Electronic Revision Control for Electrical Schematics in Automation Companies

Hi,

I work for an automation company and we are currently trying to implement a revision control process for our electrcial schematics and i am curiuos as to how others have implemented it in their workplace. 

The drawing books we provide to the workshop floor could be anywhere from 5 pages to 100 pages and occasionally we may have to make changes to these during the build stage. 

normally we would make the changes on paper and update our full set od drawings at the end of the build.

our quality team feel that for proper revision control a new set of drawings should be issued each time a change is made.

where i can see where they are coming from it may turn into a huge waste of paper printing off drawing books multiple times.

How does it work in other compaines??

does anyone know of any electronic means we could use to allow electricans to wire from and mark drawings for updating??

Thanks in advance.

There are several version control packages that were originally intended for software development, but are jjust as easily applied to any document in electronic format. I have looked into some, but in the end I gave up because of or lack of an in-house network supervisor. This could have evolved since then, or I am misunderstanding the packages, so you should look into this. Most are free. SVN appears to be the basis of some of the packages (aka Subversion) and TortoiseSVN is a Windows shell that makes the user interface more friendly.

Wikipedia seems to have a succinct description and other player in the field
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Version_control

We have created our own system which is a pain since it is manually maintained.

Big companies have whole departments for Configuration Management, and version control is only part of the process. Especially important (which you touch on in your last question) is change control or the ECN process. In most cases anybody can request a change, which includes a description and/or marked up drawings, But only certain personnel can approve the change and then assign the appropriate personnel to make the change and update the revision logs.

Creating "drawing books" on paper depends on corporate philosophy and the access your electricians have to the electronic files- you could provide them all with tablets, for instance.

This is a very wide ranging topic and there is much in the way of philosophy as to how revision control is applied. I discuss my perspective in a blog "Philosophy and Documentation"
http://www.embedded.com/electronics-blogs/wit...a-paddle/4442910/Philosophy-and-documentation

You are right in that it will be much better to copy and existing solution than to invent your own- try to find someone with the right experience. But it must be said, and system is better than none.