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| Architosh News Reports | |
| Architosh Staff (info@architosh.com) |
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Open Letter: Mac CAD production standards via "open source" model
What follows is an "open letter" to the Mac CADD community in AEC from Brian Lane of the award-winning firm, Koning Eizenberg Architecture, in Santa Monica, California. Portions of this letter have been edited. Dear Colleagues, I am a member of a medium-sized Mac-based architectural firm using PowerCADD drawing software. The reason for this note is to gather interested parties in order to pool resources towards standardization and production of CAD manuals for Mac-based programs apart from AutoCAD. At a previous office using AutoCAD, I was a part of a group that prepared a manual and had the benefit of obtaining documents from other AutoCAD offices. Additionally, we had the AIA Layer Guidelines as well as a couple of "how to" books on the topic geared to AutoCAD. Having those documents sped the development of our own CAD standards manual and helped us to fall within the industry practices -- though slightly tweaked to reflect our organization, but still comprehensible to outsiders, consultants and new staff. A general observation is that there seems to be more common protocols for drafting with AutoCAD, but due to the fact that this program is fundamentally different than most Mac-based CAD programs one is constantly reevaluating methods of how to organize and draw with these tools. This practice saps resources and plagues the workflow of many [Mac] architectural firms. It also frustrates staff who need to reinvent/relearn new methods as they move among offices. Most would rather concentrate on what they are trying to draw/design rather than how to draw it or what line weight/layer/group/color, etc. they should be using. Standardization of protocols would enable schools to teach methods that benefit employers as they take on new staff. What our firm, along with others, is interested in is if firms would lend copies of [their] manuals of any kind (if produced for PowerCADD, MiniCAD, ArchiCAD, etc) to our office. In return we will reciprocate by providing digital copies of our manual, as well as others we collect, once complete. We'd appreciate assistance anyone could provide. If there are books or documents from school programs we are interested in those as well. Please contact me with any questions, comments or concerns. We look forward to hearing from you. Sincerely, Koning, Eizenberg Architecture
Brian's letter addresses a very important topic in architectural CADD and we at Architosh felt it was important to bring this topic to your attention. Brian's suggestion resembles an "open source" model in computer programming wherein the effective agreement binds participants to share their contributions to the whole open source group. What is open source in this case are the "proprietary methods" of standardization for offices. By being willing to share this information to others you stand to gain important information which may contribute to better internal efficiencies within your organization, while at the same time helping others in unforeseen ways. In the end, the whole Mac-based architecture community stands to gain much by this "open source"-like model and we encourage you to participate.
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