Document DNA: Relevant 2D Documents in a 3D World

PRESENTER: So, cool illustration there. This is a popular one called relativity, I think. Just a fun one to study. And you wonder what your mind is going through as your eyes are looking at these things. And it's just kind of trying to adjust every time you look at a different part of that. It mentioned tessellations. He did a lot of tes-- this is called Sky and Water, I think. And he just loved to take one form and transition it into another using these nested repetitive shapes. This is another similar image where he's got the alligators kind of nested together. And then they go from 2D to 3D, 2D to 3D. See what I did there?

And this is probably one of the most popular ones where he does that 2D to 3D theme, which is kind of fun to look at. Trivia question, anybody know the connection between AutoCAD and MC Escher? Hatch pattern. That is correct. There is a hatch pattern in an AutoCAD called Escher. And now you know the rest of the story for some of you people who get that. Yes, this hatch pattern here is called Escher. And it's based on this piece of artwork here by MC Escher.

So one other of his images that I've kind of grown fond of is this one here called Three Worlds. As the name implies, this image illustrates three visible perspectives from one vantage point. THe tree is reflected in the surface, the surface of the water, and then what's underneath. I used this image probably 15 years ago to explain documentation to an architectural firm I worked at. And I'm going to make the connection as we go along. But first, let's talk about a few other worlds. Let's find out who's here today.

I'm just curious from an industry perspective, architectural construction building services people? OK, good. Civil mapping, anybody? All right, good. Education? OK, a few educators, good. Piping, process design? OK, manufacturing? All right, good. Anybody else that I kind of missed there?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: Oh, cool. Very cool.

AUDIENCE: Audio Visual.

PRESENTER: All right, excellent.

AUDIENCE: Aerospace and [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: Awesome. OK, cool.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: Oh neat, kind of similar to the theater. Probably an overlap there a little bit. Anything else? Anybody else?

AUDIENCE: Dam infrastructure.

PRESENTER: DM?

AUDIENCE: Dam.

PRESENTER: Dam. Oh, cool. All right, did you go on the tour on Monday?

AUDIENCE: Actually, no.

PRESENTER: OK, did anybody go on the tour to the Hoover Dam? Pretty good time? I bet. I bet. That's cool. Product-wise, let's start with old faithful, AutoCAD? All right, come on now. Don't be ashamed to say, I still use AutoCAD. I think I'm going to do a class on Revit snobs next year. I'm just saying. I'm just saying, you know. These people go, I used to use AutoCAD. Get over yourself.

AUDIENCE: We have to walk before we run.

PRESENTER: Oh. Security.

[LAUGHTER]

All right, so AutoCAD, Revit users? Cool. Any other Autodesk products here? Obviously I'm guessing some visual type--

AUDIENCE: Inventor.

PRESENTER: Inventor, OK.

AUDIENCE: 3D Max.

PRESENTER: 3D Max plant, OK.

AUDIENCE: Navisworks.

PRESENTER: Navisworks. I guess probably Autodesk tasks software-- Sketch Up, get out of here. Sketchbook, oh, Sketch Up is a good product. It's fun to play with. I'm thinking of Autodesk products that produce documents. Anything else that we're missing? All right, roles. Let's look at CAD managers, let's say CAD and BIM managers. What I would call production people, people who are responsible for producing those documents. Good. Educators. I know Randy, you're here. Thanks for showing up. Any other educators, trainers?

We're all kind of trainers, right? What else, role wise? Any business owners or principles in the company? Any of those people here? Excellent. Thanks for being here. All right, so that's those. Here's a little bit about my world. I've used AutoCAD since 1985. I think it was version 2.17 or something like that, stupid. And yes, I can say I've used AutoCAD longer than some of you have been here, which is really crazy to think about. Used it pretty much every day. I've done mostly architectural work but I have done some structural and a little bit of post frame agricultural buildings and horse riding arenas and that kind of thing.

And I use it for-- come on. I use it to lay out pictures. And when we want to put pictures on the wall, to make sure-- come on? Am I the only one? OK, thank you. So architecture is big. I do work-- I'm a CAD manager for an architectural firm. We do health care, financial, restaurant. We do a considerable amount of retail. And I'll talk a little bit more about retail as we go along. And if you know me and if you're friends with me at all, you know that I like my International Harvester Scout.

