The fancy role of the terminator...

...is the one I’ll establish one day when I have it my way. I’ll be on a main construction contractor’s team and we’ll be still producing drawings. I guess, that condition indicates I wouldn’t quite have it all my way, but let’s assume I’d be happy with the set-up.

The job of the terminator will be to constantly scan the central model and all its associated drawings and remove redundant data. S/he will be identifying dimensions and notes related to elements that have been built, verified and as such become ‘existing’ within the process. This data will be then made invisible for the new issues of the drawings, and the elements will become easily identifiable. (by colour, labels)

S/he would include a register of data removed too, a bit like we do in revision clouding, just the other-way-around.

You may say, there is nothing revolutionary to this concept, the traditional process of documenting buildings via IFC and shop drawings does exactly this.

Well, does it? In practice?

Do you know of companies that have people charged with the task of ruthlessly going through data and moving them onto invisible layers for progressive issues of IFC drawings? Oversee the creation of shop drawings to prevent them carry unnecessary, “existing” information?

Most companies I know still believe the busier-looking the drawing the better the results will be!