File Archiving

[Rocco525]

File Archiving

How do people store old drawing files when a plan is revised? Say you are revising a site plan and it is being resubmitted, do you save the old drawing and how do you do it?

 

[jghrist]

I'm sure there are a lot of file management programs around, but what I have done is copy each drawing to a separate directory named "Transmitted" when it is plotted for submittal. I change the attribute to read only using Windows Exploring; right click on the file, choose Properties, and check Read-only Attribute. Before copying, I change my PE seal to a block that says:

THIS DOCUMENT ORIGINALLY ISSUED AND SEALED BY name, REGISTRATION NO. number ON date. THIS MEDIA SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED A CERTIFIED DOCUMENT

At the end of the project, I copy everything to a CD-R.

 

[IFRs]

Here are a few suggestions:

Put the original objects on a new layer with a date, then freeze the layer. Your history is right there.

Plot to pdf after each submission, putting all the job drawings in one pdf file.

Save the drawing with "rev 1" appended to the name.

Make a folder for each revision level.

Use CD ROM for backup. Not CD RW. Use high quality brand name media. Wait a while until DVD becomes settled and standardized.

Use CompareDWG at

http://www.furix.com

to compare drawings.

Use BeyondCompare at

http://www.scootersoftware.com/

to compare folders and drives.

Use SecondCopy at

http://www.centered.com

to schedule backups and archives on multiple drives.

 

[Rocco525]

Thank you guys for the help. We are an 80 people firm with at least 75% of the cad users anti standardization. We'd like to write a procedure for archiving. Do you have a written procedure you can post?

thank you
Frank