This is my truck. I bought it in 1979 when I was in high school. And I've had it ever since. And now it looks like that. So if you want, we'll just talk about that the rest of the-- no just kidding. Let's talk about our world. So we're all here, for Autodesk University, to better understand the products that we work with, to just increase our expertise, to take tips and tricks back to the office, to just improve our relevancy in our careers. That's kind of why we're here.

And then my goal is that by the time we're done with this, the documents that you produce, not only the skills that you've gained here, but the documents that you will ultimately produce, will better as a result. So let's talk about what it means to have quality documents. What do you look for when-- when you look at a document, what things do you say, that's a nice drawing? Just give me some-- what do you look at when you-- OK?

AUDIENCE: Clean.

PRESENTER: Clean, what else?

AUDIENCE: Organized.

PRESENTER: Organized, what else?

AUDIENCE: Consistent.

PRESENTER: Consistent, all right.

AUDIENCE: Right content.

PRESENTER: Good, not too much, not too little. Good, what else?

AUDIENCE: Proper standards.

PRESENTER: Proper standards. So are their red flags that show up? I guess I could go to the next slide. Are their red flags that show up where you start to go, I better look at this more closely? Red flags?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: Yep, what else?

AUDIENCE: Crossing leaders.

PRESENTER: Crossing leaders, I love that. In fact, somebody was telling me the other day, they were trying to explain crossing-- just drafting-- and they mentioned, crossing leaders. And he was explaining it to a younger drafter. And he said, you remember Ghostbusters how you're not supposed to cross the streams? And the guy was like, I don't remember that part. You mean Ghostbusters with the ladies? He goes, no, no, no. Dan Aykroyd Ghostbusters. There was another one? The good one, yeah. Right, right.

AUDIENCE: Poor quality to me just means not concerned about your design. If you [INAUDIBLE] quality to tell me the story, I bet the story's bad.

PRESENTER: Yeah, you just go, oh, right? It undermines trust. Right? Yeah good. Anything else red flags that pop out that make you kind of go-- what is it?

AUDIENCE: Spelling errors.

PRESENTER: Spelling errors.

AUDIENCE: Too much information.

PRESENTER: Too much information, yeah.

AUDIENCE: If they cram just so much on one piece.

PRESENTER: Right, right, right, right. That extra piece of paper. Yeah. So here's an interesting quote I ran across. If your drawings requires a magnifying glass-- sorry, grammar. You said spelling, I see the grammar there is wrong. If your drawings requires a magnifying glass, highlighter, or scratchpad for someone to work with, you have a bad drawing. All right, if the layout looks good and then the plan is usually successful. The appearance of a drawing is usually a good indication of its accuracy. Agree or disagree?

AUDIENCE: Disagree.

PRESENTER: Why is that?

AUDIENCE: Because on paper, it'd have to still look good.

PRESENTER: Yep. So would it be safe to say that if a drawing looks good, there is an increased level of trust in the accuracy of that drawing? If they took the effort to make the drawing look good, then they were kind of a dot your i's cross your t's type person and probably carried-- is that safe to say? To a degree. OK.

AUDIENCE: The other way around.

PRESENTER: What's that?

AUDIENCE: It's very much the other way around?

PRESENTER: So you almost get suspicious of a really nice looking drawing?

AUDIENCE: Well, if it's bad, I'm very suspicious of it. Always suspicious of it, but more suspicious if it looks bad.

PRESENTER: Right, right. Here's the rest of that quote. "The layout of the drawing will determine if people can understand or work with the content. A clearly, thoughtfully laid out, drawing is conducive to a thorough and proper review before it hits the field." That was in a magazine article called Electrical Construction and Maintenance magazine. Any of you familiar with that magazine?

So when I read this quote, two distinct categories popped out at me as defining quality documents. And these are the words that defined one category, talking about what's in the drawing. We talked about it being accurate. The plan, what's in the drawing. The other is how that drawing looks, how it appears. So according to this quote, you've got that balance of a drawing that looks good, because we all know you can have a drawing that looks good but man it is way off.

