Re: how long should it take to get back "up and
running" after changing

You must be in America.  The JIC has been so misinterpreted and this can 
cause your learning curve to be longer than it should be.  Most companies in 
America claim to design by JIC or the NFPA equivalent.  But if I visit 100 
companies I see 75-80 different JIC "standards."  Europe had a similar
issue 
but they did something about it.  The IEC standard (International 
Electrotechnical Commission) has been adopted by some 49 plus countries, 
starting with the EU.

And those 75-80 companies in America think that Acad/E should be configured 
to accommodate their "non-standard" standards.  The European CAD
companies 
mostly just accommodate IEC (and I mean actual IEC - not someone's 
misinterpretation) so their task is not nearly as huge as Autodesk's.

Here's the bonus for a European designer.  If you change jobs in Europe, 
chances are high that your learning curve is very quick, because most EU 
drawings look very similar, since they follow the IEC standards, such as 
IEC-60204 for safety and IEC-617 for schematic symbols.  You may sometimes 
see the letters EN instead of IEC  This means European Normalization.

By now you probably think I'm European.  I'm not.  But I worked for a German 
company from 1988 until 2000.  We designed to the DIN standard (Deutsches 
Institute for Normung or German Institute for Normalization), from whence we 
get DIN rail.  The DIN standard is a huge part of the IEC standard.  In fact 
they are virtually identical.  The Germans had a huge influence on the 
standard so there are very few differences between the DIN and IEC 
standards.

I worked both in Germany and the U.S.  Our U.S. division adopted the DIN 
standard in 1991 and later both sides adopted IEC.  I still work for them as 
a consultant and all designs are still to the IEC standard, whether done in 
the U.S. or in Germany.  More and more U.S. firms are self-adopting the IEC 
standard in order to position themselves better for the International 
market.

Back to your situation:  When I went to work for the German company in 1988 
I had to learn the DIN standard and design to DIN standards from a U.S. 
office near Atlanta, Georgia.  It was a bit of a learning curve, but it was 
the best time I ever spent on my career.  Embrace change.  It can be great 
for your future.  That path led to my association with what we now call 
AutoCAD Electrical.


<testsubject> wrote in message news:5931575@discussion.autodesk.com...
I have a curiosity question for the regulars here.

If you had to start over at a new place of employment, how long do you think 
it would take to get back up to your previous level of production? This 
would include learning how the new company designed their systems and 
creating all the associated icons to make you more productive. I have 
recently gone from one OEM to another and there are substantial differences 
in how each one designed their prints. (It still involves Power Supplies, 
PLCs, VFDs, etc. only drawn to their specs and not what you were used to).

Thanks in advance,