Design Center is a good catch all if you are looking for something unusual but apart from that, there are many benefits in terms of efficiency just to stick with the simplicity of a good library of standards organized in an appropriate set of folders to classify what you have. With Design Center, you are not benefiting from the implementation of standards. Here's the rationale on this.
 
What Design Center Enables You to Do

1. Select thumbnail icons of the blocks contained in drawings located anywhere on your network and then drag and drop them into your new drawing.
2. Using the DC Online tab, select thumbnail icons of the blocks contained in "online" libraries of drawings offered by manufacturers or other content providers and then drag and drop them into your new drawing.
3. Right click on thumbnail icons of standard blocks organized as individual drawings in a block library from somewhere on your network, or from an online library offered by manufacturers or other content providers.. Then select "Insert as Block".
4. You can make a collection of the above blocks or parts that you want to use repetitively in your drawing by "Creating a Tool Palette" and then organize blocks in various tool palettes by dragging and dropping the blocks between palettes.

Block Managers

There are a good number of 3rd party block management solutions available that allow you to classify symbol and detail drawings under organized folders. Some of these also allow you to define keywords and descriptions that you can search on. Some also display a palette of thumbnail icons of the details contained in each of the folders in the library.

Like Design Center, these solutions still need you to develop a classification system to catalog the blocks so as to be certain that you can find the one you want, and have it inserted in 2 or 3 seconds. You can not be certain you have the right detail by viewing the thumbnail icons. So the fundamental requirement in all these solutions still remains unaddressed. Company standards have to be defined so that your blocks can be identified instantly. You could develop a rather extensive system of standards for search criteria to use with the block managers. But that is not necessary for every day work because you can quickly identify the right standard with just a naming convention for the drawings and the folders that contain them. Thumbnail icons cannot differentiate well between similar details in the same folder. So you still need the naming convention to classify your library, no matter what tools you might use.

Good Cad Management is Required

Use KISS (remember the phrase "Keep it Simple Stupid"?). As the Cad Manager, ask yourself "what is the most fundamental objective here and how do I best respond to it"? Is the objective to be able to quickly display all of the resources you have? Hardly. Is it to find the most closely matching detail you want, and get it quickly? Partly. Is it more simply, to save on design and drawing production time and produce accurate results? Yes!

First, designers are not going to scroll through libraries of thumbnail icons to find the detail they want to specify. They want it on paper at proper scale, to be able to find it quickly, to easily judge if it fits requirements, and then note some revisions on it. So you need a classified hard copy manual, containing the details you maintain as standards. The source of standards maintained in hard copy are organized under a hierarchy of naming from the drawing names to the folders in which they are contained on the computer. The index tabs in the manual, emulate the folders in the computer where the standards are stored. You will determine and add more standards over time as more work is done.

As the standards are used, they become memorized in the heads of the designers and cad techs, not just by the computer. To insert the standards in a new cad drawing, all you need are menu macros for each of your folders that invoke the insert command and automatically define the path to the standard. If you have an intuitive naming convention in natural language, you can enter the remaining part of the drawing name from memory. Handled in this manner, the entire process in identifying the standard detail wanted, and inserting the equivalent block in the drawing is performed in just seconds.

Defining an Intuitive Naming Convention

Develop a strict adherence to naming conventions for symbols and details that use intuitive natural language segments of code in the name, and then organize them in classified folders. All naming has a sequential hierarchy going from the most generic segment to most specific. For example, the most generic might be ROAD then CABA then 1224 as the most specific, meaning its a 12" x 24" catch basin kept in the ROAD directory.

You can use this methodology with a block manager, but menu macros that go straight to the filenames in your classified folders are much faster. What you really want to do is memorize the file names. Instead of looking at the pictures, you are actually choosing the right name for the standard detail you want. The names of the standard ones become memorized very quickly, and CAD operators can even guess them when you have rules governing the code segments that make up the name.

Developing Your Library

Details building up over time can be plotted out within pre-formatted "Detail Library" borders for inserting under your indexed tabs to be used for specification by engineers and designers. With such a classification system it is easy for you to find, and it does not take very long for cad operators to get so used to the file naming that they can memorize the names and insert the desired detail immediately from the classified folders.
To refine your standards, the CAD manager can use a hardcopy printout of a new detail as a mark up, and then revise the most standard ones in each category to become generic standards that can be modified quickly to suit individual designs.

Saving on production time takes in-depth planning and design beforehand by a CAD Manager. Then you get the results you want and the benefits can be realized by everyone in the office for ever forward. Besides, its nice to have a hard copy manual conveniently available at a meeting. Its also a visible and tangible company asset.

About the Author

Barrie Mathews is president of  Softco Engineering Systems Inc., This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it