually the asker.

(sorry, good grammer is not my native language)