I organize according to the project. I include copies of all part specs, BOM's printed out into 11"x7" sheets and added to a three-ring binder. That binder becomes the "gospel" for that project, and several sets are issued- one set for me, one set for purchasing, and one set for production.. An exception is that I keep schematics as PDF's so they can be easily made into plastic "menus" for the technicians. These plastic-coated schematics last a long time and don't get lost. Technicians also write on the back as notes to themselves. The schematics are printed out onto high-gloss white sheets, then are made into menus at "Kinko's" (a graphics store popular all across the US). --Bob Axtell Gerhard Fiedler wrote: > Alexandre Guimaraes wrote: > > >> I have a huge amount of paper with application notes, printouts from list >> messages, data sheets, interesting projects, etc, etc... >> >> I think most of the professionals on the list professionals on the list >> also have. How do you organize the mess ?? I tried so many ways over the >> years that it is hard to describe all. I have the opportunity to hire a >> person to organize the papers or make it all digital by scanning what is >> not in electronic format and grabbing the PDF's when it is still >> available. Is there any nice way to do this ? How to "decide" wich >> "categories" to have ? Any software to do searchs after it is all in ? >> > > I don't think hierarchical categories make a lot of sense. What works very > well for me is assigning arbitrary keywords and have a list of the content > that filters down as I type the keywords. I don't have this for documents, > but I have it for bookmarks . For me, > that's the way everything on my system should be available. But I don't > know any product that works this way on the file system, even though it > shouldn't be too difficult. > > Plus, of course, a traditional search through indexed content. On Windows, > you have at least Google and Microsoft providing reasonable and free > products for that. Of course that won't work with scanned and not OCRed > documents... no suggestions for this part. But both work with text-based > PDFs. > > Gerhard > > -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist