Two records of the same drawings
The register is a spreadsheet and the drawings sit in a folder, so every new revision has to be entered twice. In a busy week the sheet slips behind the folder, and nobody notices until site asks.
Drawing register
Drawing register software that follows every revision
A drawing register is only useful while it keeps pace with the drawings. Fidrel builds the register from what the design team puts into the project: every drawing under its discipline and in number order, showing which revision is current and keeping each earlier one, marked superseded, for when you need the history.
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Why drawing registers fall behind
Revisions nobody can trust
Consultants number revisions in their own way, and files get renamed on the way in. The register says P03 while the folder holds C01, and the site team cannot tell which one is current.
Drawings buried among everything else
Specifications, reports and photographs share folders with the drawings, so a list taken straight from the folders is longer than the drawing set and harder to check.
One register, taken from the project’s drawings
Open Documents and choose the Drawings tab. Each row gives the drawing number and title, then the revision, status, date of the revision, scale and sheet size, under a heading for its discipline, and numbers sort the way people read them, so A-2 comes before A-10. By default every DWG and DXF file is treated as a drawing, and so is any PDF stored in a drawings folder; a PDF anywhere else, a specification for instance, stays out unless someone marks it. The discipline is the one set on the document, or else the folder directly under the drawings folder.
Documents, drawings & models
Revisions numbered the UK way
A UK project numbers revisions P01, P02, P03 by default, and a project administrator can switch to letters or plain numbers instead. When a consultant writes their own revision, such as C01, Fidrel keeps it exactly as written, and the next upload left blank counts on to C02. By default each drawing appears once, at its current revision; choose All revisions and the earlier ones appear beneath it, each marked Superseded and dated by its upload.
How the register fills itself
Step 1
Upload the drawings
Put the drawings into the project’s folders as DWG, DXF or PDF files. Fidrel reads each file name for a drawing number, a title and a revision, and when that number is already in the project, the file is added as the next revision of the existing drawing.
Step 2
Fill in what the name cannot tell
Correct a number, title or revision in the upload dialog and choose the discipline. Later, type the scale as it is written on the sheet, and mark any other file as a drawing, or take one out, under Properties.
Step 3
Filter, export and PDF
Choose between current revisions and the full history, narrow the list to one discipline if you need to, then download it as an Excel workbook, or produce a PDF with Fidrel’s document head.
Status, and who may set it
Every revision carries one of the UK statuses: Work in progress, Shared, For review and comment, Reviewed, Accepted, Rejected, Published for construction, As-constructed record or Archived. Only administrators and document controllers can set Accepted, Published for construction and As-constructed record, and the database turns away anyone else who tries. Each change goes into the status history with the date, the person and an optional comment.
Comparing revisions and handing over the set
Lay one revision of a drawing over another, for PDFs and images, and Fidrel colours what exists only in the older one and only in the newer one; or put the two side by side. When the whole set has to go to someone, the Export centre downloads the current version of every file as a ZIP in its folders and can add a CSV list giving folder, file, title, number, revision, status and size.
What the drawing register does not do
Drawing numbers, titles and revisions are taken from file names rather than read off the title block, and someone types the scale in. A file named to a full project naming convention, such as HR-ARC-ZZ-01-DR-A-1001_P01, is not split into parts on upload: the whole name becomes the number and no revision is read, so correct both before uploading. Each revision is dated by the day it was uploaded, not by the date printed on the drawing. The Sheet column recognises ISO A0 to A4 sizes from the first page of a PDF only; DWG files and other sizes show a dash. The overlay works on PDFs and images but not on DWG files. The register does not group drawings into issue sets or show when and to whom each revision was issued; that record sits with the transmittals.
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Drawing register
Frequently asked questions
Anything else on your mind? We are happy to help.
Talk to usNo. Fidrel assembles it from the drawings in the project’s folders. You check the drawing number, title and revision that Fidrel took from the file name of each drawing, and add the scale where you want it to appear.
If the number on an incoming file matches a drawing already in the project, the file is added to that drawing as its next revision, and a byte-for-byte copy of the current file is skipped by default. Earlier revisions stay available, marked superseded.
Yes. Each row of the workbook has the drawing’s discipline, number and title, its revision and status, the revision date, the scale and the sheet, for whatever is on screen: current revisions or the full history, a single discipline or all of them.
Yes. P01, P02 and P03 are the default in a UK project, a revision someone writes, such as C01, is kept as written, and the next one left blank counts on from it.
Only project administrators and document controllers can set Accepted, Published for construction or As-constructed record. Other members with edit rights can set the remaining statuses, and every change is kept in the status history.
No. The register relies on file names for numbers, titles and revisions, and on what you type for the scale, so a consistent naming habit keeps it accurate without anyone retyping it.