Or you can have a drawing that looks just terrible, but it's right. I mean, they drew what we wanted them to. It's modeled correctly. It's dimensioned correctly. It's annotated correctly. But man, it just looks really messy. Crossing leaders all that kind of stuff. All right, here's another quote. "Pool working drawings often exhibit fundamental problems, incomplete details, missing drawings, component sizing errors, poor workmanship, excessive information, and nonstandard symbols."

Again, I see those two categories over, talking about the content of the drawing, missing stuff, errors, incomplete. And then the visual part, the look, the workmanship, too much information, as you mentioned. And then things that people don't recognize in terms of symbology, all right? So I think to define-- at a minimum, to define quality, there are two categories. And I'm calling them technical and visual.

So every drawing that we've got has at least those two components. They have to be technically correct and visually correct. And that balance between those two would define, at least up to this point, what we would consider to be a quality documentation. And I don't care how you're producing that document. You know, it's interesting to me that we hear the term paperless, we hear that term a lot, but I don't know that I've ever heard the term documentless.

Now, there are some industries that will go straight from the model, bypass the document part completely, right to a CNC machine or 3D print or something like that. But I would say the majority of industries probably have that document stage where something has to be turned into taking that design, turning it into some type of document. So anyway, quality documentation in these two things.

Now when I think of-- so who here is involved in quality control or drawing audits or something like that? So your job is to review documents at some point in that project before it gets sent to the client or issued, published, whatever that case may be. That's your job. Would you agree that the process that you use to do that, these are the focus. You are looking at either a PDF, a DWF, or a piece of paper and you're looking for things, if we go back to-- that's not what I wanted. Anyway, if you go back to the quote, you're looking for incomplete details, missing information, poor workmanship, that type of thing.

Now, the quote we read earlier says, "a clearly thoughtfully laid out drawing is conducive to a thorough and proper review before it hits the field." So what I propose here is that quality documents doesn't just benefit the project at the end, or the client, but it benefits your company before it even goes out the door. So if we took the QC cycle, if you want to call it that, this is very simple of what that would be. You've got a project. It gets to a certain stage in the project. Somebody, one of you, will take and look through that and make sure there's things that aren't missing, whatever. If there's changes, you send it back, reject.

Send it back. They make changes and that cycle continues until you're satisfied and it can then move on out the door. There you go. That's what I was looking for. That's what you're looking-- what's what you're, essentially, looking for. Now, ran across this quote here. The construction industry, and I would say that probably other industries as well, is cursed with more or less the same quality control processes today as those available 200 or even 500 years ago. So we're in the Venetian. Outside the Venetian is a miniature of the Eiffel Tower.

The Eiffel Tower was built in 18-something, 70-something, 130, 150 years ago. So you can imagine the quantity of drawings that were created to produce the Eiffel Tower. What did that QC process look like? And how different does that look today? Aren't we doing the exact same quality control review process? Now, there are some of that stuff that could probably be automated. But a lot of that is just expertise, people with experience looking at that and going, oh, you missed that. That's an important element there that you need to catch.

So I mentioned that our firm does retail architecture. So retail architecture tends to be short duration. You know, these are projects that are a couple of weeks long. This isn't your traditional architecture where it's years in the making, 20 stories, that kind of thing. Very small projects, short duration, speed is of the essence, efficiency is of the essence. And so one of the things that we provide for our clients is we produce master drawings, templates, prototypes that people can start with to produce those drawings.

So our QC review process looks more like this, where while we're producing master drawings, template sheets if you will, we have a QC review that takes place on that. Then when those drawings get actually used in production for a project, they get QCD. So our drawings are getting a fair amount of QC before they actually ever end up in the field or to the client. So you would think that our drawings are pretty rock solid because of this. And as it shows there, sometimes the changes that we see here-- let's see if I can get the-- get fed back here because again, we can keep changing it here, but if it's something that we can fix back in the master, let's just do it once and get it done, right?

