Catalog company philosophy

[Jean-Paul Lanaux]

Greetings to all,

I was wondering if I could learn from the users out there on their mistakes, or Lack of mistakes regarding catalogs.

My background: I am employed by a consulting engineering firm which has to provide drawings for many different clients (Major Oil and Chemical companies). We must manage many specs for each of the clients. We also have many offices (different locations).

I can easily see the benefits of managing one set of "root" catalogs and building all specs from this "root" set.

It seems though that all of our offices and sub-groups within offices are copying catalogs to other locations and building specs off of these copies. They have specific reasons for doing this. Modifying the textual descriptions of components is the one valid reason that I heard. I am thinking that this solution is short sighted, but I do not have a lot of experience to know. I will ultimately reach my conclusion, but that is a year away.

Can I hear any arguments on how this should be set up? The more comments and reasons the better.

Thanking you in advance,

Jean-Paul Lanaux

[Aplant Monkey]

My opinion on Catalogs is that they should be centerally controled. We have in the past allowed (and continue to do so) mulitple copies of the same catalog for different projects. This in my opinion is a mistake and leads to problems down the road. you end up with multiple versions of the same thing taking up valuable drive space (although no that much it does add up). You then have many different ways of saying the same thing in different catalogs with no set standard. ie. PIPE, SMLS, BBE, Sch 80, A106-B ot the same pipe could be called out as Sch 80 Pipe, SMLS A106-B.

not much of a difference but enough to create a separate Sys ID and therefore a separate item. all it takes is a space or a comma for the item to be different.

In conclusion I would highy recommend using a standard catalog with specs that read that catalog, not using muti catalogs or even a separate catalog for each spec. You will regret it in the long run

[BentleyGuy]

I agree with AutoPlant Monkey. Build your base catalog and specs per your company. If you get a client that does things different you can modify the company catalog and specs or copy it and then modify it based on what the client wants.
There also needs to be at least two guys in charge of specs and catalogs. If one guy leves the company one day at least you have another guy that knows what is up!