CadTempo - Time Tracking and Logging for Engineering Documents

Dr. Who and the CAD Manager, Part 2

2012-01-12T18:00:00.000-08:00

January 5th, 2012

Welcome back from last month. It was an exciting return trip after dropping you off. I didn’t have quite enough battery power to make it to my destination but fortunately I landed in a shopping mall outside of Miami that had those new car chargers available. I hope the Chevy Volt owner got fully charged after I surreptitiously borrowed his hookup for a while. For this month the TARDIS is fully charged so if you’re ready let’s take another trip back in time...all the way back again to 1991. Here we go.You’ll remember I had just started up my company and began my quest to improve my AutoCAD productivity. I shared with you a scanned image of some job time logs I had manually recorded while previously employed, performing design and drafting work on a board. From these logs I created the following spreadsheet to help visualize my work effort and output. This would serve as a benchmark to measure against as I massaged my AutoCAD standards, drafting techniques, and customized AutoCAD work environment.

Manual Board Drafting

By studying the spreadsheet you will see I’ve graphed (in blue) the total job time which is the sum of layout, detail, and checking time per the sum of manufactured details and commercial components. Also graphed is the total job time (yellow), layout time (Green) and detail time (beige) per number of manufactured details. My main area of interest was the number of detail manufactured parts, primarily because that was where the more original thinking was required. Commercial parts were more quickly drawn due to having dimensional information or it was a matter of simply tracing over a template. I did not attempt to differentiate between the complexity of the detailed parts such as a weldment or a spacer plate, I was interested in establishing an average. To a certain extent that explains the peaks and the valleys as some jobs had a greater number of complex parts, some less. The end result of this exercise as you can see is a typical job required 4.72 hours to complete per manufactured detail and the average time to detail was 1.73 hours per detail. For charting, checking time was not included so you’ll notice a slight disparity in the total hours per detail part.Starting out fresh I had much to do, selection of a computer (my first “real” one), self taught AutoCAD and AutoLISP learning, supporting software selection, printer, file cabinets and more, too many details to bore you with. The main focus was on designing and building the machine I was committed to, until that was complete the search for increased productivity was placed on the back burner. With that in mind let’s jump back into the TARDIS and dial in the year 1993.I was pretty busy during the intervening two year period, completion of the machine design and build, additional design jobs, and many AutoLISP routines to write for tweaking my system as shown in this list:

Now I had several AutoCAD jobs under my belt to make some comparisons, although the first few jobs were not recorded. Those that were recorded would offer some insight as to how things were developing. The following spreadsheet was created in July of 1993.

AutoCAD Modeling and Drafting Benchmark

I used similar metrics as previously, however checking was no longer recorded, I abide by the old principle of measure twice - cut once and after a design was completed with numerous amounts of LIST and DIST commands checking was redundancy upon redundancy. You will also note I grouped modeling in with layout. Mind you it was not true modeling, at the time I was constructing my models as simple 3D wire frames, in fact all my construction was done with just lines, circles and arcs. I had determined that polylines were memory hogs in AutoCAD and they were more difficult and time consuming to work with. Bottom line is a typical job now required only 2.20 hours to complete per manufactured detail and my average time per detail was down to .74 hours.The take away from this is the CAD software vendors were right - CAD is more efficient than manual drafting however I can attribute much of the productivity gains to the methods and customizations that were implemented. Specific dates are not indicated on the charts but I’m certain you can determine the point at which many of the changes took affect.Now it was time to discard the old benchmark and replace it with a more current one, one that reflected strictly AutoCAD work. It is also time to hop back into the TARDIS and make another leap forward. I’m not exactly sure how far ahead we’re going because of those missing dates on my charts. I guess we’ll have to wing it and hope for the best. OK let’s have a look around, yes it seems we are right on target although oddly I don’t see a calendar laying around. I do see another spreadsheet created a number of jobs later.

AutoCAD Benchmark Comparison

As you can see, I’ve continued to make progress on my quest. In the previous installment of DWATCM (Doctor Who and the CAD Manager) I stated “Until you know where you are currently, it will be difficult to establish goals for where you want to be.” I’m going to show you one more spreadsheet. Actually it is a scan of some charts I had made at the time. You see, I had neglected to close the file on my computer when I needed to make a slight time jump. I was not aware that Doctor Who’s nemesis Henry van Statten was nearby. Upon my return the spreadsheet was missing and I was left with only printouts I had made on my dot-matrix. There’s no telling what old Henry has in mind for those charts and he’s probably the guy responsible for the missing calendar too. Well anyway, this is it:

