Versions and revisions

A drawing is never finished once. It is issued, marked up, reissued, and issued again, and the question that matters on site is always the same: is this the current one? Revisions are how Teralo answers that, and getting them right is the difference between a register you can trust and a folder of files with dates in the names.

One document, many revisions

A document in Teralo is a single entry in the register with a stack of revisions behind it. Revision C replaces revision B, which replaces revision A, and all three are kept.

The register shows the current revision. The earlier ones are automatically marked superseded and stay accessible in the document's history, which is the whole reason to do it this way: a superseded drawing is evidence. It is what somebody was building to in March, and deleting it does not make that untrue.

Uploading a revision

Find the document in the register and upload a revision against it, rather than uploading a new document. Increment the revision, add a note saying what changed, and the new file becomes current.

This is the rule that decides whether the register works. Uploading a revised drawing as a new document breaks the chain: two entries now exist for the same drawing, neither one supersedes the other, the history is split, and anybody searching finds both and has to guess. It is also almost impossible to unpick later.

The revision note is worth writing properly. "Rev C" tells the next person nothing; "Rev C: door schedule updated to match structural, grid 4 to 7" saves them opening both drawings to compare.

Reading the history

Every document carries its revision history: each revision, when it was uploaded, by whom, and the note. Earlier revisions can be opened and downloaded like any other file.

That history is what a transmittal, a claim or a variation eventually refers back to, so it is worth being able to read it before somebody asks you to.

Status is not revision

Two different things, often confused, and both live on the document.

The revision says which version of the file this is. It counts up.

The status says where the document is in its life: draft, for review, approved, for construction, superseded. It moves according to what has happened rather than counting.

A document can be at revision D and still for review; a document can be at revision A and for construction. Filtering the register by status is how you find everything still outstanding, and filtering by both is how you find the current issued set.

The one to build from

On a live job the practical question is which drawings are current and issued for construction, and the register answers it in one step: filter to the current issue status, group by discipline, and that is the set.

Anything else in the register is either superseded, which is history, or not yet issued, which is not for building. Where a drawing has been issued formally, the transmittal is the record of who received it.

Marking up a revision

Markups belong to the revision they were drawn on, not to the document in general. That is deliberate: a comment about a clash on revision B is about revision B, and silently carrying it onto revision C would attach it to a drawing where the clash may already be resolved.

So when a document is revised, its markups stay with the older revision, where they remain part of the record. See Markups and annotations.