We have a standard list of material abbreviations that our office puts in the drawing set every time. Question has come up if there is an industry standard list out there in the AE world.
Anyone away of a list/database?
Personally, I say in this world of computers - write out the word, but I don’t win that argument very often. Especially in the young world of tweets and text messaging.
Abbreviations can be useful for things like finish schedules but I agree with Russ - write it out unless the word or phrase is particularly long. Perhaps that practice will also help people with their spelling. If we are to use abv.(or is it “abvr.”?) there should be standards, at least within a firm.
“Question has come up if there is an industry standard list out there in the AE world.”
Yes, it’s called the National CAD Standard, which includes the Uniform Drawing System developed by CSI. Module 5 addresses terminology and abbreviations.
Dream on!
A firm I worked for some years ago had a “boilerplate” drawing that listed abbreviations - that nobody paid much attention to.
One of my favorites was two definitions for “DF”. It was first defined as Douglas Fir and then as Drinking Foundation. I thought that was a club I should join. It must have been issued on hundreds of projects.
I often find that the abbreviations list has no relevance to the project. We specialize in healthcare and lab designs which can include hefty and mysterious abbreviations. None of these will be on the abbreviations list, but a dozen related to wood frame construction will be. I often am asked to provide QA (quality assurance, not on the list) reviews and I love it when the project manager freaks because I actually redmarked their abbreviation list.