AutoCAD Goal Set

I’ve added some coloration so you can match the charts up but there is a little further explanation to do. First, the vertical bars are representing the trend of the particular metric measured over the accumulated individual jobs - the running average. Secondly, the upper left graph does not reflect the inclusion of commercial items - this was consistent across the AutoCAD data. Finally the lower left chart does separate the model time from the layout time, unlike the previous two charts. For this graph I plotted the static average indicator from actual data however.The red lines overlaid on these charts are averages taken from the AutoCAD benchmark spreadsheet and the AutoCAD comparison spreadsheet. What has remained unspoken until now was that after first establishing the original AutoCAD benchmark the goal I had set for myself was to halve my times. At this point I was very close and that was when I set new benchmarks. The shorter red bars to the right were new goals based on the new benchmarks. You’ll notice they were not as aggressive as the first goal, I felt there was a law of diminishing returns that would enter the picture however I underestimated the continued gains that were possible, relentless pursuit would shatter those marks.Do you hear that? The alarm on the TARDIS is ringing like mad. Doctor Who must be having some type of emergency and desperately needs his vehicle back. Hurry in now, we must return to the present so he may take care of his business. Ah yes, here we are, all back in one piece and it looks as though the TARDIS has retained plenty of power, The Doctor will be pleased.To conclude these little time travels, I hope I’ve given you some insight to arm yourself for your own time travelling. There is much to be gained with a little effort and resources are available that can aid you in that quest. As you begin your travels perhaps our paths will cross and we can share a beer in some corner of the Fitzroy Tavern.

Patrick Hughes is a machine designer in Rockford, Illinois, USA, and owner of Engineered Design Solutions, a provider of machine design contracting services. He has developed numerous AutoLISP and other software solutions to automate his workflow and increase his productivity throughout his years in business. Patrick developed the CadTempo time tracking program to aid his quest for further refinement of his processes, and invites you to investigate how it may help your organization. Find out more by visiting the CadTempo website at www.cadtempo.com. Reprinted with permission from Autodesk User Group International (AUGI), AUGI Hotnews, January 2012

Dr. Who and the CAD Manager Part 1

2011-12-10T12:43:00.000-08:00

December 7th, 2011

For those of you not familiar with Doctor Who, he is a character in the long-running BBC series of the same name. He is a time traveler. Truth be told, I’m not that familiar with the show or the good doctor, but I do my fair share of time traveling, so I feel a certain kinship.

You’re likely thinking, what is this guy talking about and what does any of this have to do with CAD management? Time actually. You’ve heard the cliche "Time is money" and perhaps you agree with that. I’m not a disagreeable person, but I take issue with this particular cliche. You see I believe time is money * n, or money ^ n or perhaps time is money exponentially. All right, you can see I’m not a math whiz. What I'm trying to say is if you were to look at every little micro or nanosecond of non-productive time and multiply that across all people in an organization, pretty soon it adds up to a significant amount of cash.

Well you can't really look at all those non-productive nano or microseconds or, for that matter, full seconds or even minutes, but you sure can examine the accumulation of them. Furthermore, who is to say what is or isn’t productive time? Maybe you don’t even bother. With a competitive global economy nipping at every one’s heels perhaps it is time to bother. Possibly the head honcho has decreed that you have to raise your department’s efficiency. You’re under pressure to meet this or that impossible deadline. Maybe your current design and drafting standards need updating or you are looking at moving up from AutoCAD® LT to AutoCAD®. Perhaps you are examining moving to 3D modeling. Do you stay with AutoCAD or do you make a switch to Autodesk Inventor®, AutoCAD® Civil3D®, or Autodesk® Revit®? Thinking of a move to the cloud? Where do you start?

Don’t.

Before you do anything, or make any changes, assess where you are. I don't mean a mental assessment because you can easily be deceived by your own brain—I do it all the time. Take a hard look at where your current costs are by monitoring the time component of your current drawing or model-creation processes, personnel, methods, and so on. How long does it take to prepare a drawing of a certain type, or prepare a bill of material. Is one designer or drafter faster when working on a blue widget and another quicker working on green gadgets? Until you know where you are currently, it will be difficult to establish goals for where you want to be. For these reasons you’ll want to begin establishing some benchmarks.

If you don’t mind a journey into the past, jump into the TARDIS with me and let’s travel back about 20 or more years. I’ll share some experiences that may give you a hand in getting a grip on your current costs (where your users' time is spent) and how those cost might be brought down. Ready?

Our first stop is 1991. I had recently been successful in landing an independent design and build for a new machine I had proposed to a potential client. Striking out on my own I wanted to become as efficient as I possibly could. My first decision was to select AutoCAD as my drafting platform. The price of AutoCAD was within my means, but most importantly I learned AutoCAD came with the AutoLISP programming language. I had never heard of AutoLISP but I had some previous programming experience and figured it could not be that difficult to learn. I was right.

Now I needed to begin logging my time for work being done and my first inclination was to use AutoCAD's TIME function to study the amount of time I worked on my designs and drafting. I found the command to be woefully inadequate. Not only did I discover the "edit" time was merely an accumulation of the amount of time that a drawing was open, I also discovered that the time was carried over from one drawing to another when performing certain file saves or starting a drawing from other drawings that had previous accumulated time. My conclusion was that’s not going to work well.

I soon worked out an AutoLISP program that allowed me to get a true picture of the time spent on my drawings, both the actual edit time and the total elapsed time. This provided me with the means to establish a rough idea of my efficiency and productivity. Why only rough? There are other factors that enter into design and drafting. For instance, reviewing reference material, whether it be books and catalogs (hey, this was pre-Internet), or consulting with shop personnel about how best to machine something, meetings or phone calls with vendors to discuss a particular component. The list goes on, and all were happening while the drawing was open and adding up those seconds.

