CAD file organization and management is one of the difficulties with CAD files. This fact holds true whether you’re taking part in a large-scale CAD project or small-scale CAD project, working for a company, or just a CAD hobbyist. Moving from conceptual design to detailed design – and making revisions along the way – can generate dozens of files, which are hard to track without a system. The number is even higher if you’re a cog in the large wheel that is a large CAD project.
Poor CAD file management can result in lost, overwritten, or deleted files, and even unauthorized access. And when working collaboratively in teams, poor management can lead to files being re-duplicated and the wrong CAD files being modified. To prevent these issues and simplify file management, this article covers ten best practices for organizing CAD files. We also discuss the two strategies you can use to maintain long-term CAD file management. Let’s get into it.
Table of Contents
Understanding CAD File Organization and Management
What is CAD File Organization and Management?
CAD file organization and management refers to the systematic process of storing files in a way that makes it easy to search, identify, access, and retrieve them. It structures files and folders logically, making it easier for designers, clients, and engineers to locate what they need. It also makes adding, deleting, and updating particular files easy. CAD file organization also prevents unauthorized persons from inserting duplicate files.
Benefits of CAD File Organization and Management
You’re likely to experience a number of benefits if you implement the various best practices for CAD file management and organization outlined later in this article. These benefits include:
- CAD file management saves time by making it easy to find and retrieve saved files
- It facilitates collaboration by ensuring everyone uses a standardized way of naming and saving files
- CAD file organization prevents unauthorized persons from accessing files, promoting CAD file security
- Securely saving and backing up CAD files in cloud-based storage solutions like cloud-based digital asset management (DAM) systems and cloud-storage services prevents data loss
- Effective CAD file management promotes accessibility, enabling teams and professionals to easily and quickly find CAD files
Challenges of CAD File Management and Organization
CAD file management isn’t always smooth, with many teams often struggling to develop strategies for managing CAD files and documents. Their struggles arise from any of these challenges:
- Lack of clearly outlined information about CAD file management and organization: The intended objectives and specifics of the processes of managing and organizing CAD files may not always be clear to everyone in your organization. This can lead to confusion as everyone attempts to implement their own systems.
- Conflicting CAD file organization practices in large-scale collaborative projects: Large-scale projects can bring together teams from different companies with their own CAD file management practices. This can be an issue if the various teams don’t start by defining the systems they’ll all use.
- Version control issues: A system for version control may not be clearly outlined from the onset. This can lead to an outpouring of numerous files, creating confusion and making it harder to distinguish files. This issue becomes even more problematic if an organization hasn’t adopted a naming convention.
- Data security and privacy challenges: Insecurely storing data or having non-existent or weak access control mechanisms can lead to data breaches, contrary to the provisions of regulations and laws such as the GDPR and CCPA.
- Inaccessible files: A study showed that 58% of employees consider the inability to quickly find files and documents they need a top 3 workplace challenge. This inaccessibility can be due to poor CAD file management practices.
Best Practices for CAD File Management and Organization
Here are the ten best practices for CAD file organization and management to help you and your organization deal with these challenges and enjoy the benefits highlighted above:
1. Store CAD Files in a Central Storage
Central storage can be a shared folder accessible to all authorized team members. It can also be a cloud storage, DAM software, or a container in a server at your company’s premises.
Central storage prevents scattered local files, which can hinder collaboration. Separate storage can make merging changes or resolving conflicts within a file harder. It can also create multiple versions of a drawing, complicating CAD file management and organization. It can also birth confusion.
2. Develop a Folder Structure and Hierarchy
Once you’ve decided where to store your files and folders centrally, it’s now time to decide how to organize them. Typically, files should be organized within a folder for the best results. This folder could be a sub-folder within another folder or sub-folder. This system of using folders and sub-folders to organize and manage files is known as a folder structure. The parent-child relationship between these folders and sub-folders is known as the folder hierarchy.
The perfect file structure and hierarchy should boost productivity and enable collaboration and communication. It creates a system that’s easy to understand and use. This CAD file organization and management practice promotes inclusivity by ensuring everyone’s on the same page.
