Best Practices & You

When it’s your vision on the line, do you want standard practice, or excellence? If you’re like us, excellence IS the vision. Of course there are always cost constraints, but even when you’re creating a practical solution on a tight budget, every level of work deserves to be done right.

What do you mean by “Best Practices”?

In the discipline of drafting what you see is not always what you get. What makes the difference between acceptable drafting, at regular standards, and best practices?

The differences between regular standards and best practices can be summed up in two words Organization and Optimization. Most plans, once printed out, look the same; but what if you need to view an electronic file, or need to make changes once the project is underway? This is where organization and optimization separates the common drawings from the best practices drawings.

How are best practices drawings different?

Organized, optimized, well-defined drawing

• Organized: Easy to find, well-placed items within the drawing
• Optimized: If the plans only need 50 items, why have 250 items w/200 items not used and taking up space and causing confusion?
• Well-defined: Naming an item for what the item is. What a concept!
• Easy to modify drawing
• Making items simple and quick to change. This ties into organized, optimized, well-defined drawings. There is a trend of designers and drafters to “protect” their drawings by taking steps that make modification extremely difficult to force the customer to comeback to the original designer or drafter. However, this is a sign of dishonesty and a lack of confidence since the customer is paying for the design and plans. Let your work bring them back! Of course, we are not talking about copyrighted items or plans.
  

Choosing the Right Design & Drafting Resource for You

Choosing a design & drafting resource can be tricky; but also very important. Outside of the actual project being built the design & drafting aspect of the project is what you and your customers will see. Don’t you want an accurate and viable set of plans for the builder or manufacturer to build off of? Of course you want to find someone who has attention to detail, uses strategies that anticipate change, and has implementation know-how – but how do you find them?

• Meet with them – find out who they are and if they are professional
• Look at their past work – look at their portfolio and the range of their work; ask to speak with other clients to hear more about their experience working with this resource both during the job, and after it.
• Look at their past experiences – interview them just like a job interview
• Ask about their resources – find out exactly what they can do for you
• Pick their brain – ask them about your project and see if they have suggestions that make sense
  

Link to outside standards site

• National CAD Standards
• The American Institute of Architects