AEC Tech News #138
16 Feb, 2005 By: Michael DakanNCS v3.1: No, Not Many Care
A preliminary look at the flurry of feedbackabout the National CAD Standard
In the last issue of AEC Tech News, I wrote about the National CAD Standard and its recently released v3.1. At the end of the
article, I asked, "Does anybody care?" and requested feedback from readers about whether they
are using NCS and how much.
I want to thank those who took the time to respond — many with lengthy, thoughtful insights
about their use, or nonuse, of the standard. I don't intend to provide mathematical analysis
of the feedback I received; although it was more input than I expected, the 60 replies
constitute a very small statistical sample, from which I cannot really draw any meaningful
conclusions. Rather than numbers and percentages, this analysis will be more of a raw
impression of what I read.
Reasons Against Adopting NCS
One percentage, however, did stand out glaringly: More than 70% of the respondents said
they don't use the NCS in their offices at all, and know of few others who do. I
expected a sizable percentage of readers would answer this way, but I didn't anticipate a percentage
anywhere near this high. The reasons stated for not using it are what you might
expect: the cost of purchasing it, lack of upper-management support for its use and the usual
litany of problems that CAD managers encounter when attempting to get coworkers and outside
consultants to change the way they do things in order to comply with standards.
The most frequently cited reason against adoption is the high cost, which, as I reported
last time, is $350 per copy. Many respondents feel the standard needs to be released into the
public domain and made freely available and electronically usable before it can gain widespread
use. Ideally, some say, NCS needs to be automatically, fully integrated into the CAD
software they use so it requires minimal effort to implement.
Other obstacles cited were the lack of marketing and the impression that even the
professional organizations involved in writing the standards had stopped promoting it. A
couple of respondents said they had never heard of NCS, despite being involved with
professional groups and discussion forums.
Small Percentage of Partial Users
The next-largest group of respondents, about 17%, were those who said they
use a small portion of the standard. Of those, more than half said they use
the Layer Guidelines portion of the standard, which was developed by the
American Institute of Architects, and little else. Some of those who are
using the AIA Layer Guidelines said they don't get them from NCS, but from
one version or another of the AIA pamphlet.
Tiny Portion of Full Users
Only four respondents said they are trying to use NCS
entirely and are slowly implementing the whole thing. Not surprisingly,
these people are generally from larger national and multinational firms that have the most to gain from adopting a widespread
industry standard, and the most to lose from the chaos that otherwise can exist. This has
certainly been my experience as well: Most of the larger firms are paying attention to and
using the NCS to one degree or another, while smaller firms see it as too costly to
implement, with questionable direct payoff.
One thing mentioned by several respondents was they felt the National CAD Standard is based
on old technology — that NCS is outmoded and doesn't address much that is applicable to newer
thinking about building information modeling, industry foundation classes and so forth. This
is true to a large extent, and for some firms the notion of CAD standards takes on less
importance when they use newer technologies that place less emphasis on CAD graphics
issues such as layer names and properties.
But many people who are working with CAD, if not most, still wrestle daily with very
real and immediate CAD graphics issues. Layers may be losing some importance as a fundamental
part of newer 3D technologies, but these technologies haven't yet gained sufficiently
widespread adoption to cause the old CAD issues to disappear any time soon.
I was initially surprised, even shocked, by some of the results of my informal request for
NCS feedback. But on further reflection, I realized I shouldn't have been. The basic problems
are — as they always have been — fundamental people issues. Technology doesn't change the
way people think and respond to daily challenges nearly as fast as the changing technology
allows. As much as we who are involved with technology may wish for and welcome change,
people are still people and are often less enthused about all the technology changes
affecting their lives.
Link
U.S. National CAD Standard: http://www.nationalcadstandard.org