McNeely Engineering Ltd. Drafting Standards
Developing an internal information architecture system to standardize structural drawings for engineers.
The Challenge
McNeely Engineering Ltd. is a small structural engineering design firm that had been in operation for well over a decade without a graphical drafting standard or central database of standard details. The company’s output to date was inconsistent from detail to detail, page to page, and project to project. I undertook the creation, documentation, and deployment of a drafting design standard to create consistency in the company’s primary product: structural drawing sets.
The Approach
Inventory
This first step in the process of creating the McNeely Engineering Ltd.’s first drafting standard was to create an document that identified all fonts styles, plot styles, line styles, layers, colours, standard details, blocks, notes, and title blocks, that had been used in every drawing set in the company archive.
A single drawing file was created as a warehouse from which the new company CAD standard would draw from.
Eliminating Redundancy
Once the inventory was created, each category of element was organized and the archive of elements was stripped of redundant elements. The goal was to create a graphical drafting standard that would be simple and intuitive to use, while maximizing it’s utility.
Informing the decision of the final linetype set was a combination of how users wanted to organize their drawings (commonly by material), and how to assign line weights and linetype scales that would allow the creator to convey important visual information to the drawings end users. For example, on a steel framing plan, the steel beams should stand out significantly from the gridlines and other informational linetypes.
Aesthetics & Function
A competitive audit was undertaken of drawing sets acquired from other contractors, architects, and engineers to gain an understanding of what was being offered by other firms.
It was in this stage that the fonts, typographic hierarchy, line weights, and linetype scales would be defined. As consultants’ drawings are constantly shared among the design team members, it was important to pick from common fonts available in legacy versions of AutoCAD.
The Backend
The new standard was applied to the hundreds of company typical-details. Two base drawing files were created; one metric and one imperial. The full roster of blocks, text styles, typical details, and title blocks were organized for easy location and implementation.
Documentation
A document was produced for circulation to the company engineers that presented the new CAD standard. It included scaled examples of the new typographic hierarchy, linetypes, blocks, etc. with explanations for their use and how they would be replacing the company’s existing drafting practice.
User Testing
With the new document and drawing files in hand, engineers and drafters were tasked with using the new CAD standard for their next project and document usability issues.
One user desire identified and implemented at this stage was the creation of dynamic blocks. Dynamic blocks would promote greater drawing-to-drawing consistency and increase the speed and utility of the components database.
The Solution
The end product was McNeely Engineering Ltd.’s first CAD standard.
Gone were the days of inconsistent drawings, poor technical communication, and difficulty in finding and modifying standard details. The redesign of the graphics standards offered both employees and clients a far superior experience and had a dramatic impact on company’s public and private image.
