Representatives
of the AIA, Construction Specifications Institute, and the National Institute
of Building Sciences have signed an agreement for publication and distribution
of the U.S. National CAD Standard (NCS) that will lead to the release
of Version 3.0 of NCS in early 2004 as well as continued development and
publication of the product. The NCS is a standard for organizing and classifying
computer-aided drawings and other design (CAD) data intended to streamline
communication among designers, building owners, constructors, and facility
managers.
AIA
Chief Operating Officer James Dinegar; CSI Executive Director Karl Borgstrom,
PhD; and NIBS President David Harris, FAIA, signed the agreement. Since
1999, the three organizations have jointly published the NCS, which is
developed through a consensus process open to participants from all sectors
of the building industry. As Dinegar noted, “The NCS enables architects,
engineers, constructors, facility managers, and building owners to eliminate
the time-consuming and unproductive task of developing and maintaining
proprietary standards for organizing their building data and instead focus
on their core mission, which is to create value for their clients.”
Deepening the partnership
This latest agreement broadens and deepens the partnership among the three
organizations and will lead to enhancements for the NCS, including an
electronic edition accessible to users on their computers via single-user,
workgroup, and companywide licenses.
The NCS defines standards for many aspects of electronic building-design
data, including:
• CAD layers
• Organization of drawing sets
• Drawing sheets and schedules
• Drafting conventions
• Terms and abbreviations
• Graphic symbols
• Notations
• Code conventions
• Plotting.
“Through this agreement, the National CAD Standard will continue
to contribute to the industry in a major way, providing a common language
for CAD data in the same way that MasterFormat™
does for specifications,” said CSI’s Borgstrom. “Consistency
in the use and exchange of design and construction information saves time
and reduces the potential for errors and omissions, which are often the
cause of cost overruns, delays, and disputes.”
It’s a consensus
Maintaining a consensus process, participants intend to keep future NCS
versions in pace with evolving technology by defining standards for such
things as object data, graphical display of information, and printed output.
The agreement also authorizes NIBS to license building-industry software
developers to include the content of the NCS within software applications.
As publication of NCS Version 3 moves forward, the NCS Project Committee
is revising its rules of governance to accommodate better the large number
of participants in the consensus process and manage better the development
of the NCS’s large body of knowledge. Approval of the new rules
of governance is expected this fall. “Over the past quarter century,
some of the most significant projects in which NIBS has been involved
have made use of the Institute’s finely tuned consensus process,”
NIBS President Harris said. “None have been more important or have
had greater far-reaching impact than this work on the development of a
National CAD Standard. The devoted efforts of more than 200 volunteers
on 22 separate task teams have produced an American standard that raises
the bar globally.”
Copyright 2003 The American Institute of Architects.
All rights reserved. Home Page
|