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Al Whitley/5 min read

Effective File Storage and Organization Methodology for Architectural Projects

File Organization Best Practices

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This tutorial walks through effective file storage and organization methodology for architectural projects, covering essential tools and techniques for your projects.

I'd like to spend a few minutes talking about file storage, file saving, and file organization. What we have done in all of our courses so far is that we have put all of our drawings in the same folder for each class. In the real-world, in the production environment, we normally don't keep everything in one folder.

Rather, there's a methodology in how we organize saving our files. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to be talking about a folder called VDCI. And by this, I mean this would be the project folder.

Typically in the office, every project that comes in has its own folder. It is typically a numbered project. If, for example, you're working in the year 2015, and if it's the fifth project of the year, the project number would be 15005.

But again, what I'm doing is I'm keeping the project name four digits, and I'm using the characters VDCI to represent the project number. Now, I'm going to have a folder for original files, my construction documents, my external references, project-specific details, project-specific blocks, submissions that I've made, archive folders. I would also have folders for my corporate details and corporate blocks.

These are usually approved by the Senior Staff in an office as being details or blocks that they want us to use for all projects generated in the office. So let's start looking at some things. When you begin a project, you're usually given some original data.

So I would have a folder called VDCI, my project number, dash, ORIG, for original. And you can see that I have folders under that called Original-170101 and Original-170131, meaning that this is my folder that's for original files that I received from someone else, and the date on which I received them was calendar year 2017 on the first of January. Whenever anyone sends you a file, don't modify it.

Take the file, put it in the original folder, and then if you need to take that data and continue working off of that, make a copy of it and then rename that copied file to your standard office file naming systems. VDCI-CDs, these are the construction documents. This is where our sheet files would be.

So you can see I have my sheet file for A201, A202, and A203 located within my construction documents folder. I have another folder for my external references. This is where I would have my model files, my floor plan model, my building section model, my building elevation model.

I also have my VDCI-Details folder. These would be construction details that are being used in your project, and typically what happens is that after a project has been wrapped up, a Senior Staff member would evaluate these VDCI details and see if any of them should be saved in the corporate details folder. So again, these are the project-specific details.

We also have the project-specific blocks. If, for example, you're working on a residential project and you've decided that you want to use a particular kind of Jacuzzi tub, you would save the blocks for this project in that folder. And again, when the project is finished, someone on Senior Staff would review the blocks and see if any of those are recommended to go into the company library.

Then we have the VDCI-Submit folders. These are typically PDFs and/or e-transmits. So I have a folder called VDCI-Submit.

Under that is a folder called VDCI-Submit-170101, meaning this was the date that we submitted the contents of this folder. Then I would have a separate folder for my PDFs and a separate folder for my e-transmits. So these are the actual ZIP files.

Then what I have is my VDCI-Archive. Projects go through different phases. You have schematic design, design development, construction documents, and then the as-builts.

And so people will frequently have a time when they say, okay, let's archive everything. So what we would be doing would be to copy the contents of our standard folders into a folder that's under the archive folder. So I would have copies of my XREFs, my CDs, details, and blocks.

And so you can see that I have different submission dates. I have the 1st of January. I have another submission date for archiving on the 31st of January.

So, again, we typically will archive projects at certain points along the way. Sometimes people will include the name SD for schematic design, DD for design development, CD for construction documents, and AB for as-builts in their archiving folders. And then we also have our corporate details and our corporate blocks.

So, again, this is the manner in which most offices will archive and store their project files. It makes it easier for people to work on a project if they know, for example, that all of the construction documents are in the construction documents folder, external references or model files in the XREF folders, and so on and so forth. So here's what's going to happen.

In a few minutes, we're going to start our next project. And when we start our project, we will be saving all of our drawings in folders that are representative of this. So let's continue on.