AutoCAD® 2009 & AutoCAD LT® 2009 All-in-One Desk Reference for Dummies®

Chapter 1. CAD Management: The Necessary Evil

AutoCAD 2009 & AutoCAD LT 2009 All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies is designed to help both AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT users improve the quality of the designs that they publish and to effectively share them with others. As you progress through this book, you discover how to manage the drafting environment and CAD standards for your company and some of the different ways to effectively work with drawing files.

CAD standards is a topic that isn't discussed enough in the office, and yet they play an important role in sharing drawing files. CAD standards ensure that the drawings you create look similar to the drawings that everyone else in the office creates. All the drawings should have the same look and feel when they're presented to a potential client or the shop floor. If your work doesn't have a uniform look, the client might get the impression that your company doesn't have enough experience to handle the project or is simply disorganized, which can stop talks cold at the table.

After you've finished creating your set of drawings for a project, it's usually time to share them with others, whether a client or someone in manufacturing. During this stage of a project, you might find that printing hard copies and mailing them to the client or off-site team members can take a lot of time. If you need a timely response to a question or a change, you'll most likely need to share files electronically. The type of file sharing you use depends ...