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Introduce some variation in your schedule

You’ve heard of Google and their 20% time? It’s where every engineer is allowed to spend a fifth of their time on non core projects. So basically something the employee can get extra excited about! And it seems to work for Google. But this idea isn’t new. As far back in the mists of time as I would care to go, maybe 6000 years, the idea of a seventh day was introduced as a day of downing the tools. A time of reflection and recharging the batteries. And most people would accept this principle is a healthy thing to observe.

Down-time means more up-time

What we can learn in a CAD context is that it’s no good doing just fee earning work on and on, day after day. We get bogged down and lose sight of our goals. Our quality and work speed suffers. But also we end up using the same bad working practices because we don’t take the time to change them. Doing something else to break up the day leaves us more focused and even energised to carry on.

You may feel happier and more productive

So should we all have a midday siesta? Maybe so! But I don’t think your boss would react too kindly to hearing you snoring. One of the best things to do is set aside a block of time (straight after lunch is best for me) just to do value added tasks, such as admin, reading technical papers, research and development and streamlining your CAD processes. Not only will you carry out your fee earning work more productively, you will most likely feel happier doing it.

A highly effective way of increasing the productivity of CAD users is to have a training scheme in place. And one of the most effective ways of doing this is to have short “toolbox talks” at regular intervals. The “little and often” approach ensures that a greater amount of information is taken in, and less strain is put upon the trainer or chief CAD user. Try setting up a weekly slot of 10 minutes to demonstrate a few new or lesser used CAD commands. You will soon find that your CAD staff begin to take an active part in suggesting topics, or even presenting toolbox talks themselves.

Learning to set up dynamic blocks in AutoCad takes a couple of hours of trial and error, but the results are worth-it. For example, just assigning rotation parameters to your most used blocks allows you to rotate with a grip edit. This saves repeatedly using the “rotate” command.

If you’re at all into architecture or architectural visualisation, one of the most immediatly productive things you can do is create your own texture and scene archive. Make sure you always carry a small digital camera with you wherever you go, or alternatively a phone with at least a 2 megapixel camera built in. Once you get over looking an idiot taking photos of brick walls and bedding plants you will quickly build up an invaluable resource!