The document register

Documents is the drawing register for a project — the drawings, specifications, reports and certificates the job runs on.

It is worth treating as a register rather than a folder, because three other parts of SmarteBuild read from it.

What reads from it

Module	Uses documents for
Take-Off	Measuring quantities off the PDFs
Tenders	Attaching drawings to bid packages
Purchase Orders	Attaching details to supplier orders
Client portal	The documents you choose to share with the client

That is why a document uploaded here is more useful than the same file on a network drive: it can be measured, tendered from, attached to an order, and shared with the client without leaving the job.

Nothing reaches the client unless you share it

The register is yours. A document only appears on the client’s portal if you put it in the Client Documents folder or tick it to share. See Sharing documents, photos and selections.

What it holds

Each document carries:

Field	What it is
Document Title	What the document is — A-101 Floor Plan
File Name	The file itself
Version Name	The revision — Rev B
Note	Anything about it worth recording
Options	Auto-attach settings and the obsolete flag

Suggest Title proposes a title from the file name, which is usually most of the way there.

Versions matter

A document is a thing with versions, not a series of separate files.

A-101 Floor Plan is one document. Rev A, Rev B and Rev C are versions of it. Uploading Rev C as a new version supersedes Rev B rather than sitting beside it.

That is what makes the Take-Off carry-over work — when you open a drawing you have measured on and a newer revision exists, Take-Off knows they are the same drawing and offers to bring your measurements forward. See Versions and revisions.

Upload Rev C as a separate document and you get two files, no relationship between them, and no carry-over.

This is the mistake worth avoiding

plans.pdf, plans final.pdf and plans final v2.pdf as three separate documents is how a drawing register stops being useful. One document, three versions.

Organising

Documents can be placed in a structure using Select a Node, so a large set stays navigable. Filter narrows a long list, and Show Archived brings back things that have been put away.

In this section

• Uploading and organising
• Versions and revisions
• Auto-attaching to bids and orders