So the thing that was happening was that even though our drawings are being reviewed over and over again, maybe more than most, I was still getting feedback from people complaining about the drawings. Here's some examples of what those statements might have been. This dynamic block doesn't work correctly. They didn't say anything about it doesn't look right. They didn't say anything about it's not right. The content or the visual, right? I'm sorry, the technical or the visual. They didn't comment--

So they would say, why, when I go to this view port, do all my dimensions disappear? Or, when I plot this set of drawings, the title block is not in the same position on every sheet. These line weights don't look right. Not technical, not visual, but something that's slipping through that QC process that's affecting. And it was a frustration factor. It was people going to me, what the heck? Why is this not a multi leader? Why is the schedule not a table?

Why did they explode that? These are not statements about whether it was drawn accurately or it looks right, it was something else.

So I threw in the digital part of the document saying, you know what, our drawings are being QC'ed at the technical and visual level but they're not being QC'ed at the digital level. No one's looking at that to see if those drawings, those models are done correctly from a digital perspective. Let's break some of this-- OK, here we go. Not only must we contend with poor working drawings, but we also must deal with the poor electronic sources of these drawings. There you go.

So let's talk about document DNA. Three elements here. And we're going to break these down individually. Let's talk about technical first. This is obviously the one with the content of the drawing. We want the drawings to be accurate. We want them to be constructive-- we want to be able to build what you've drawn here. And we want them to be compliant with whatever regulations or codes or anything like that that may be relevant to that. Some of the questions that kind of get brought up in this element here, is what the client was wanting in the first place?

Did we even create a model or a drawing that that's what the client was asking for? This stuff is all in your handouts, by the way, if you haven't downloaded that. Does it comply with the relevant code regulations? Does it protect us, the firm, against liability? Does it protect the client against liability? And there you go, things drawn correctly and spelled correctly. The goal of the technical element is just accuracy. We want the drawings to be accurate. Because think about it, if the drawings aren't accurate, what's the point, right? You can stop right there.

Now let's look at not that one. Let's go to the next one, visual, the appearance of the drawing. How is it presented? Is it organized? The geometry that we're using in the symbols, is it something that people are going to be able to recognize? Here's some of the questions that come up with that. Is the drawing laid out and the information spaced enough to avoid clutter? Is it legible? Industry standard symbols, line weights, do the line weights aid legibility, show depth, and convey importance? That's what line weights are for.

The goal of the visual part is clarity. Yeah, we want the drawings to be right, but if they're not clear, we kind of shot ourself in the foot. Interesting quote here, "any time saved by producing a sloppy set of construction documents is more than compensated for by time spent correcting the problems and by ensuing liability risks." It didn't say anything about whether drawings are right or wrong. They are the good? Are they clean? Are they neat?

Here's another one. "An organized drawing appearance probably causes the greatest number of difficulties in both bidding and installation. It is also the highest potential for impacting the contractor's profit." Didn't say anything about them being right or wrong. Just the drawing appearance is bad.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: Right, right, right. Exactly. All right, let's look at digital. So digital is what I referred to, things like how the drawing was created. The standards that we use. One of the guys mentioned standards earlier. Collaboration, do the drawing support collaboration? Some of the questions here, are the drawings as clean and as small as possible? Can the drawings be edited easily and efficiently? Not, is it right or wrong, or does it look good, but is it a chore to work on?

Are intelligent objects being used? Are we using dynamic blocks? Are we using families? Are we using work sets? See, I can talk that Revit stuff too, right? That's why I went to-- there's some classes this week. I've got to get on some of this terminology, so at least I-- no. Does the drawing set up and enable collaboration? Talking about referencing and all that kind of stuff.

Now, I used an icon for tools there because honestly, I like digital because it kind of fits with technical, visual, digital. It kind of got a ring to it. But I really considered putting tools there as a label, but it just didn't go. Because if you think about it, even when they did the drawings for the Eiffel Tower, there were probably certain methods that they used for efficiency. And even over the years, gray hair, I've done my shared drafting, lettering guides, symbol templates, sticky back, pinbar registration, these are all things that had nothing to do with the technical aspect of the drawing or the visual aspect of the drawing, it had to do with how those drawings were created efficiently.

So that's why I put tools here because sometimes the best tool may not necessarily be digital. If I wanted to give you a sketch of my Scout right now, I'm not going to fire up AutoCAD. I'm going to pull out a piece of paper and say check this out. So the tool happens to be the pencil or the pen, in that case, as the most efficient. But in our world, digital. The goal of the digital element is efficiency.

