Custom Residential Architects Network

First off some background. I have a custom residential firm and generally provide complete services.  An average set of drawings for, say a 5000 sqft house, might be 80-90 sheets of detailing of every piece of millwork in the residence.

Recently we are being prodded to go beyond the paper drawings and pdfs because many of our more sophisticated contractors use the software in their production.

There are so many issues with this that I could write a book. Copyright on a new residence with simple manipulation seems like the biggest along with reuse of your detailing by simple cut and paste. Further, with renovations, we are forced to produce as-is drawings which are only as good as we can measure.  When these drawings go out without dimensions we are somewhat covered because contractors are forced to scale and redraw shop drawings.  If they have the opportunity and decide to use our computer drawings as a basis for show drawings, disaster seems around the corner.

While EVERYTHING in my heart and soul tells me to stand tall and say no, but I want to be reasonable. Am I missing something. What are your thoughts, again, as they would relate to a massive set of drawings and specifications.

Thank you in advance,

Dave





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David Andreozzi AIA
Andreozzi Architects
Barrington RI
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I strongly feel that it is a very bad idea to distribute Autocad drawings to the GC. Your designs and details could be recycled into other projects or if used for CAM data input the GC may assume an unrealistically high level of precision... all of which are liability problems IMHO.

I would suggest that PDFs are all they should need. They can always import them as a "background" sheet and add additional info for their own bidding or other purposes.

In the Commercial relm, GCs are requesting Revit Files from Architects for similar purposes and most are actually "recreating" the Revit Files for their own purposes (only applicable to very large projects)

Have a nice morning!

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Dan Sloan AIA
Sloan & Sloan, Inc.
Delray Beach FL
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