Paperless Design: Detailing Its Journey & Increasing Adoption
December 27, 2011
In the contemporary world, paperless design has been accepted as a vital aspect of the overall designing process that is used in conceptualization, creation and brainstorming over possible designs. However, not many people know about how paperless designs became mainstream or even how they got started. It was the designing of a Chinese aircraft, JH-7A, which used paperless design as a core development process for the first time. This was also the first instance of an aircraft being designed using CAD/CAM software.
Today, digital media has seeped into how most designing processes are executed. This includes architectural development. Everything from artifacts to educational simulations is being created using cad conversion. This can be interpreted as a transformation towards a technologically-immersed development process that uses a paperless studio. Architecture schools had already struggled with physically integrating paperless designs into their conventional methodology or comprehensively adopting ‘being digital’ in a wholesome manner which invariably means using paperless designs.
The other, most notable use of paperless designs has been in the niche of Paperless Archives or Paperless Documentation. Most organizations have realized that digitalizing paper files is a lot better than maintaining physical files. This includes records of every kind, from library archives to patient medical records maintained by healthcare centers. A hard drive that isn’t even visible to the user can store more scanned documents that an entire room dedicated to warehousing physical files.
A paperless environment is also more efficient from the workflow perspective. For instance, scanning, indexing, saving and retrieving scanned files is very easy. It helps to eliminate workplace hours lost at storing or locating files. Even if one person is employed for scanning and storing all the scanned documents for an entire department, the purpose of creating a paperless office is met. Larger firms might need a small scanning department, equipped with expensive scanners and more than one person. However, the most recent trend in creating scanned organizational records is getting the work done via a scanning vendor. The reasons are quite easy to comprehend.
A scanning services provider ensures that departmental personnel are not wasted for scanning records. The vendor provides the scanned records, indexed and saved systematically, in a ready-to-use format. This kind of paperless documentation format is largely seen in legal firms and healthcare offices where multiple records of a client or a patient are stored in single digital folders. Every digitalized folder contains all scanned information plus additional paperless information such as emails and electronically generated notes or drafts that can be clubbed together into a single folder. This way of archiving files is cost-effective and undemanding where using PDF files instead of physical files means that documents can be located, updated, referenced further or deleted with a single click of the mouse.
Most organizations have understood how the concept of paperless design extends beyond CAD CAM software used in designing workplaces. They have realized that paperless designing is essentially another example of how a Paperless Workflow can increase organizational effectivity, save costs and streamlines the entire method of working without putting forth any regulatory or legal stress.
The advancement in paperless design applications includes attaching photographs or images that are easier to maintain in the digitalized format. For architects, creating models for their clients, this has been a boon and this convenience has been realized across other professional fields. For instance, healthcare offices have increasingly started attaching scanned medical imaging records of their patients in the patient folder maintained as a part of the larger software application, commonly referred to as Electronic Medical Records or EMR systems.
Most analysts say that while the integration of paperless technologies remains a question for some design schools, it is definite that the use of paperless designs helps to create more ideas and explore a wider range of design expressions. This is a simple fact where time saved from creating and maintaining physical models/documents can be dedicated to the core, creative process. Yes, evolving into a paperless studio is not an issue as there are plenty of technical tools to make this transition easier. However, this transition shouldn’t be attempted without having a sound knowledge-base in architectural styles or digital media basics-a paperless design is essentially a progression of how work is handled in a more efficient manner but it cannot replace the need to be thorough in your professional field.
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