So we've got these three elements here. And we already said earlier, hey, if the drawing is not accurate, we can just quit right there. So does that mean that the other two aren't important? And how do we balance this? Is it OK to say, eh, you've got a couple them. That's good enough. The other ones, eh, we can let that one go for now. Where is that-- so what I want to do is I want to look at the three scenarios that if we say, if we take this mindset that two out of three is OK, what's the impact of that? So let's first look at this quote. The most important things are the issues that deal with the architectural or engineering of the project. That's the meat of the project.

The cleanliness of the drafting, the presentation, is more or less marketing for the company. You should firstly focus on the meat of the project and make sure it is accurate. If there is time after that, then you should spend more work on cleaning things up. I already see people going, mmhmm. So this guy is saying what? He's saying technical is more important than visual. And you and I can probably pull out a drawing that we know that would send this guy going, oh yeah, I didn't think about that. Right?

So what happens if we have drawings that are visually good, digitally efficient, but technically not correct? What? You get sued. Yeah, what else?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: Yeah, you got liability issues. Yeah, you're right. What else?

AUDIENCE: Rework.

PRESENTER: Rework.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: If it's even possible at all. Yeah, right. What else?

AUDIENCE: Back charges.

PRESENTER: Back charges, yeah.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: Correct.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: Yep, exactly.

AUDIENCE: More RFIs.

PRESENTER: More RFIs. Yeah, right. Change orders. The result of this two out of three scenario is-- and there's other issues that come into play here, but liability is one of them. Let's look at the next scenario here. Well, before we do, here's an example. Now, at first we're like, no, no, no, no. If it ain't it's no good at all. Let's stop right there.

But wait a minute. Let's not throw this scenario out completely. Here is a drawing that is not technically correct. It's visually decent, meaning if the goal of visual is clarity, that drawing is good. It's clear. I see-- I have no idea what it is. It looks like a still or something. It's clear. And digital-- OK, it's not digital. But the tool, the method that they used was the most efficient one for that particular exercise. Here, just sketch this out for me. Now, it's not technical, as you can tell, because this two foot and that two foot aren't even close.

So can we say that that scenario is never any good? I don't think so. You've all created a not to scale detail before, right? It's not technically correct. But I did some work for a roofing contractor one time and he wanted me to draw details of roof parapet sections and things like that. If I had given him a drawing that was technically correct, showing the membranes and the flashing on that parapet, what would he have said?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: He would have gone, I don't understand this. And I'm going, but it's right. That membrane is a 32nd of an inch thick and that's what I drew it. And that flashing is even thinner than it and I drew it that way. And they're smashed up against each other. And I drew it that way. That's right. So we can't toss this scenario out completely, but we have to take into consideration the context, I guess you would say. Here's another example of one that's technically not right, but hey, the person for that particular example, the point is made.

Scenario two, drawings that are technically correct, digitally efficient, but visually there is a mess. What's the issues with that?

AUDIENCE: Hard to install.

PRESENTER: Confusion?

AUDIENCE: Hard to install.

PRESENTER: Hard to install, right. Interesting that the visual element would be so important that we can't even complete the project. What else?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: Correct. The one quote said something about unclear drawings in the bidding process. Yeah, what else?

AUDIENCE: Seems like it would take longer to put that kind of drawing together and you would kind of get lost on the way it works.

PRESENTER: Let's not talk about the client. Yeah, let's talk about you trying to produce it. Yeah, exactly. That's good.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: You know, that's an interesting statement because one of the things I try to tell people to do is, how would you want to be the recipient of your drawing? And I've heard people say, you know what? You should go in the field and use your drawings to produce what you just drew. Might make you go back and go, I need to do it a little differently. All right, so the result of this is confusion, as somebody said.

Let's look at scenario number three over there. Oh no, this is a perfect one. I ran across this last week. Technically correct, digitally probably correct, but visually it's not doing me any good. Right? There's another one, same set of drawings. Now granted, I'm looking at this probably early in the process. And there may be some scaling, annotation scaling issues going on. I get that.