I first established some goals, taking into consideration my current standards, methods, prior knowledge of my work output, etc. Wait, let's get back in the TARDIS and dial it back a couple more years, back to when I was employed as a machine designer.

Earlier I mentioned that you need to know where you are to determine where you want to be. A benchmark is needed and before moving to CAD I had manually kept some records of my time when I worked on a drafting board. I would record the number of hours to design and layout a machine, noting the number of manufactured details and commercial components. I then recorded the time spent detailing the components and finally the time to check. Here’s what some of my original recordings looked like. Click on the image to enlarge.

Toward the end of my employment we had begun doing some CAD work and I highlighted those with the hashing. You should be able to see the time was higher on those jobs, a result of the CAD learning curve. Studying my recordings of various projects I determined that total job time for much of the design and detail work came out to approximately five hours average per manufactured component. I was also able to establish an average percentage of the job total to the type of work (design and layout, detailing and checking). Armed with this previously collected data, I was ready to begin my quest for improved productivity and see if the bar could be raised.

I see the batteries of the TARDIS are getting low, and we are about to run out of time. Let’s jump back in and get back to the present. Next month, I’ll have things charged back up and we can take another trip back to the past and I’ll fill you in on how I used my benchmarks. Until then, to infinity...and beyond!

Reprinted with permission from Autodesk User Group International (AUGI), AUGI Hotnews, December 2011

Load Shifting

2009-07-09T13:41:00.000-07:00

You might be wondering about the "Load Shifting" title and what exactly does it have to do with recording your engineering document time. Well, I'll tell you.

I was taking a smoke break this morning (yes, I'm one of those cretins) when a big rig pulled up in the parking lot. The driver turned his rig off and approached me. I struck up a little conversation with him asking why he shut down the engine and mentioned how uncommon it was. During our discussion the thought crossed my mind how he did not fit the trucker stereotype, he was young, well dressed, well groomed, and well spoken, and his rig was spotless.

A while later (another smoke break) the shop foreman joined me and commented about how much of a pain in the *ss the driver was. Every skid he loaded the driver would tell him "no, a little to the left" or ""no, that's not lined up quite right" or "that's not spaced right". You get the picture, pretty anal right?

Later, I realized what this driver was doing. Not only was he balancing his load, he was benchmarking. By knowing exactly how these skids were placed on his truck before his trek, when he arrived at his destination he was able to inspect his load and examine the load shifting that may have occurred. With the knowledge he would gain from this examination he could easily determine his performance among other things:

Was his load strapped properly? Check.
Did he take that curve at a reasonable speed? Check.
Where his straps sufficient for the job? Check.
If the load was damaged, could the cause be determined. Check.

OK, so here's how this applies to engineering documents and time keeping.

As a CAD manager, project manager or engineer, staff supervisor (the truck driver) your duties may encompass similar functions:

Assign the CAD personnel to task (balance the load)
Understand your staff's capabilities (have a benchmark)
Maintain standards compliance (keep the truck spotless)
Monitor the project status (inspect and examine the load)

CadTempo can be helpful to you in these situations by providing the means to determine your staff's strengths and weaknesses and assigning members to perform at what they do best.

Welcome to the CadTempo Blog

2009-06-15T14:29:00.000-07:00

Hello and thanks for coming by for a visit.

I hope I can keep this interesting for you as I touch on a subject that I find is not often discussed or covered in my web travels, time - relating to the creation of drawings and engineering documents. I've developed a time logging solution called CadTempo http://www.cadtempo.com to assist in recording the amount of time I spend in performing my job.

Time is frequently referred to as the "fourth dimension" and this concept is certainly valid. In this sense of course the reference pertains to the movement of a three dimesional object as it travels through space. This blog, however, will focus on time as a measurement of work production by users of CAD software such as AutoCAD, Inventor, Revit and other popular 2d and 3d drafting products. I believe this is an important subject, as "time is money" and to understand where your money is being spent you need to know where your time is being spent.

My interest in this subject is framed by my need as a small business owner to have a firm understanding of the cost associated with the job functions performed in my daily activities. I started my business, Engineered Design Solutions http://www.engds.com , in 1991 after developing a machine to manufacture drinking straws based on an idea that I had. My previous employer had recently sent me to CAD training and during the evening hours I designed my machine and created the details for its build.

During my employment I had kept detailed records of the time that was required to complete the design projects that were assigned to me. For the most part, this was time that I had monitored while manually drafting with a drafting board and Vemco drafting machine. After a while I came to establish a consistent measurement of work product. This was manually recorded on paper that documented the number of manufactured details that were designed for the project as well as the number of commercial items that were a part of the final design. In addition to recording the number of components that made up the design I segregated the number of hours involved in design and layout, detailing and checking.

After starting my company, armed with this data as a benchmark I was able to compare CAD drafting to my manual methods and determine improvements that I made to my work environment by means of customization of AutoCAD via AutoLISP programs and modifications to the AutoCAD user interface. In future articles I will share the data I had gathered.