Enforcing Best Practice Document.....

[zwei]

So a little bit of backstory...
I recently just help someone fix their CREO files in our PDM because they accidentally remove the family table instance and check in the file, causing a whole lot of issue to other users downstream.

And this make me wonder, a lot of time, CAD issue can be avoided by just following some simple best practice (eg: dont model thread if you dont need it, don't make to assembly pattern instance, etc)

So that make me wonder and thought that I should ask the folks here...

Do anyone keep and enforce some sort of Best Practice document at work?

If yes, how much detail & effort is put into it? What's the lesson learnt?

I had been considering to at least "Hang the rules" but would like to get more feedback from others before I start doing that...

[AlexLachance]

Hello Zhen,

We do have some of these documents over here, but maybe not to the extent of explaining subtle practices that you most likely won't use, like ''don't model threads if you don't need it''.

I take care of building most of these documents, and the level of detail and effort put into them depends on the matter it adresses and it's audience.

For instance, a document that will be strictly for me will not have as much detail as a document for the technical department, and the document for the technical department will not have as much detail as the one for the company.

These are the type of documents we have over here that sort of enforce ''best practices''
-Document to explain how to proceed to create a project and ''Pack and go''(Not what we use, but similar)
-Document to explain the skeleton sketch method inside our company.
-Document to explain how to build electric/pneumatic/hydraulic drawings from SolidWorks(yeah, we went there, works great!)
-Document to explain some of the ''bad practices'' commonly seen inside the company
-Document to explain how to understand and push information from SolidWorks to our ERP and avoiding mistakes.
-Document to explain how to ''create'' items inside the company, to keep some form of standard part numbering.
-Document to explain the How-to's of eDrawing for our shop people
-Document on how to use the collision detection tool efficiently
-Document to explain commonly known SolidWorks bugs and how to work around them.


Edit: Some screens from the pneumatic/electric scheme we built, some have asked before to see a glimpse

image.png

image.png

image.png

[MJuric]

So a little bit of backstory...
I recently just help someone fix their CREO files in our PDM because they accidentally remove the family table instance and check in the file, causing a whole lot of issue to other users downstream.

And this make me wonder, a lot of time, CAD issue can be avoided by just following some simple best practice (eg: dont model thread if you dont need it, don't make to assembly pattern instance, etc)

So that make me wonder and thought that I should ask the folks here...

Do anyone keep and enforce some sort of Best Practice document at work?

If yes, how much detail & effort is put into it? What's the lesson learnt?

I had been considering to at least "Hang the rules" but would like to get more feedback from others before I start doing that...

Every medium to large company I have worked at or for does this and it's called "Engineering standards" Here we actually have two standards books. One is "Engineering standards" and the other is "Solidworks/Modeling Standards". The "Engineering Standards" is all about prefered methods of designing something, materials, tolerances, bearing arrangements, weldments etc etc....yeah it's a big thick book. The correlating "Solidworks/modeling Standards" book is essentially a mirror of the Engineering book that shows how to do those things in SW, "Best Practice". It also covers PDM usage, Revs etc etc.

Getting to the age where I am starting to qualify as "An old Timer" this used to be the way it was EVERYWHERE. Even small shops had these books of "Hey this is how we do things here". In most cases smaller shops simply followed the standards of their largest customers.

Essentially these books where created to keep everyone on the same page and be used as a training guide for new comers.

All that being said, sadly, today it seems everyone thinks they are an expert on everything and they have no need to have someone elses knowledge or be told how to do something....so standards are becoming a thing of the past along with any concept of decent engineering.

[zwei]

Hello Zhen,

We do have some of these documents over here, but maybe not to the extent of explaining subtle practices that you most likely won't use, like ''don't model threads if you don't need it''.

I take care of building most of these documents, and the level of detail and effort put into them depends on the matter it adresses and it's audience.

For instance, a document that will be strictly for me will not have as much detail as a document for the technical department, and the document for the technical department will not have as much detail as the one for the company.

These are the type of documents we have over here that sort of enforce ''best practices''
-Document to explain how to proceed to create a project and ''Pack and go''(Not what we use, but similar)
-Document to explain the skeleton sketch method inside our company.
-Document to explain how to build electric/pneumatic/hydraulic drawings from SolidWorks(yeah, we went there, works great!)
-Document to explain some of the ''bad practices'' commonly seen inside the company
-Document to explain how to understand and push information from SolidWorks to our ERP and avoiding mistakes.
-Document to explain how to ''create'' items inside the company, to keep some form of standard part numbering.
-Document to explain the How-to's of eDrawing for our shop people
-Document on how to use the collision detection tool efficiently
-Document to explain commonly known SolidWorks bugs and how to work around them.


Edit: Some screens from the pneumatic/electric scheme we built, some have asked before to see a glimpse
image.png
image.png
image.png

Thanks for input, I certainly see the benefits of keeping different level of detail...

Nice screen shoot by the way

[zwei]

Every medium to large company I have worked at or for does this and it's called "Engineering standards" Here we actually have two standards books. One is "Engineering standards" and the other is "Solidworks/Modeling Standards". The "Engineering Standards" is all about prefered methods of designing something, materials, tolerances, bearing arrangements, weldments etc etc....yeah it's a big thick book. The correlating "Solidworks/modeling Standards" book is essentially a mirror of the Engineering book that shows how to do those things in SW, "Best Practice". It also covers PDM usage, Revs etc etc.

