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.”

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