So there may be some digital things that need cleaned up here. But it presents itself as a visual problem until we look under the hood and go, oh yeah, well, let's just change that or change whatever. All right, here's another one in an AutoCAD drawing. So this is an elevation of a kitchen. And if you zoom in on that coffee pot baby, yeah.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: There's the brand, the logo of that. Love that. Heck yeah. Got that Coca-Cola logo stuck under there. Because if they didn't have any information, they would have had a hard time putting that kitchen together in the field, I guarantee you, right?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: You know, and it's funny. I was, really was, in a Revit class yesterday. Really was. One. I did a couple of them yesterday. But the guy was talking about detailing and he said, why don't we detail everything in Revit exactly-- we live in a 3D world, draw the chair to look like the chair.

Because in Revit, in the BIM industry, there's levels of development or levels of detail, LOD. And it kind of says, you know, at this at this stage of the project, you don't really need all that graphic or data attached to that object. But later, it may come into play. So there's this kind of gradation of importance, right? And he was like, that's a bunch of crap. Literally, that's his words. That LOD is a about of crap.

And I'm going, OK, I don't want to see your models, buddy. If you told that-- is he going to do that? No. He's not going to do that. Even in Revit he's not going to do that because he knows better. "Even completely accurate, fully detailed drawings can be problematic if unprofessionally executed, sometimes leading to subtle but significant impacts, most notably misinterpretation."

Let's look at scenario number three which is drawings that are technically correct, visually correct, but digitally not efficient. Issues with that?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: OK.

AUDIENCE: Time.

PRESENTER: Time.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: Yeah. Yeah. What's that?

AUDIENCE: I said, it pisses you off.

PRESENTER: That's exactly right. Yeah. Anything else?

AUDIENCE: Maybe not [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: I'm sorry?

AUDIENCE: Possibly not configuring [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: OK.

AUDIENCE: I think that next person scenario, too.

PRESENTER: Yeah, that whole next person, that's the golden rule, guys. I used the term, for the result of this, I used the term unprofitable because I feel like of all those three scenarios, this one impacts your profit on your projects more than the other two. Because somebody said pisses you off, because you're exactly right. The frustration factor of working on a drawing where things are exploded and we're not using styles, or we're not using types, that frustration factor directly impacts profitability. Not to mention, the lifecycle issues and just delays and RFIs and all those kind of things that would come into play as a result of that, as kind of a collateral of that.

But what's interesting is we're back to our QC review stage. Didn't we start with technical and visual with QC? That's what we look at. So the thing that I-- in some ways I'm preaching to the choir here. I don't think that the leadership in your companies understand the profit impact of a digitally inefficient or digitally efficient document. I don't think they get it. And I think part of our job is to convey it to them in terms that they understand.

I like to use the phrase, what's it going to cost us not to do that? Not, what is it going to cost to do that? What is it going to cost to create these dynamic blocks before we actually start this project? I want to know, what's it going to cost to not do that? If we don't take that time, this is where you make the investment in your project that's going to pay back from then on.

So a while back I was playing with a post-it note and I drew this little post-it note here. And I sent it to a friend of mine at Autodesk. And I got two responses back. One was from a guy and his answer was just, ouch. And the other guy said, this is circulating through our internal internet, or whatever it was. I said good. And of course, this is the other side of the coin. This is not talking about us. But again, talking about profit, every click is an extra step. It's a ding in that profit.

When I worked for the post frame company, it was a culture shock for me, because I had worked at a 500 person architectural firm, had multiple offices in the US, a couple of offices in India. And it was an ego job. I was a CAD manager there. And it was fun. Got some traveling to do. And then the economy hit and took a dive back in 2008 or whatever it was. And they started laying people off. And I got caught up in that.

So I then went from a 500 person firm to a 25 person company doing pole barns. So I drive in the parking lot, gravel parking lot, in my Volvo S40 and I park beside this Chevy S10, or whatever, and this rattle trap of a truck over here. And I'm just going, I'm out of my element here. I go in and I punch a time clock, which I think I haven't done since high school working at Pizza Hut. And it was a culture shock to me.

But what was interesting is I walked into the conference room for a meeting and they had a poster of a fighter jet on the wall in the conference room. And I'm going, we do pole barns here. We do post rain buildings. What's the fighter jet thing? And the owner of the company said, with a fighter jet, there are certain weaknesses that don't exhibit themselves until you hit a certain speed, mach one, whatever it is.

