huangyhg

quality of structural drafting work
if you have technical structural drafstmen working for/with you, what type of quality work are they putting out? aka, how much hand holding do you have to do to get a set of drawings out that are understandable and free of a dimensional nightmare? i'm trying to gauge whether or not i'm expecting too much.
i recently changed jobs and i'm shocked to find so many problems with the sets these guys are putting together. they require the engineers to basically babysit the draftsmen. should i really have to go through the set and make sure dimensions are snapped to column grid lines? spelling errors galore are corrected? section cuts and detail markers easy to follow? i'm almost thinking of leaving this company because of the liability to my pe license. they just had a $30,000 claim (not on my license thank god) because they couldn't get an elementary steel dimension correct.
any words of wisdom are welcome.
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we routinely find dimension lines snapped to the wrong place or spelling mistakes. that is part of the "checking" process, though, isn't it? i would say i find this more often with details than plans.
when i hand a detail off, i have it drawn on engineering paper. i get it back from cad and i check it, not only for everything that i had in the detail, but i also try to look at it "fresh" to ensure the original design makes sense. it is usually pretty easy to pick up spelling errors - i don't see this as such a burden.
in the little dealing with draftsmen, i have found a pretty wide range of abilities and care.
i would be concerned, not just with how things are, but if it looks like they will be improving. if you're working with new people, there's hope. if they've been there for years, it may be time to move on.
part of it is knowing what expectations are. if you're expected to do a perfect drawing, you'll look at it accordingly. if you get to thinking "well the checking will fix that so i won't look at anything twice", you wind up with a mess.
part may depend on the workload as well- they may be shuffling work through so fast they don't care.
we're talking about draftsmen with 30 years of experience who, for example, don't know how to set up a foundation schedule. or know how to call out t/steel elevations.
i'm just trying to define the boundary between normal checking and having to take 3 days to rework entire sets because they make no sense to anyone.
that sounds like one year of experience done 30 times. i would expect a lot of checking for new draftsmen, not for 30-year guys.
what do you do? there are good draftsmen and bad ones. there are good engineers and bad ones.
this type of problem exists in some firms where the expectations of that individual is either not made clear and/or not monitored. i find that most people will generally live up to what is expected of them. keep in mind that all of us, at some point in time, do not perform up to our best. we all deal with personal problems that may affect our performance.
that being said, it is my expectation of drafters and designers that dimensional accuracy and having sufficient dimensions to build from is their responsibility. with computer x-references, dimensional accuracy plus coordination between disciplines should be a relatively task. the weak link is the human decision making process.
atomic25,
i have worked with all types from those who you give a beam size and a number of bolts to those that can only copy your sketches onto drawings. unfortunately with the structural engineering industries reluctance to invest in training the later are becoming more common.
there are 2 issues here, one as you pointed out is the greater potential for mistakes, the second is the fact that you are less productive because you are spending so much time going over their work.
csd
part of the process could be in the quality plan.
draftsmen/detailers should know what the expectations are and be able to reference old sets for assistance, if necessary at all.
from there a working print is made and a careful and proud detailer will check it before it is given to the chief detailer or engineer. following a working print, a quality print is made and checked by the engineer or engineering supervisor.
few mistakes make it past that control.
excessive working prints is cause for allowing the detailer permanent vacation.
regards,
qshake
eng-tips forums:real solutions for real problems really quick.
yeah, sounds like a serious problem. i do my drafting myself, but have had really god guys do it for me. top notch guys should be asking you questions. if it is a drafting department, talk to your manager. don't complain, but ask if there is some miscommunication. maybe they are used to getting certin information or expecting certian procedures sombody forgot to mention to you. if the manager does not see the problem, that is the problem. there are alot of firms doing sloppy work (including branches of well respected firms) and this may be one. time to move on.
one final note, unless you are acontract employee, your prfessional liability should be protected by the corperation. if it is not, this is not a good sign either.
to me it is part of the checking package - i see the same mistakes alot - many times it is use of different abbreviations from one drawing to another in a design set (example: typ. vs typical; concrete vs conc.). a particular design set of drawings should have consistency between terms and abbreviations.

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