Jumpy Guy
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| posted on 15/9/06 at 09:45 AM |
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Managing big drawings at work
We have recently entered into the world of architects and big drawings.. biggest is A1, A0
How do people manage them? at the moment they're kinda rolled up, and taking over our office....
What do people use? A big desk? some kind of huge filing cabinet? folio? folders?
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mike smith1
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| posted on 15/9/06 at 09:48 AM |
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We have them in lever arch folders or in filing cabinets,
best way is to fold them into A4
same principle on each, fold them so you can see the title in A4. Fold drawing in half so you cant see any details, fold each ear back on its self so
you can see half drawing on each then fold in half for A4.
If you can do it from that description good look to you! LOL
HTH Mike
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NS Dev
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| posted on 15/9/06 at 09:55 AM |
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At the companies I have worked at we have always used large filing cabinets specially designed for the job.
They are like huge lever arch files on their sides, they have sets of interlocking rails like giant combs in the top. You slide the rails together
then slide the hole punched drawings back and forth to find the one you need, then clip the ones you dont need out of the way to the back and front of
the cabinet and part the "combs" again to release the drawing.
god I am crap at explanations!!!
working in agricultural prototyping then in a steel tube mill has meant I have had quite a bit to do with large old drawings LOL
[Edited on 15/9/06 by NS Dev]
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NS Dev
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| posted on 15/9/06 at 09:57 AM |
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here you go:
plan filing cabinet
Retro RWD is the way forward...........automotive fabrication, car restoration, sheetmetal work, engine conversion
retro car restoration and tuning
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Mike R-F
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| posted on 15/9/06 at 09:58 AM |
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You can also use plan hangers. These are strips you attach along one side of the plan. You can then hang them on pegs in a plan hanging cabinet. Best,
if you have the space, are plan filing drawers. Another option is to have them digitised & archived if you have the facility to view them. Try a
company called Servicepoint (www.servicepointuk.com), I used to work for them many years ago, they specialise in large format document management.
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iank
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| posted on 15/9/06 at 09:58 AM |
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One nice solution is a map cabinet since it keeps them flat.
They look like a large chest of drawers with each drawer being an inch or so deep.
Here's a picture, but is on US ebay 
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Pdlewis
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| posted on 15/9/06 at 10:04 AM |
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We deal with alot of A1 building plans not sure what the product we use id called but has metal bars which attach to the top of a drawing so the rest
hangs down (unfolded) these metal bars then have groves to go onto metal runners the width of the metal bars
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D Beddows
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| posted on 15/9/06 at 10:08 AM |
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Made perfect sense to me......but then I do it on a daily basis  Bear in mind there will be an extra fold in half at the end for A0 sheets.
To be honest there's no easy way to manage or file big drawings, whatever you do you always end up spending half your life searching for the
right drawing - we tend to print the one/s we need off at the time we need them then bin them - not very green but it has the benefit that people are
more likely to be working to the latest revision (in theory anyway!)
If you get your hands on an old A0 drawing board though it makes reading them much easier
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liam.mccaffrey
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| posted on 15/9/06 at 10:37 AM |
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i was a draughtsman for a few years, now an engineer with the same company and we keep anything A3 and smaller in folders, everything up to A0 is hung
by attaching suspension tape. Either in vertical comb files stored in specialist cabinets as mentioned, or in stick files where a number of drawings
are clamped together and then that stick is hung in a rack. Constantly unfolding and refolding drawing down to A4 size is very trying you will get
sick of it quickly.
all of the stuff bigger than A0 is rolled and stored in horzontal cabinets
this is very efficiant we currently have over 15000 drawings stored in 2 small rooms.
our system is quick good, I seldom have trouble finding what i need
[Edited on 15/9/06 by liam.mccaffrey]
[Edited on 15/9/06 by liam.mccaffrey]
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mcerd1
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| posted on 15/9/06 at 11:08 AM |
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We design/build steel structures for eletrical substations and build tower (pylons) and antenas, as you can imagine these need big drawings - we will
make thousands of structures/ parts each year so you can imagine how many drawing we have
Large drawings are either hung up if we use them alot or folded down to A3 or A4 to be filled away (as mentioned above)
But most of the drawings we get are electronic, so we tend not to keep full sized paper copies (we can just print them off as we need them)
As for the paper origonals we get they get scaned then filled away
(of course the electronic ones are saved on a server thats backed-up every day and so on....)
The only problem with this is you'll need an A0 printer & scaner
(we offer an A0 copying/ scanning/ printing service to help it pay for our one - most of the local architects use it )
Maybe there is someone near you who could do the scaning/ printing for you ? it could help you reduce the number of old drawing you need to store
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liam.mccaffrey
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| posted on 15/9/06 at 11:19 AM |
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we are the same I scanned most of our drawings and we are pulling the originals far less frequently now.
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