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by Jerry Laiserin, FAIA
Cynical observers have long said
that architects must love CAD standards, because we have so
many of them. In an ideal world, a CAD standard would be just
what the name implies: a single set of rules and procedures
for documenting and conveying building design information
regardless of the software used to create it or the medium
in which it is viewed. But in the real world, there are multiple,
overlapping standards, each of which addresses a different
set of issues regarding the organization and appearance of
CAD files and the sharing of information with non-CAD applications.
Steady progress has been made on these fronts over the past
few years [record, May 1999, pages 57–58; October 2000,
pages 185–86], but the goal of a unified standard has
remained out of reach—until now. Recent advances among
standard-setting organizations offer renewed hope for more
widespread adoption of existing standards, convergence of
standards, and perhaps even unification of the various standards
frameworks.
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The primary players driving this integration are the National
CAD Standard (NCS), produced under the auspices of the National
Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) in Washington, D.C.;
and the Industry Foundation Classes (IFCs), developed by the
International Alliance for Interoperability (IAI), across
the Potomac River in Alexandria, Virginia. [Note: record publisher
McGraw-Hill is an active participant in IAI].
Drawn and quartered
The NCS is the result of a convergence among three previously
independent standard-setting efforts: the AIA’s CAD Layer
Guidelines (CLG); the Construction Specification Institute’s
(CSI) Uniform Drawing System (UDS); and the Department of
Defense’s Tri-Services CAD Center’s plotting standards.
Collectively, these components define how design files are
organized internally (CLG); what goes into a drawing, how
drawings are aggregated onto sheets, and sheets into sets
(UDS); and how the digital components are printed or plotted.
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Having the National CAD Standard
built into CAD software, as shown here in ArchiCAD, automates
drawing tasks such as title blocks and sheet titles, and
ensures coordination and consistency of detail and sheet
formats. |
Version 3 of the standard will be available later this year
and will include new terms, abbreviations, and layers from
architecture-related disciplines such as civil engineering,
piping, communications, and so forth, as well as a new administration
section that clarifies many optional components for conformity
to the standard. According to Alexander “Sandy”
Shaw, who coordinates NCS activities for NIBS, these incremental
improvements show the maturity of NCS “in the 2D organizational
direction.” He adds, “We will continue to reach
out to related disciplines to expand the usefulness of the
2D information; however, we’re also looking beyond 2D
toward objects and the facility lifecycle information model.”
The need to advance NCS beyond drawings is echoed by Michael
Tardif, Assoc. AIA, director of the AIA’s center for
practice and technology. “Of course, there’s still
work to be done on drawings, especially the addition of metadata
in drawings that will ensure predictability of printed output
regardless of the output device or setup,” he says. “But
to move past drawings, NCS must develop organization and classification
information for objects, which naturally pushes NCS closer
to IAI and its IFCs.”
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