There are several approaches you could use to organize your folders:
- By project, e.g., All Projects > Project category (say, Architectural Projects) > Project subcategory class 1 (say, Architectural Designs) > Project subcategory class 2 (say, Floor Plans) > Project name > CAD files
- By date, e.g., All Projects > Year (e.g., 2025) > Month (e.g. February) > Day (e.g. 24th) > CAD files
- By name, e.g., All Projects > Project name > Project category (say, Architectural Designs or MEP Designs) > Project subcategory (e.g., Floor Plans) > CAD files
3. Use Consistent File Naming Conventions
Your file naming system should be clear and unambiguous. For instance, you should shun names like ‘drawing_draft1’ and instead use a specific and detailed nomenclature that captures easily identifiable aspects of your project. Such a name should contain information that lets you know, at a glance, what the CAD file contains.
Your file name could, for example, include descriptors like the name of the drawings and that of the project or department. You could also include additional elements/descriptors like the stage at which the file was generated, i.e., conceptual design, detailed design, etc. You could separate these elements using hyphens, underscores, or capitals (camel case).
4. Implement Revision Control and Conventions
Revisions are expected in any CAD project that typically involves the inputs of multiple professionals and the client. This is especially true given the increased prominence and popularity of real-time collaboration tools like cloud-based CAD solutions, BIM systems, and digital twin platforms that enable teams to collaborate.
Without proper management, revisions can become chaotic. To prevent this, adopting revision control and conventions around how to handle revisions is a recommended practice for CAD file organization and management. Revision control refers to the process of tracking the evolution of a CAD file through the various stages of revisions. It relies on conventions that detail how the files should be named. Revision conventions can follow the standard naming conventions detailed earlier.
5. Carry Out Version Control
CAD version control involves tracking and managing the changes made to a CAD file. This process can be implemented manually or using automated solutions. The former approach is cumbersome and inefficient, but it offers you complete autonomy and control over the entire process, not to mention that it is free and, therefore, cost-effective.
Nonetheless, automated CAD version is preferred in our current modern setting. Plenty of solutions offer this capability, including versioning tools integrated into CAD software and external version control systems such as product lifecycle management (PLM) and product data management (PDM) software.
Version control helps design professionals organize their CAD files better. For instance, a company can come up with a versioning system that is then widely adopted throughout the organization. Such a system can encompass the use of version numbers to delineate the different versions of a CAD file. CAD version control goes hand in hand with a consistent file naming convention and systematic revision control.
6. Implement Access Control
The adage “too many cooks spoil the broth” appositely applies to CAD files. It’s easy to lose track of files if everyone can create, modify, delete, or archive them. This makes implementing access control a crucial aspect of CAD file management. Besides aiding in CAD file organization, access control boosts data protection.
You could implement access control in many ways:
- Set passwords to files and folders
- Assign permissions and roles
- Block downloads and deletions of files
7. Delete and Archive Old CAD Files and Folders
Sometimes, starting on a clean slate is the best option. It saves you a lot of time; time you’d have otherwise spent completing an elaborate CAD file organization and CAD file management exercise on files you’d end up not using. To start on a clean slate, you simply have to delete or archive old CAD files and folders from previous CAD projects.
These can be BIM (building information modeling) projects that have gone through the entire lifecycle, from design and building to maintenance and demolition, meaning the files may no longer be useful. They can also be files from abandoned projects or those containing conceptual designs that weren’t adopted. The list is endless.
The general rule of thumb is to delete files and CAD drawings you’ll never use or reference again. But if you aren’t sure whether you’ll need them in the future, you could save them in a new ‘archive’ folder. Files saved in this ‘archive’ folder need not be organized per the best practices for CAD file management and CAD file organization. The direct result is time savings.
8. Securely Back Up Your CAD Files
Imagine a scenario where your computer’s storage gets irreparably corrupted leading to complete data loss, yet you hadn’t saved copies of your files elsewhere. In the best-case scenario, you’d have to painstakingly recreate the files, wasting time in the process.
You’d also cost your organization money, especially if the resultant delays result in cancelled orders or penalties. In the event that your computer contained hundreds or thousands of files that you would logically not be able to recreate, the corruption would effectively translate to a complete data loss, i.e., the worst-case scenario.
