>
> I am looking for information concerning naming conventions, or best
> practices concerning the identification of architectural and engineering
> drawings. In the past (roughly 1888 - 2006), our City used an
> alphanumeric system consisting of a letter designation followed by a
> hyphen and a sequential number for each drawing, whether individual or
> in a set.


John-

This is avery common convention used for drawings.... an alpha character or
set of characters for the "discipline" of work, and then sequential numbers
beyond that.  Some organizations take it one step further and add a
designation in the middle to indicate a year so they can limit the length of
the sequential string and also to avoid running out of numbers.  (eg
G-1998-00001)

For example, a single drawing for a grading plan would be G-12345, a set
> of ten drawings would consist of G-12345 to G-12354.



And for computerized indexing, it would be required to have leading zeros so
they would start with G-00001, but if the numbering started in the 1800s, I
doubt they were  thinking about that =)

When we scan we
> also have a variety of other fields that are indexed as well that can be
> used for retrieval.


When I worked for a public utility and also for a large construction firm,
we had a "Key Sheet" for numbering drawings that include a few fields of
critical information that were components of the number.  We had a
discipline, a year, a project identifier, an area, and a sequential number.
This would allow easy identification of a drawing to a time frame and
project title. Every project had a "key sheet" that divided the work into
"areas" which were identified by blocks and each area was assigned a
number.  Drawings that were to be used for the entire project as typicals
were given area number 99.  (eg ST-1998-98036-170- 00001 for a structural
drawing on a 1998 project number 98036, area 170, drawing number 1)  And
yep... we indexed titles, etc as well.  But the numeric information is what
was punched into the aperture cards for the microfilm of the drawings, and
it was also the primary indexing information.


 His concern is to minimize the amount of searching required if
> the total number of drawings in the set is unknown, and to reduce the
> amount of time necessary to locate individual drawings. His thought is
> to have one project name or number identify all associated drawings so
> all are retrieved in one result set, or possibly as a multi-page
> document, then use the page-of-pages field or similar field to move to
> the desired page.


As stated above, you may want to have the project number or name as a
component of the number, but I don't think having it as the ONLY number with
everything else simply as a sheet will facilitate finding anything, in fact,
it may make it more difficult.  One of the potential problems here is what
do you do when you have  a multi-sheet drawing, such as a P&ID, a BOM, or a
spool drawing?  And how do you track revisions to sheets independently?  If
you're storing images of versions as well as each sheet, it would be a
nightmare sorting through them later to find what you're looking for.

I have some concern changing to a multi-page form of
> drawing set as well as creating the linkage to the GIS for the correct
> page, and how many fields would be necessary to create that linkage.
> I would appreciate reading about other numbering systems in use, how
> efficient they have been, and any issues dealing with linkage to the GIS
> or other problems.


My primary experience with GIS or AM/FM was tag numbers for devices on
drawings (valves, fittings, pumps, motors, etc.) and if the device tag
numbers are numbered similarly to the drawings, (discipline, project, area,
sequence) then it makes the entire system more logical.  We did a lot of
linkage in AM?FM to devices within a facility, but hadn't gotten too deeply
into GIS linkages to devices in the field.  Most of these devices were
numbered in a manner that obviously indicated the geographic location and
minimized the effort in locating them (pipeline number, mile point location,
etc.)

Hope this helps some.

Larry

-- 
Larry Medina
Danville, CA
RIM Professional since 1972

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