1.  Move the drawing to 5000, 5000 and rotate so the road runs West-East.
Did you know a kitten dies every time a buildings lower left corner is placed at 5000,5000?

2. Lines overlapping text.
Drafting 101: If you didn’t take the class – buy the book.

3. Dimensions that look completely different on the same sheet.
C’mon Man! An engineering drawing is not the place to exercise your artistic expression.

4. Sending me the file without the reference attachments.
Thanks for sending me the file with 3 pieces of text and a revision cloud.

5. Hand me a redline file with no file name, date, or project number.
That’s okay, I had nothing better to do today than spend 3 hours to find your file so I can make a 5 minute edit.

6. Misspelled words.  MicroStation has Spell Checker, use it!
Deer user, weather u can spell or knot, spell checker won’t waist ours of yore thyme.

7. If you are done with those construction lines DELETE THEM!
Trying to figure out what lines are good and which ones are bogus is practically a hobby of mine.

8. Objects drawn on the wrong level or worse yet multiple levels for the same objects. ie “Contours” “Major Contours” “5ft Contours” “Index Contours”
Don’t, just don’t… A design file is not the place for a high-tech version of “Where’s Waldo”

9. DO NOT Drop a Dimension. There is a support group 1-800-DIM-DROP
I don’t trust elements that update automatically.

10. Do not plot it if the scale should be 1″=20′ and it shows in the dialog 1″=19.73″. Save a tree and fix your plotting shape.
Sheldon Cooper may think 73 is the best number, but not when comes at the expense of the accuracy of your plot.

11. Not using dgnlibs for standard levels, text styles, dimension styles, etc.
This ain’t AutoCAD. DGNLIBS are the easiest way to deploy your standards to the users so they have the most current set of standards.

12. Co-mingling your company standard files with the default MicroStation files.
Did you know Bentley’s default seed file is in meters?  Now your project is as well.

13. Clinging to your Level 1 – 63 standard.
The 90’s called, they would like their level numbers back.

14. Not learning AccuDraw.
AccuDraw has only been around since 1992, I think it is here to stay.

What are you pet peeves?  How does your company try to alleviate these problems?

Some of the above pet peeves can be addressed by user training and standards development.  I recommend having management buying lunch and have everyone get together and go through some of the pet peeves you may have in your office.  Get it ironed out so everyone is on the same page.  As a designer you should be able to go into someone elses file and it should look like your own.  If it doesn’t, look into a Managed CAD Environment to make sure your standards are being deployed and the user can easily access them.

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