Dear John,

I'll tell you what we do.

This system was set up before long file names, so its a bit terse,
but I hate typing, too.

Every product has a two letter acronym, which is documented in a
master list of products in the root of the engineering outputs drive
(mapped drive on server).  So e.g. the Widget might be WI.

Every product has a folder named the two letter acronym.  So for the
Widgit, there is a folder D:\WI\

In that folder is a less-well defined set of folders by type of file,
like DWG for the drawings, FIRMWARE for code, DOCS for manufacturing
docs, PCB for board files, etc, etc.

Drawing naming convention is:

AAPPPPNR.ext

the extension is set by the application, of course, DWG, DOC, BRD,
SCH, .C, whatever.

AA is the two-letter acronym.
PPPP is the four digit part number of the part described.  We use 4-
digit part numbers for everything, even user manuals.  Documents like
application notes, which don't apply to a part, sometimes deviate
form this standard, but there is usually some part to refer to.
N is the page, sheet, or sequence number as needed.
R is a revision LETTER, A is first release.  (All drawings have rev).

This system works very well for organizing and backing up files.  Its
major disadvantage is that it is not mnemonic, the 4-digit numbers
are very descriptive.  Given long file names, I would have made the
product name field longer and added a "title" field.  Today a drawing
might be at D:\WI\DWG\WI76541C.DWG , and if I had to do over we might
have something like d:\wi\dwg\wi-faceplate-7651-p1-revC.DWG

FWIW, we are ISO9001 (old rev- 1997?) compliant with our system.

------------
Barry King
NRG Systems "Measuring the Wind's Energy"
http://www.nrgsystems.com
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