Spent 4 hours fixing a dimension I typed wrong on the first draft

I was working on a set of floor plans for a small office buildout over in Burnaby, and I had this one wall dimension that just kept throwing everything off. Turned out I'd typed 12'-6" instead of 12'-0" back on the very first layer, and I didn't catch it until I started cross-referencing the elevations with the structural grid. Must have redrawn that wall section three separate times before I finally went back to the original file and spotted the typo. By the time I fixed it and updated all the dependent views, I'd burned almost a whole shift on something that could have been a 30 second fix if I'd just double checked my inputs earlier. My foreman walked by and said "you look like you're wrestling a ghost in there" which was pretty accurate. Has anyone else had a single digit mistake cascade into hours of rework like that

2 comments

2 Comments

henrys7416d ago

This reminds me of a time I was working on a friends kitchen remodel plans. I accidentally marked a window opening as 36 inches wide instead of 30. That one little number made all the cabinets not fit right and the sink ended up two inches off from the plumbing rough in. I had to redo the entire elevation just to make the numbers line up again. Took me about three hours on a Saturday afternoon when I could have been outside enjoying the nice weather. It is funny how one tiny typo can snowball into something that eats up your whole day.

oscarh1615d ago

Yo @henrys74 did you ever figure out a system to catch those mistakes earlier? What worked for me was printing out the plan and physically walking through the measurements with a highlighter. I had a similar thing where I punched in 48 inches for a fridge opening instead of 42 on a friend's kitchen plan, and everything got thrown off by six inches. Spent a whole Sunday redoing the layout just to make the numbers jive with the actual appliances. Now I always double check the critical dimensions before I even start drawing.