These scenarios and the consequences that abound point to the need to securely back up your CAD files. It should be noted, however, that the backup should be stored in a separate location from the central storage discussed earlier. You could back up your CAD files in the cloud or a cloud-based DAM tool. You could also use other avenues, provided they’re secure.
9. Create and Manage Metadata for CAD Files
Metadata refers to any information, besides the file name, that provides relevant facts about a document. This information makes it easy to search and organize CAD files. The details captured in the metadata can include:
- Date of creation or the most recent modification
- Names of the designer/drafter and/or the people who may have modified
- Purpose of the CAD file, e.g., bill of materials, structural drawing etc.
The first step towards creating metadata is to have a standard. You could even use the naming conventions discussed earlier. But the bottom line is that there should be consistency.
AutoCAD lets you enter metadata. Simply click the Applications button, then click Drawing Utilities, and select Drawing Properties. Alternatively, you can enter the DWGPROPS command. Next, click the Summary tab on the Drawing Properties dialog box and change metadata such as the author, keywords/tags, subject, and more.
10. Use Product Data Management and Product Lifecycle Management Tools
PDM and PLM software solutions like PTC’s Windchill, Siemens’ Teamcenter, Autodesk Vault, and SolidWorks PDM are proven tools for helping you with CAD file organization. PDM software enables disparate teams to collaborate. A solution that avails product data to teams and professionals drawn from the entire product lifecycle, including partners, suppliers, designers, fabricators, manufacturers, engineers, customers, and clients, is known as a PLM system.
PDM and PLM systems are designed to avail product information in a timely fashion to the right people and in the proper context. They enable companies and teams to source materials as well as create, sell, and maintain products. Put simply, PLM and PDM systems manage product data, which, besides boosting collaboration, is key to CAD file management and CAD file organization.
These solutions have built-in access control mechanisms to ensure only authorized people access the data, guaranteeingCAD file security. They also ship with built-in versioning tools and safeguards that prevent multiple parties from editing a CAD file simultaneously. The latter function ensures everyone works on the most up-to-date version of a drawing.
What’s more, they store data centrally and, in most cases, on the cloud, acting as a single source of truth. (As a result, PLM forms the foundation of the digital thread technology.) Given these functionalities, one fact emerges: using PDM and PLM systems can help you implement several best practices for CAD file management and organization.
Maintaining Long-Term CAD File Organization
Implementing the ten best practices for CAD file management and organization is one thing. But it’s a whole other thing to ensure their effects are felt throughout the lifecycle of a project and even in other projects you decide to undertake. A long-term approach is, therefore, needed.
This section details how you can ensure the benefits of the best practices for CAD file organization are felt in perpetuity. Here’s what you need to do:
1. Perform Regular Audits
Audits help you identify areas within your CAD file management workflows that are falling or have fallen short. You could assess aspects such as your file structure, backup storage, naming conventions, access control practices, and more. Only after identifying a potential point of failure can you decide how to fix it. This is where the second intervention for ensuring long-term CAD file organization comes in.
2. Update CAD File Management Processes
Your CAD file organization processes may fail because they are outdated. They may also fail because they weren’t implemented appropriately from the onset. In this regard, updating the various aspects of the CAD file management process that your audits have deemed poor is a surefire way of ensuring long-term success. You could rely on newly updated international and CAD standards, for instance, to guide any changes you make to your workflows.
Conclusion
CAD file management can take some serious work. But at the same time, the long-term payoff is huge. From time savings when searching for files to regulatory compliance and better data security, there are plenty of benefits associated with good CAD file organization and management. However, that success relies on having a proven system and regularly updating it to align with the market’s changing needs.
This article, therefore, discusses the ten best practices for CAD file organization. These include centrally storing CAD files, having a folder structure and hierarchy, implementing a naming convention, having revision controls, using PLM and PDM systems, creating metadata, deleting or archiving old CAD files, implementing access control, and backing up your data in a secure location. It’s also advisable to perform regular audits and update CAD file management processes to ensure long-term success.
