We are currently looking to consolidate / reorganize our network filing structure and I'm curious to know how other firms have their digital files organized.
Currently we have multiple network drives - Cad, Graphics, Admin, and some others. A typical project, using firm standards, would have 2d and 3d modeling files (cad, revit, sketchup, rhino, etc), on the 'cad' drive; presentation work on the 'graphics' drive (all adobe files, basically - PSDs, AI, InDesign, etc, along with research); and more project management type files on the admin drive (emails, project directory, CA files, construction photos, etc).
I wasn't here when this structure was set up, but I'm guessing it was mostly about physical server space. Graphics files used to be the biggest, storage used to be expensive, etc. Now that neither of those things are necessarily true there seems to be no reason not to consolidate.
This scenario seems a little odd - shouldnt you have one single project file for each one that comes in and all relevant documents in there? (Excluding admin/etc.). I think I would get very frustrated having to navigate between two different server drives for a Rhino file and an Illustrator file...
BenC - it is very frustrating. We are already moving to one project file for 'working' design files - drafting/modeling thru graphics and presentation. I think we're just looking at what other additional changes could be made to improve workflow and organization, as this would be the time to do it while we're already shuffling everything.
Dec 5, 14 10:50 am ·
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Firm Network Filing Structure
We are currently looking to consolidate / reorganize our network filing structure and I'm curious to know how other firms have their digital files organized.
Currently we have multiple network drives - Cad, Graphics, Admin, and some others. A typical project, using firm standards, would have 2d and 3d modeling files (cad, revit, sketchup, rhino, etc), on the 'cad' drive; presentation work on the 'graphics' drive (all adobe files, basically - PSDs, AI, InDesign, etc, along with research); and more project management type files on the admin drive (emails, project directory, CA files, construction photos, etc).
I wasn't here when this structure was set up, but I'm guessing it was mostly about physical server space. Graphics files used to be the biggest, storage used to be expensive, etc. Now that neither of those things are necessarily true there seems to be no reason not to consolidate.
What does your network setup look like?
(It's a 300+ person firm, for what it's worth)
Virtual machines are bad idea, we have them and it cost us 3-4 full days of down time firm wide since all of your eggs are on one physical machine.
Organization has to be simple descriptive and able to grow fast
This scenario seems a little odd - shouldnt you have one single project file for each one that comes in and all relevant documents in there? (Excluding admin/etc.). I think I would get very frustrated having to navigate between two different server drives for a Rhino file and an Illustrator file...
BenC - it is very frustrating. We are already moving to one project file for 'working' design files - drafting/modeling thru graphics and presentation. I think we're just looking at what other additional changes could be made to improve workflow and organization, as this would be the time to do it while we're already shuffling everything.
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