Drawing Log

Six months in, the set has been issued nine times for four purposes, a third of the sheets have been revised at least twice, and somebody on site is building from the wrong one. The log is how you answer "what is current" and "what did they have on March 12th" without archaeology. This keeps that log.

Scope and limits — read first

What this does. Maintains docs/drawings/log.md: a sheet table (number, title, current revision, status) and an issue table (date, purpose, recipients, which sheets went at which revision). Records new sheets, new revisions, and new issuances as you report them, and reads the log back to answer what is current, what changed between issues, and what any recipient holds.

What this does not do.

• It does not know your revisions. A sheet's revision changes only when you say it was revised, and an issue exists only when you say the set went out. It never marks a sheet revised because time passed or a PDF appeared.
• It does not read the drawings. What changed inside a sheet is drawing-diff's job; this log records only that it changed and when.
• It does not write the transmittal. create-transmittal makes the cover sheet for a package; this records that the package went, to whom, and what was in it.
• It does not decide what sheets the set should contain. drawing-checklist answers what a phase expects; this records what exists.
• It does not manage CAD or BIM files, sheet numbering standards, or title blocks.

What you need before starting. The sheet list: typed, pasted, or read from a drawing-set-bookmarker index file. After that, the habit of telling the log when sheets are revised and sets go out.

Workflow

Step 1. Bootstrap if needed

Check whether docs/drawings/log.md exists. If not, copy assets/drawing-log-template.md there. If a drawing-set-bookmarker index exists in the project, offer to seed the sheet table from it; otherwise ask for the sheet list. If the project has no docs/ folder at all, confirm before creating one.

Step 2. Record sheets

One row per sheet: number and title exactly as the title block has them, current revision as you state it, status active or superseded. A sheet added mid-project records the date it entered the set.

Step 3. Record an issue

Each time a set goes out, one entry: issue number sequential (ISS-01), date, purpose in your words (pricing, permit, construction, addendum, ...), recipients, and the list of sheets included with the revision each went at. If a revision changed since the last issue, update the sheet table in the same pass and note which issue carried the change. Offer create-transmittal for the cover sheet; do not write one here.

Step 4. Answer questions

From the log alone:

• What is current: the sheet table, active sheets, current revisions.
• What does <recipient> hold: the latest issue naming them, sheet by sheet.
• What changed since <issue>: sheets whose revision moved after that date, with the issues that carried each change.

If the log cannot answer, say what entry is missing rather than reconstructing from memory.

Step 5. Supersede, never delete

A sheet leaving the set is marked superseded with the date and, where one exists, the sheet that replaced it. Every issuance it ever appeared in stays intact.

Rules

• Every issue has a date and a purpose. An undated issuance cannot answer the only question logs exist for.
• Sheet numbers verbatim. No normalizing A-101 to A101; the log must match the title block, and mismatches are flagged, not fixed silently.
• The log records; it does not conclude. Whether the contractor built from a stale set is a dispute question (dispute-advisor), not a log entry.
• One log per project. Consultant sets get rows in this log, marked with their discipline, not a second file.

Anti-patterns

• Bumping a revision because a newer PDF showed up in a folder.
• Recording an issue without its sheet list, "same as last time".
• Deleting superseded sheets to keep the table short.
• Reconstructing a missed issuance from memory instead of recording that the gap exists.
• Turning the log into a transmittal archive; the cover sheets live where create-transmittal put them.

Resources

• assets/drawing-log-template.md — the file this creates, empty.

No reference files. The history comes from your project, not from here.