Apr
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Preventative CAD Management

CADDManager on April 4th, 2007

Last time I wrote about preventing problems before they occur. Preventative (or Proactive) CAD Management involves the concept of setting up processes and guidelines in order to prevent things from going wrong.

Reactive management just responds to problems as they come up. This is part of the job, but can often settle you into the rut of responsiveness. Responding to, but not avoiding problems.

Just like changing the oil in your car is a preventative measure, there are some things you can put into place to avoid having troubles later on.

So what steps might you take to set up some preventative measures? Some of them are obvious, some are not. Some of these have links to my web site because I have covered them before.

Here are a few:

  1. A solid CAD Standard that is reviewed on a regular basis.
  2. A list of approved software tools.
  3. Do a mid year checkup on yourself
  4. Set up teams to help you manage
  5. Narrow your focus
  6. Create a Technology Plan or refresh the one you have
  7. Blend you standard into your software through custom content and tools
  8. Create templates for all your file types
  9. Organize your server and all your data and support files

Do you have any more ideas? Leave me a comment.

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One Response to “Preventative CAD Management”

  1. R.K. McSwain
    April 5th, 2007 at 4:33 AM

    Mark,
    One of the things that works well for us is using AutoCAD startup files (located on the network) for setting things that always seem to get “unset” at some point.

    For example, at each ACAD startup, a VBS script is run that sets the ADSKFLEX_LICENSE_FILE environment variable to the proper value. What does this do?

    1) Since this was implemented, I have not had a single case where a machine could not find the license server.

    2) This makes it easy when we change LM servers. We just change the VBS script and everyone is updated the next time they launch ACAD.

    3) This script is also run once during our automated ACAD install. One less thing to worry about when deploying a new machine.

    That’s just one example.

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