So there are things that may be, hey, it's all good right now. But when you reach a certain acceleration, then things start to shake and rattle, and oh my goodness, we've got to fix that. And I contend that this is what happens with the digital element. We don't really notice things shaking and rattling until it's crunch time. And now I've got to open every drawing to do this to it because somebody didn't make it and xref, or whatever scenario it might be.

That, to me, is an excellent illustration of what is happening when things aren't done precisely at the digital level. So I think we would all agree that all three of those are equally important. And I don't know that some people still probably think that two out of three are better than-- obviously, at least two out of three, but it would ideal to have all three. But I'd like to say, is it possible for us to focus on one of these elements that would then benefit the whole DNA structure. And I say that the digital one is the one.

Because if you think about it, a well-crafted dynamic block, a well-crafted family, can have the technical part in it. It can be technically correct. And it can have the visual part. So you've got, now, the ability to take things that are digital and actually achieve all three of those targets. Does that makes sense? Now, one of the things that we wanted to do is take these digital-- how are we doing on time? Just checking here. Oh, 10 o'clock, 15 minutes, right? OK, we're good.

So we want to take a look at some tools that would help us with that process. So what do we need the tools for? Making the drawing standards and enforcement, reducing drawings to digital footprint, eliminate redundancy increased-- when I did consulting a while back, one of the things that I would tell my clients is-- they would want things to be automated.

We have this thing we do every time, can we automate it somehow? And it's like, yeah, we could automate it if you would do things this way. And I told them, the foundation for automation is standardization. If you want to automate something, we've got to build it on a platform, a foundation of standardization. Naming things a certain way, whatever it might be. Simplify standards compliance management and maintenance. And a nice mantra for standards for me is if I can make it easier for you to do it right than it is for you to do it wrong, that's a win-win.

If I can give you tools-- think about it. If I try to give you standards that are difficult to work with, I'm just fighting an uphill battle there. But if I can give you standards and make them easy to comply with, then I've saved us both the headache. Provide documented audits and reports. So let's look at some specific tools, and there's more than this.

I'm sure you had your own, but these are some of the ones that came to mind. Obviously, we want to focus on using styles and types, whether you're in AutoCAD or Revit or whatever. Because again, that central level of control, if I can affect all my text by changing this one style, that's a beautiful thing. Digital. It's like why did somebody override the text font on this [INAUDIBLE] text because we have a style that will do that? Those kind of things. Plotting and page setups, sheet sets, obviously great tools to make that digital more effective.

Templates, standard sheets. I'm going to skip through some of these, standard checker. If you haven't used any stuff by Lee Mack, if you're an AutoCAD user, you haven't done anything with Lee Mack, he is a phenomenal-- I don't know if he's ever been to AU, but my gosh this guy has done some amazing [INAUDIBLE] routines. It's just amazing what can be done. And one I mention here is called a batch attribute editor. What it does is if you have a block, an attributed block in drawing, and it's used in a number of drawings, think maybe a title block, for example, and you need to change that attribute value in multiple blocks, and the attribute value in that block in multiple drawings, that's the tool to use.

It's like publish for editing attributes, fantastic tool like that. But again, the foundation for automation is standardization. We're talking about blocks that are the same, blocks named the same, those kind of things. I also mentioned e-transmit here as a batch tool. E-transmit is normally used to package up a set of drawings so I can send them out to somebody. But it also has things like, you can change what version of AutoCAD drawing they are. You can execute a purge. So I could use the e-transmit tool just to purge my drawings.

Reference manager, Autodesk reference manager for looking at the things that are-- it's a great way to get a bird's eye view of what's in your drawings. Fantastic tool. Unfortunately, it's what I refer to as an Autodesk orphan. It's one of their children that they abandoned. Great tool as it is, but a lot of potential there. So think about this, I want to know what all the references are in this set of drawing, what their path to, what the reference names are, reference tool is a way to do that.

