All,
Beyond drafting standards, Art's question is an interesting one.
The obvious interpretation of the question is: Can/Should other sheets
have their own revision blocks?
The next interpretation is: Does the revision block have to be shown on
the first sheet or can the drawing revision block be on some other sheet?
Possible interpretation is: If the revision block is too large to fit on
the first sheet, what is there that I can do?
In the good old days when drawing sheets were totally independent pieces
of paper, each sheet could have its own revision history.
But, in those good old days, one wouldn't consider moving views from
sheet to sheet, or just adding views because it took too long, so most
of what went on on drawing changes was either add or replace entire
sheets and/or make some few minor changes to a sheet. Under that
circumstance it was easy enough record those changes.
Ready for a rant?
<rant>
With multi-sheet computer files (CAD drawings, MS-Word, MS-Excel,) it is
a single document. Any change to any page changes the whole document
revision. It's interesting if a word on page 5 revised that page, but
there's no good guarantee that that is all that happened.
Moreover, with PDM systems, filling out the revision blocks becomes
wasteful.
Why?
Consider - the drawing basis file is the Pro/E drawing and associated
items. When a snapshot is created, perhaps a PDF, how is that snapshot
lock-step coordinated with the PDM system? If Rev A is created and
committed to a vault and, in the review process, a typo is found and
fixed creating A.1, what distinguishes a PDF snapshot of A.1 from the
Rev A snapshot? They should both say Rev A. They are, however, different.
I'd just as soon leave revision information to be controlled by a PDM
system, watermarking its outputs with actual revision status, actual
release status, time of output, and requesting user.
As far as history of drawings being recorded on drawings under PDM
systems? Why? If you need to know how a drawing got the way it got,
you'll need to go to the PDM system anyway. Sign-offs? Same thing. If a
drawing is signed by a stress engineer and it undergoes thirty
revisions, is his signature still good? Even on the first revision, it
doesn't record what use the stress engineer analyzed. One has to go back
to the stress reports to see that information. Likewise everyone on the
project - under a PDM system one should have links to all the
information that backs a drawing of a part or an MS Word report or an MS
Excel spreadsheet.
Otherwise you get things like including the number of the record of the
desired change to document and the number of the document attached to
the record of the desired change and the number of the document that
approved the incorporation of the change to the document. Even then, how
does one know those documents were approved? Go back to the PDM system.
How does one know they have the latest version - Go back to the PDM system.
If there is a PDM system, one should be able to keep the meta-data off
the drawings and watermark it on the outputs.
</rant>
Dave S.
