File Naming Convention and Folder Pathing - Engineering

[Bearblastbeats]

Fellow engineers. How do you or your companies name their projects and path their folders.

I am spearheading the effort for my company to find a new structure for our system.

I want to mimic the AIA or NCS as much as possible so when our disciplines are part of a drawing package, it coincides with the set.

Below are my efforts thus far.


Company Disciplines Abbreviations:

AGV - Automated Guided Vehicles
ASRS - Automated Storage and Retrieval Warehouse Systems
CS – Conveyor Systems
HC - Horizontal Carousels
IR – Industrial Robots
MBS – Modular Building Systems
MSS – Mobile Storage Systems
PM – Pick Modules
PR – Pallet Racking
PTL – Pick to Lights
SH – Shelving
VC – Vertical Carousels
VLM – Vertical Lift Modules
WMS – Warehouse Management Software



Drawing File Naming Convention Examples:

YYYYXXXX_Customer_Discipline/Sheet category code_DWG#

Ex: 20170001 - LLBean - SH - FP01.00   or   20170001 - LLBean - SH101.00 (.01 = sub-project option if additions are made to project in the future)



File Pathing Convention:

S:\drive
    |----Engineering
        |System Projects
            |----Customer A
                |----17001 - Customer Name - Discipline
                    |----01 Quotes
                        |----01-Accounting
                            |----Adjustments
                            |----Change Orders
                            |----Invoices
                            |----JT-1

                        |----02-Corresonpence
                            |----Email IN
                            |----Email Out
                            |----Proposals
                            |----RFQ
           
                       |----03-ConDocs
                            |----Company Created
                                |----CAD Drawing Set
                                |----Issued Drawings
                                    |---- YYMMDD Set Name
                                |----Presentation
                                    |----PDF
                                    |----Render

                           |----Client/Consultant
                           |----Vendor

                       |----04-Pricing
                           |----ISP Reports
                           |----Vendor Quotes

                       |----05-Project Management
                           |----Engineering Notes
                           |----JobSite Photos
                           |----Schedule
 
                    |----02 Projects (We copy everything into this folder once we receive a PO)
                        |----01-Accounting
                            |----Adjustments
                            |----Change Orders
                            |----Invoices
                            |----JT-1

                        |----02-Corresonpence
                            |----Email IN
                            |----Email Out
                            |----Proposals
                            |----RFQ
           
                       |----03-ConDocs
                            |----Company Created
                                |----CAD Drawing Set
                                |----Issued Drawings
                                    |---- YYMMDD Set Name
                                |----Presentation
                                    |----PDF
                                    |----Render

                           |----Client/Consultant
                           |----Vendor

                       |----04-Pricing
                           |----ISP Reports
                           |----Vendor Quotes

                       |----05-Project Management
                           |----Engineering Notes
                           |----JobSite Photos
                           |----Schedule


                |----17002 - Customer Name - Discipline

            |----Customer B
                |----17001 - Customer Name - Discipline



The only thing wrong with this is numbering the drawings. Can’t have 17001 for all customers, adding a customer ID# may help differentiate.

i.e. LL Bean account # is 67000. So we use 1767000NN. NN = arbitrary number sequence.. 01, 02, 03…

What are your thoughts? Is there a way to make this more streamlined?

[Lulee]

I applaud you for your efforts as I’ve seen the value in standardized file structure for my team of software automation testers (we essentially wrote software to test the various websites for our company).  It will save you so many headaches and make things so much more efficient.  Not sure our experiences correspond closely but they may save you some time and pain.

For test results, we named the folders starting with the date in a YYYY_MM_DD, allowing us to easily find them later as they were then sorted chronologically.  We used the underscores to enhance readability.

Our file servers were all Microsoft and so we avoided punctuation, especially periods, in the folder and filenames.  While using them might work for a short time, it caused oddball behavior which drove us buggy every time someone did it.