Getting to the age where I am starting to qualify as "An old Timer" this used to be the way it was EVERYWHERE. Even small shops had these books of "Hey this is how we do things here". In most cases smaller shops simply followed the standards of their largest customers.

Essentially these books where created to keep everyone on the same page and be used as a training guide for new comers.

We do have a lot of info/material scatter around, but without proper enforcement, they are just like optinal guideline and people are not really following (not to mention, they dont even bother to read)

I am more curious on how much detail is placed in your the modelling standards? High level rules/etiquette ? Or step by step instruction on modeling (this seem a bit impractical to me)?

My current visualization of "best practice document" is just a few set of "rules" that all should follow so that they don't screw up each other....

All that being said, sadly, today it seems everyone thinks they are an expert on everything and they have no need to have someone elses knowledge or be told how to do something....so standards are becoming a thing of the past along with any concept of decent engineering.

I can definitely relate to this...
It seem that nowadays everyone have their own "standards".
Some was thrown into a project with basically zero knowledge on the CAD tool and no proper training and they develop their own "standards".
I had lost count how many time i cringed at someone patching up a hole with a extrude boss, leading to a super long feature tree that make no sense to edit, and yet they are complaining why they are having performance issue...

[MJuric]

Every medium to large company I have worked at or for does this and it's called "Engineering standards" Here we actually have two standards books. One is "Engineering standards" and the other is "Solidworks/Modeling Standards". The "Engineering Standards" is all about prefered methods of designing something, materials, tolerances, bearing arrangements, weldments etc etc....yeah it's a big thick book. The correlating "Solidworks/modeling Standards" book is essentially a mirror of the Engineering book that shows how to do those things in SW, "Best Practice". It also covers PDM usage, Revs etc etc.

Getting to the age where I am starting to qualify as "An old Timer" this used to be the way it was EVERYWHERE. Even small shops had these books of "Hey this is how we do things here". In most cases smaller shops simply followed the standards of their largest customers.

Essentially these books where created to keep everyone on the same page and be used as a training guide for new comers.

We do have a lot of info/material scatter around, but without proper enforcement, they are just like optinal guideline and people are not really following (not to mention, they dont even bother to read)

I am more curious on how much detail is placed in your the modelling standards? High level rules/etiquette ? Or step by step instruction on modeling (this seem a bit impractical to me)?

My current visualization of "best practice document" is just a few set of "rules" that all should follow so that they don't screw up each other....

All that being said, sadly, today it seems everyone thinks they are an expert on everything and they have no need to have someone elses knowledge or be told how to do something....so standards are becoming a thing of the past along with any concept of decent engineering.

I can definitely relate to this...
It seem that nowadays everyone have their own "standards".
Some was thrown into a project with basically zero knowledge on the CAD tool and no proper training and they develop their own "standards".
I had lost count how many time i cringed at someone patching up a hole with a extrude boss, leading to a super long feature tree that make no sense to edit, and yet they are complaining why they are having performance issue...

Enforcement is as strict and consistent as the managerial level wants it to be. Where I work now there is very little enforcement and things that are enforced generally have to be egregious enough to cause problems in manufacturing.

Other places I have worked the standards where strictly enforced even to the point of being part of the checking process. Fit, form, function and is the modeling and drawing done to standard.

"Proper Enforcement" is the solution or problem with most systems. The best system in the world eventually fails if no one is making sure the system is being followed.

[Merovingien]

in different previous places where i worked,
i did that kind of "document" (how-to ... in SW)

to answer only one time a question, rather than always repeat the same thing....

my document was very simple, with screen capture, steps, arrows where to clic...
no blabla in my document ! (once upon a time, bla bla bla...)

[matt]

When I was a CAD admin, I considered the need for enforcement a failure of the hiring and training processes. Ideally you have people who want to learn and follow company practices, and where need be, help improve them. Enforcement is reacting to failure. Common sense company standards and training (and of course hiring that finds the right kind of people) is the real key.

[mattpeneguy]

When I was a CAD admin, I considered the need for enforcement a failure of the hiring and training processes. Ideally you have people who want to learn and follow company practices, and where need be, help improve them. Enforcement is reacting to failure. Common sense company standards and training (and of course hiring that finds the right kind of people) is the real key.

@matt,
I got dragged into our 2D CAD upgrade and I'd love it if everyone involved had your attitude. We're carrying forward 25 year old standards...One of which is that they've remapped lineweight 31 to 0 (there are other things that should be deprecated). So, if we ever try to work with anything from outside it's a complete mess...But, change is too hard...It doesn't help that Rube Goldberg's older schizophrenic brother helped develop the Bentley software programs we're using...hmm, just found my email, it takes 19 steps to create a 2D drawing file in the document management system.

[zwei]

When I was a CAD admin, I considered the need for enforcement a failure of the hiring and training processes. Ideally you have people who want to learn and follow company practices, and where need be, help improve them. Enforcement is reacting to failure. Common sense company standards and training (and of course hiring that finds the right kind of people) is the real key.

This too is what i believe at first too...
Except that some people had been neglecting / ignoring the training and follow their own practice

[jcapriotti]

Treat it like a QA check, pull some random samples of drawings for check and track which "operators" have a higher first pass yield. Then reinforce training.

Users follow the path of least resistance. Rework is not that path.

[Sappermarc]

I teach a program - CAD Mentoring Program for SOLIDWORKS which teaches a disciplined modelling method. It’s used by job-seekers to break into industry and also by teams to train each designer to a common standard.

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