Working With Remote Drafters

[ACAaron]

A few months ago, we started working with a remote drafting company for our permit drawings.  I bring the client through the design process and send the drafting company the .plan files for the as-builts and finished design, along with photos and necessary notes.  Then they create the actual permit drawings.  We've completed two projects now and have run into some coordination issues.  I was hoping somebody has found some solutions for these items they'd be willing to share "best practices".

 

1. Sharing Files - when .plan and layout files are shared back and forth, we create full backups of the files and share the zip file via DropBox. The issue I'm running into is the zip file contains EVERYTHING in it.  The most recent one they shared with me has 146 files (plan file, images, materails, etc.) that all unzip to one folder.  So now I have a ton of files that are most likely already in my CA catalogs library folder and everything is a big mess in one folder.
   1. Any suggrestions for sharing an organized folder containing only new items that are needed (not including the CA catalog items)
2. Notes and questions - we currently are sending questions, notes, pictures, etc. through email, which is becoming somewhat disorganized to look back at
   1. Any suggestions for a simple online platform that will allow for collaborqation like this?  I realize there are a ton of them out there (ClickUp, Monday, Asana, etc.)  I'm looking for something that is rather simple wihtout a huge learing curve so I'm not "teaching" how to use it

 

Any other tips or suggestions that people have found that may be helpful are appreciated.

 

Thanks

[MarkMc]

1-You can set up a folder in the user library per project and put any custom or altered textures in it. Can get time consuming and easy to miss something. One thing that helps is when altering a texture rename it. Put a space in front of the name so that it goes to the top of the plan materials list. Then can go to the list, select add to library.

It's also a good idea to keep that list tidy using purge and then merge dupes.

2-Ive used half a dozen collaboration platforms. Settled on using Drop box paper. It's the easiest simplest I've found. Folks on the other end can manage fine with a free account. Also possible to work with people who don't have an account but more complicated  You do need an account, I used a free one for several years.

Just tell users to make sure they have notifications set.

[Renerabbitt]

1 hour ago, ACAaron said:

A few months ago, we started working with a remote drafting company for our permit drawings.  I bring the client through the design process and send the drafting company the .plan files for the as-builts and finished design, along with photos and necessary notes.  Then they create the actual permit drawings.  We've completed two projects now and have run into some coordination issues.  I was hoping somebody has found some solutions for these items they'd be willing to share "best practices".

 

1. Sharing Files - when .plan and layout files are shared back and forth, we create full backups of the files and share the zip file via DropBox. The issue I'm running into is the zip file contains EVERYTHING in it.  The most recent one they shared with me has 146 files (plan file, images, materails, etc.) that all unzip to one folder.  So now I have a ton of files that are most likely already in my CA catalogs library folder and everything is a big mess in one folder.
   1. Any suggrestions for sharing an organized folder containing only new items that are needed (not including the CA catalog items)
2. Notes and questions - we currently are sending questions, notes, pictures, etc. through email, which is becoming somewhat disorganized to look back at
   1. Any suggestions for a simple online platform that will allow for collaborqation like this?  I realize there are a ton of them out there (ClickUp, Monday, Asana, etc.)  I'm looking for something that is rather simple wihtout a huge learing curve so I'm not "teaching" how to use it

 

Any other tips or suggestions that people have found that may be helpful are appreciated.

 

Thanks

Hire me next time, haha.

1. So simply drag the materials into your root textures folder and chief will find them..then do it for every backup and it will prompt you about duplicates. OR
make your drafter goto 3d/materials/create plan materials library, a very quick tool, then export as a calibz file and import into your machine and chief will skip the duplicates in X15.

2 why not use chief, the note system works in 3d and will even snap to things, simply write in the notes text above line field and youve got a note in 3d, attached to the thing you need to address.

[Kbird1]

14 hours ago, ACAaron said:

Any other tips or suggestions that people have found that may be helpful are appreciated.

 

Just Zip the Plan/Layout perhaps?, not the Reference Files if the Permit Company is not creating or adding new materials etc.  This may leave things out though, like PDFs and Images etc which maybe needed in Layout, so it may just be easier to sort the folder after unzipping and deleting .jpgs and .pngs ( or moving them to the default Textures folder Per Rene ) if it bothers you.

 

M.

[ACAaron]

Thank you all.  I'll give those a try.

 

 @Renerabbittwe did work together once a while back.  I'll rech out on the next one to see if you're available.

 

@MarkMc Dropbox Paper sounds like it would work perfect.  I'll give it a try.

 

@Kbird1  The issue is more on the end of the drafter, which is part of the issue.  Thanks for the thought.

[ACAaron]

@Renerabbitt Rene, I'm not sure what you're referring to in regards to the "note system"  Could you elaborate?

[MarkMc]

@ACAaron I should mention that I'm the remote drafter (or was-practicing retirement now) Many of my clients are not very tech savvy.

 

To elaborate on DB Paper: It's a glorified word processor doc.

• Keeps a record of everything and who said or put it there from the very start
• Notifies of any changes/additions in Win notification area, in the DB app, and by email at frequency you select.
• Possible for both to have it open and type or upload which is then live on each system. This will create a "conflicted copy". At end of session make sure the original is completely updated and delete the conflicted copy.
• Keeps a backup going back 30 days. (I'd passed a client off to a friend and gave him access to that clients folder of projects. He deleted it from his system which syncs to online and my machine. Client asked for a revision to last job I did. It was gone (while I had a copy elsewhere on my system of the plan files not all the notes. Restored from history and all was back.)
• You can simply drag ANY file up to 50MB from  your file manager (win explorer,...) Upload larger files to DB instead of drag and drop.
• Drag links (like a 3D framing model uploaded to Chief cloud)
• There are icons for some formatting but it also supports a lot of keyboard shortcuts for format. Click keyboard icon on bottom right to see them. 
• There are some other keyboards- I use @name to make sure they are notified, to keep dates listed use one of these
• To go to the bottom of the page when first opening click a blank area to one side, hit the "end" key
• I prefer to have everything in the body but some clients like to use the comments which show up in the side margin- YMMV

[Chief_George]

We use DropBox to save all of our files to the Cloud.

And, we have remote users who help us with design work.

It seems intuitive that there should be a way to centrally locate material files on DropBox, so that all the users in our office and our external draftsperson can share elements of a plan file, without having to manually backup files to a zip drive or create a calibz file to share among users/locations/computers. 

I can't even create a plan file on my desktop and pull that up in our conference room without losing reference files.

Can't DropBox be used to centralize file storage and material files to we can avoid having to manually backup and move files around???

 

In my mind, this should be easy.... Can you please help.

famous last words...

[Renerabbitt]

18 minutes ago, Chief_George said:

In my mind, this should be easy.... Can you please help.

 

haha, sorry but this made me chuckle. It is anything but easy but I think we will get there eventually. Redundancy checks, file authoring, file locking, id management, list goes on...its very very complicated to use the same file at the same time across a myriad of systems both running locally and networks simultaneiously. Fraught with complications.
You COULD, put your textures file on the cloud in the same location for every machine. You will absolutely run into redundancy, and file bloat..since one machine may try and write a material whil another machine is referenceing those materials..but it will work.
Or simply map textures to a known location and turn off the option to copy externally referenced files in chief.

[raltd9245]

We USE one-drive with success