Changing a layout number with a revision letter.

[Anonymous]

Our office wants to institute a regime whereby the reference number of a drawing is amended each time the drawing is revised.

(I've noticed that some practices use the layout name as the field for the revision letter - but we really want to keep this field for the name)

Our problem is that, after having done this, when publishing the layout, the resulting file sometimes has the original name (the one that it had when first published), rather than the new name, thus over-writing the previous revision of the published layout. This doesn't happen consistently. Today when publishing a set of 20 drawings, only 5 of them had file names reflecting the new name.

Is this a bug in Archicad? How do other practices get round the revision letter problem?

Also, how do most practices manage the outgoing data on their network? Do you have, for example, one folder containing the latest set of GAs which can be emailed on demand to consultants/contractors etc. Or do you keep a unique folder of drawings every time a set is issued, possibly named as per recipient? (the latter method requiring a new publishing path every time drawings are published)

Keith
Archicad Ver 12 on MAC OSX 10.4.8

[Aussie John]

Revision numbers are painful in Archicad. I end up using one of the custom fields which unfortunately renumbers all the drawings. If only part of a drawing set is reissued then it is possible some drawings will never have a particular revision number. I save the drawings as PDf and use an apple script to add the revision number to the file.

[Anonymous]

You can edit the name of a layout in the Publisher set, to append a revision letter for instance. This will not effect the actual Layout, just the title of the published PDF.

[Anonymous]

(S2art - your image doesn't work!)

Keith - How does you office currently number and name your drawings? Could you post up an example of your titleblock, and also the layout naming details. I'm not sure I understand how you do it from your description.

I haven't come to a satisfactory conclusion either to how best to deal with revisions generally, so I would like to hear any suggestions also. At the moment I crudely have a separate text box for both the revision letter and the description on each layout which I have to edit manually before publishing. It's not a very 'intelligent' solution.

I have noticed that Cadimage has a Revision Manager addon here which you may be interested in, but I haven't investigated it in any detail.

[Anonymous]

Peter wrote:
(S2art - your image doesn't work!)

Thanks, fixed.

[Anonymous]

What happened? I thought I'd already posted a reply to this. Forgive me if it comes up twice.

I'm not sure how a screen shot would help you, Peter. All we do is add the revision letter to the drawing number, resulting in a publisher list that looks exactly like the one posted by S2art.

Here's where it gets strange, though. If we edit the layout number in the layout - it is automatically reflected in the publisher list, but the actual file names of the published layouts may or may not reflect this change (appears to be random).

I've now discovered that, if I change the layout number manually in the publisher list (as S2art's suggestion), then the file name is correct (and it looks as if this is working consistently). However, after changing the name manually, it will no longer update automatically the next time we add a revision letter to the number in the layout.

None of this seems very clever, and I would have thought it would be quite easy for Graphisoft to sort it out.

(PS I'm away for a week tonight, so won't be able to post again until the following week)

Keith
Archicad Ver 12 on MAC OSX 10.4.8

[Achille Pavlidis]

Keith wrote:
Our problem is that, after having done this, when publishing the layout, the resulting file sometimes has the original name (the one that it had when first published), rather than the new name, thus over-writing the previous revision of the published layout.

Keith, i'm experiencing the exact same problem! I published some pdf's that overwrote the old files having the old name. I use a numbering system where the layouts have a numbering where the last digit is the revision number (starting from 0 etc) For example 1234-0 then 1234-1 etc. So when the publishing window starts it reads "Publishing 1234-1.pdf" but then on the folder there is the 1234-0.pdf but with the content of 1234-1.pdf, esntially erasing the old pdf file.
I think this is a bug.
Have you found any solution???

[Anonymous]

Hi Achille.

No I haven't found a solution - which is frustrating because we're trying to establish a new office procedure to eliminate saving hard copy.

So we're very anxious that we don't overwrite previous files.

I've separately posted a question asking how others manage the 'publishing' procedures (on the wrong forum: 'Working in Archicad' -oops!) and it appears that most practices make a new folder of issued drawings every time they publish - which seems to me both a very inefficient use of network space and a not very friendly system for someone unfamiliar with a project looking for the latest version of a drawing.

[vfrontiers]

I have taken a slightly different approach... Rather than renaming the INDIVIDUAL FILE... I rename the FOLDER..

Now when I publish, the old FOLDER remains intact and a new folder with v2(or whatever) is created.

I also have on my SHEET INDEX a CUSTOM PARAMETER used for issue date of each Layout in the set. I do have to MANUALLY change this text, but it keeps my head straight on which sheets were updated when. It was our office policy to change COLORS of the paper at each print revision.. So our sets start out at the contractor in green, then the sheets that were revised go to yellow, then to pink etc. etc.

While publishing, I could either select the WHOLE SET or only the sheets that changed. The new folder would either become ADDENDA or REPLACEMENT sets.



Don't know if I've explained it well....

[Anonymous]

So, Duane, do you end up with a separate folder for every set of drawings you've ever published to anybody, or just one for each set of revisions?

If the latter, do you create a new set on each occasion that just one drawing in the set is revised?