SolidWorks® Administration Bible

Appendix B. Sources for Standards

IN THIS APPENDIX

• General Services Administration

• American Society of Mechanical Engineers

• American National Standards Institute

• International Standards Organization

• National Institute of Standards and Testing

CAD standards are designed to make interpretation of drawings uniform across an industry. Standards for architecture, schematic, and mechanical drawings have different goals, and each type of drawing looks different. Traditionally, standards are called drafting standards, and usually refer to the presentation of data and symbols on paper drawings, and may refer to layers, colors, and line weights on AutoCAD documents.

As a SolidWorks Administrator, you will need to find a way to apply standards to SolidWorks 3D data in addition to the 2D documents SolidWorks can produce. Remember that when you establish a standard, that standard is supposed to serve you, not the other way around. Don't create a standard for the sake of a standard; create it to make your job easier, more repeatable, possibly more automatable, and easier for your customers or suppliers to interpret consistently. Standards shouldn't be hard; they should be easy and intuitive.

You will likely need to adapt any standard you find from the sources that follow for your purposes. You can also probably trim out a significant portion of existing standards for use at your company. It all depends on what you are trying to achieve. Most CAD standards are structured around AutoCAD layers, text sizes, ...