Bird's eye view of everything referenced into a set of drawings, great tool. And then just general cleanup tools, merge textiles, you can Google these things. The layer merge command in AutoCAD has been around for a while. Now you can merge layers in the layer palette. Strip StripMText, Overkill and DupRem for getting rid of duplicate objects. I mentioned these merge tools here because one thing that happens with AutoCAD in general is trying to clean up stuff. You try to get rid of a layer, and I can't get rid of this layer. I try to get rid of this text style and I can't get rid of it because I can't find it anywhere.

So my approach is merge to purge. So instead of me trying to find that layer that's somewhere in the drawing, I'm just going to go to the layer palette and say, merge that layer with this one. Done. Let AutoCAD figure out where it is. Same thing with textiles. Textile merge is merged textiles. Great tool. I've got a bunch of texts that I can't find-- it's probably associated with an m leader somewhere or maybe a dementia style somewhere. Or it's in a block-- I'm not going to worry about finding it.

AutoCAD, you find this text file and merge it with this one. Thank you, I'm done. Digital efficiency. Now, I want to-- as I was working through this, I'm thinking, you know what? This whole document DNA thing has some value beyond just documents. And this is not in your handout but you know, it's just something to discuss. Let's take a look at your people in your office and think about levels of expertise in each of these elements. Now visual, I'm not going to put in there because your three-year-old can look at those drawings and go, that's messy.

Where would you place-- and it would be great to have post-it notes if I had time to do that-- but where would you put your entry level CAD person as far as their technical expertise and their digital expertise?

AUDIENCE: Three.

PRESENTER: Three, OK. So they don't need to be highly technical. They don't need to be highly digital. Maybe-- that's where I'd put him. You can adjust that however you want to. Maybe you want somebody that's a little bit more. If they're just strictly cranking out drawings, maybe you want more on the digital expertise scale, how about an entry level BIM person? Same spot? Oops, that's right not the right order. There.

I put him-- I like for that person to have a little bit more technical understanding of buildings and how they go together. And maybe as a result of that, they may need to know a little bit more about the digital as well. OK, I through a project manager in there, because sometimes that project manager was formerly a CAD person. You're shaking your head. You don't think so? What do--

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: What's your thoughts?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: OK, so they would be lower on the expertise or the digital. Yeah. Yeah.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: They're in the negative Cartesian coordinate. That's funny. I threw a CAD manager up here. I want that person, you know-- now is it helpful if that CAD person has more technical understanding of what's being produced? Absolutely it is. But I want them to be focused on digital efficiency, profit. Less frustration, more efficiency. I put a BIM manager over there because I feel like a BIM manager probably needs to be more technical than a CAD manager. OK, maybe he doesn't need to be quite as digital is that. Any thoughts? Where would you put that?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: Close. What about your QC person, quality control person? Where would you put them?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: Where?

AUDIENCE: Upper right.

PRESENTER: Upper right? So you'd go two for your QC person? What else? High 2? OK.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: OK.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: Couple of votes for four. All right, now I put him in four. Now, maybe that's not the best, but I think I want that person to have that tech-- now again, most of our QC people don't look at the digital drawings. They don't open those CAD files or Revit models to go, hmm, that's not right. They're just looking at the presentation.

So again, don't have time to go in this and I'm not going to fill it out, but I want you to kind of think, does the importance level of those three elements, digital, technical, visual, do they change over the course of a project? Is there a stage of that project where, man, this is really important right now. You know, we've got to focus-- we want these digitally to be good. Oops.

Because what happens when it comes crunch time? Guess what element gets sacrificed when it's crunch time? What?

AUDIENCE: Visual.

PRESENTER: Visual or digital. Right? How often have you heard or even said, just explode is and change it. Why? We've got to get it done. Don't have time to do it right--

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: Just change the color. Whatever it is. So the digital-- So in that case, the digital element, when it gets crunch time. The digital element becomes the throwaway element, in my opinion. And I understand that. We've got to get the project done. But again, thinking next person, if that comes back for revision, oh that's right, we exploded that when we were trying to get this out the door. Now we've got a mess on our hands.

Told you. So document DNA, there's your three worlds, the digital, under the water. That's under the hood, so to speak. So hopefully this concept will help you with your documentation, just to make that a little bit more effective, increase your profit, make it better overall. So please do your surveys. Thanks for being here. Enjoy the rest of your day and have a good holiday season.