It seems every time we wake up and log on, something has changed. In our time of rapidly progressing technology, computer movers and shakers and their faithful followers of the Latest and Greatest (admit it: that would be us, friends) keep our relationship to the digital world in a constant state of flux. And while this progress is often exciting, we are frequently left in confusion though our livelihoods depend upon the smooth flow of information.
In the world of AEC/O, every project has the potential to produce thousands upon thousands of pages of hard or electronic copy. What format, from among the ones used to produce these documents, are we wisest to choose as the one that will rise above the others and give the greatest longevity and most universal compatibility to our documents? Microsoft Word’s .doc? Rich text? Plain text? Where is our formatting port in the storm?
It’s a common question for which everyone has a pet answer. Well, we’ve been doing a little research. We tend to agree with *Macworld’s Christopher Breen, who feels that Adobe’s Portable Document Format (.pdf) is most likely to stay relevant in the years to come. His justification: governments use PDFs for an endless number of documents, and since government change tends to move at a snail’s pace, chances are good we won’t be seeing the PDF go anywhere anytime soon. Which we, in the AEC/O should take as good news since the first place winner is plain text (.txt), which doesn’t do much for design documents and drawings.
Choosing to convert most of their documents to PDF wasn’t an arbitrary decision on our government’s part. In addition to the aforementioned benefits, PDF has considerable advantages over other formats in the areas of print quality and, increasingly, compatibility on all fronts.
Most CAD, BIM, drawing software, printers and other applications have been updated to produce high quality PDF searchable text and so now we’ve got a big group hug of information and compatibility where was once there was confusion and isolation. Add to this that PDF’s can be secured, or edited or created to be editable. They can be made into forms and so on. Well, it’s a beautiful thing.
So, are we saying only work in .pdf? Of course not. Your needs are diverse and you should always use what works best for you. Are we saying it might be a good idea to archive in .pdf? Absolutely. Consider it an insurance policy on your work; a safety net for the files’ future. All in all, we think this is excellent news. When you work in an industry where your words are only as effective as the image they describe, it’s comforting to know that the format most likely to stand the test of time is one that preserves your whole document, without a lot of limitations. And let’s all hope that 50 years from now, the work we’re generating today will be worth at least that much.
*MacWorld December 2007