We also had occasional problems with the length of filenames.  Perhaps it was because we were running Windows Server 2003 and 2007 way beyond their use-by dates.

You mention copying files into a “02 Projects” structure after getting a PO.  We always had issues if people moved items around as it caused confusion along the “where did it go?” lines and sometimes broke internal links that meant we couldn't open the moved files with our specialized testing tool.  Moving sometimes hosed user rights on the server which might not be applicable to your situation but which we used to allow anyone to read our files but only us to edit them.  Copying had its own problems, mostly getting people to update/add to the right set of data.  So we kept things static once a project started until years later when it would be archived.

Not having seen the AIA or NCS recommendations/suggestions and assuming that you’ll do multiple projects per customer or would hope to, perhaps the following structure under the “s:\engineering\system projects” folder would work?  It tries to follow yours.  At the highest level it’s by customer with each customer having only three subfolders: General Correspondence (for non-project specific stuff like intros to new contacts, the client's holiday schedule, etc.), Quotes, and Projects.  That should make it quick to locate any info on any customer’s quote or project.

Hopefully some of this helps.  If nothing else, know that people who've been in a similar boat can truly appreciate how hard you're working to make life better for your team.


000000000 Customer A
     General Correspondence
     Quotes
          100000000 East Doohickey NH warehouse expansion
                shortcut to project folder if converted to project
                Accounting (is there any at a quote stage of activity?)
                Correspondence
                       E-mails
                       RFQ
                 Presentation
                        PDF
                        Renderings
                 Project Management
                         CAD
                         Engineers Notes
                         ISP Reports
                         On-site Photos
                         Vendor Quotes         
          2000000000 Old Town NY new warehouse


     Projects
          100000000 East Doohickey NH warehouse expansion
                shortcut to original quote folder (so no need to copy/move)
                Accounting
                      Adjustments
                      Change Orders
                      JT-1
                      Invoices
                Correspondence
                      Customer
                      Governmental
                      Vendor
                 Project Management
                       CAD
                       Engineering Notes
                       ISP Reports
                       On-site Documentation
                            Maps
                            Photos
                        Schedule
                        Vendor Documentation
         
          200000000 Old Town NY new warehouse
                shortcut to original quote folder (so no need to copy/move)
                Accounting



000000001 Customer B

[Goldielocks]

First, you have a terrifically fun company to work for, I think.  I help with industrial storage solutions, but don't get too many of these a year, and haven't had a chance to play with Pick to Light in over 5 years now.

One folder that we find very handy , is to have a "record" folder at the top level, after the project number.

Into this directory for the project, we copy all issued to client or city permitting, "record" files, such as drawings or final reports, along with a decent descriptive title and date.  It makes looking for project records so simple.


Otherwise, our folder structure is a lot like yours..

Project number
 - Major divisions (Proposal and quotes   / Project / Management for the admin stuff life CO's, invoices, meeting minutes and contracts / Resource are materials provided by the client like their floor plans, or our initial site photes)
    -- Division by Discipline or functional area within our company...
     --- Division by sub project or by phase
       ---- Whatever folders you want to divide it into, at a minimum "drawings" and "Anaylsis" and "correspondence" are common.

Note that Major divisions include the ISO 9000 requirements that we have, so they are easy to find for auditors.  things like safety, quality, management, etc.

Attached is an overview of what it looks like now.   Some offices add the numbers 01_ etc in front.

[Bearblastbeats]

Thank you both for the replies. I like the shortcut idea the most.

Another thing my boss and I came up with after this post was to simply log our projects in a standard excel sheet. This way, whoever has a new project and needs to create a number, they look at the log and then choose the next number.

With our industry things become convoluted quickly. Our engineering team is about 10 people and we have about 200 sales and office staff which we support.

The main goal in this system is to make this so easy that our upper management can look for a customer, see the projects we've done, note the projects that never became one and so on. This especially helps organizing by customer because we will do multiple projects for them, and will have more than one engineer working on a project for the customer.