The AEC Workflow - Adobe Acrobat and PDF for Architecture, Engineering, and Construction - page 12

future unnecessary expenditures of time, money, and manpower. Drilling through an electric conduit or
cutting a water pipe are common mishaps that may be attributed to lost, missing, or out-of-date drawings
and manuals.
Using PDF in the Bidding Process
The earlier part of this chapter identified the mountains of paper generated and moved about on a design
and construction project. In this part of the chapter you see how an equivalent process can be managed
digitally.
Electronic bidsets have seen some success in recent years. The US Army Corps of Engineers
Engineering Research and Development Center runs an electronic plans and specifications service for the
Corps and other agencies. The Corps has used PDF for the specifications for some time, but use CALS for
the drawings. The Corps have been experimenting with PDF drawings and may eventually go to an
exclusively PDF-based system.
Electronic Specifications
Specifications are composed of a series of word processing, spreadsheets, and scheduling files. The design
firm develops a set of the various sections and divisions for projects. Each section or division is an
individual file; the appropriate section and division files are collected and modifed for a specific project. A
typical project often contains 50 - 100 word processing files. In addition, specifications usually have at
least one spreadsheet and/or a schedule, and may also include scanned maps.
Both Acrobat 6 and 7 have the ability to combine all the electronic formats into one file in one step
using the Create PDF from Multiple Files command. The files are selected and ordered, and then converted
to PDF and combined into a single file.
About the CALS Format
CALS is a proprietary raster format similar to TIFF. Like other raster formats, enlarging a CALS drawing
results in pixelation. As they are in a raster format, CALS drawings do not contain fonts, and consequently
lack the ability to be searched. On the other hand, PDF is a vector format like CAD drawings, which can
be zoomed without any distortion of the drawings, as vector drawings are based on equations.
Bid Sheets
Word and Excel have both been used to make electronic forms, although neither program was intended for
forms development. Form users had to have access to the same programs to complete the forms. Word
forms change appearance as they are filled out; Excel forms, although they are visually more stable, may
also have problems in their use.
PDF forms are becoming the industry standard. Since the free Adobe Reader is one of the most widely
distributed programs in the world, the problem of the user not having access to the proper program for
completing the form is eliminated. Acrobat 7 has added the ability for the form to be e-mailed back to the
originator automatically by clicking a button on the form that is preconfigured to send the FDF (form data
format) file containing the form data back to the originator. The person completing the form cannot
electronically save the completed form with Adobe Reader, although the form can be printed.