echo vs Google Drive

Google Drive manages folders and syncs those folders across devices, making them shareable. Then there’s echo by DCM. Echo manages engineering drawings, preventing disorganized chaos with intuitive user controls, a powerful visual browser, a modular (by site, by floor, by discipline) search wizard, and a central command hub that supercharges what a Facility Manager can do. Oh, and it also syncs across devices making them shareable. 


echo vs Google Drive: a rocket to firecracker comparison

No doubt about it, Google offers a powerful suite of business tools under its flagship product, GSuite. For a tidy $25/month/user, Google Drive gives companies a spot in the Cloud to store corporate documents in standard folders and sync those files across work desktops, home laptops, and smartphones. Google’s got the “everyday task” market in the bag; it gives companies a way to organize documents, photos, spreadsheets, and slide decks in a secure, searchable way. 

That’s all lovely and well, but there are a few major problems with Google Drive that make it a bad choice for your engineering drawings:

  • Lacklustre search functionality
  • Limited visual display
  • Something we call modification freedom

What’s modification freedom? It’s the way Google lets end-users play with folder hierarchies (how folders are structured). 

That’s where things get messy.

It’s about preventing mess

The lifecycle of an engineering drawing spans decades. Keeping track of the right version over many years from many sources depends on preventing duplicates. Up-to-the-second real-time access only works if you pull the right version of a drawing and manage user access to it. 

Google Drive would let Jim store drawings the way he liked (by facility) before he retired as Facility Manager in 2012. But Jim didn’t organize drawings the same way Betty did in 2018 (by discipline). And Betty doesn’t organize drawings the same way Kumar will in 2025 (alphabetically). 

That kind of freewheeling user-preference permission causes the same sort of chaos that paper blueprints did in damp basements in 1967—which is exactly what Google Drive facilitates without any red flags. In fact, Google Drive builds duplicate functionality into the right-click menu that encourages multiple versions (then invites you to scroll down forever through version history to figure things out). 

So even if your team agrees on a file folder structure within Google Drive, and nails down a best practices policy, and even if every single team member sticks to that structure… how do you know for sure that the drawing you need is the right one? 

Google Drive stores and shares files. That’s it. It’s not a program that cares if someone duplicates a file then stores that copy two hierarchies down. And it has no idea if the drawing named Final_Version_2017_b is the working drawing that helps turn off the broken water main in the southwest zone of building #4 at the Idaho plant. Maybe the right drawing was actually Final_v2_2018 that didn’t even make it into Google Drive because Helen is a hoarder and she put that drawing on her desktop in a folder called “Make myself invaluable.”

You’re no further ahead with Google Drive than you were in that damp drawing room overloaded with musty-smelling blueprints.

Thankfully, there’s echo, by DCM

Echo is an engineering drawing library that won’t let you create chaos and brings up the right document every single time. 

Why is echo way better than Google Drive, exactly?

Because of the way echo restricts and permits control to guarantee accuracy.

Because of how echo displays your drawing in a dashboard. 

Because of how echo helps you find what you need—fast.

Echo Drawing Management Software Live on iphone

Better control over your drawings and better visual display

The view options in Google Drive are “list” and “grid.” That’s it. It’s easy to preview a file, but that preview is isolated. It doesn’t appear as part of a control hub. Preview with Google Drive is simply a zoom command. There’s also the problem with opening a drawing in Google Drive. Depending on the format of the drawing, clicking on it will jump you to an outside app. That means you may need to open a PDF viewer, or image software like Photoshop or Illustrator, or CAD programs like AutoCAD. Your drawings will live in multiple places. Multiple places mean multiple opportunities for hassle and, worse, for errors.

Echo, on the other hand, controls the information you see in one spot within a user-friendly visual browser. Your drawings appear as large thumbnails in rows allowing you to swipe left or right to visually browse your most popular drawings, recent drawings, and drawings in the categories you set up.

Buttons and options that border the drawing let you do any number of things, like request a CAD file or add a revision or share a drawing. From one mobile responsive intuitive interface, you can easily send an electrician a schematic of the 2019 renovation of the third floor of Building D in Michigan while you’re, say, out on a date (while your date chats about your reservation with the maître d’). Secret send! … and done.

“The online echo system that holds our drawings is easily searchable and readily usable by all the facilities staff in the Board. The support we continue to receive is excellent and we would highly recommend echo and support to other school Boards.”

—Lewis Morgulis from Durham Catholic District School Board

User permissions and the green checkmark—to keep things organized.

Echo is a gatekeeper. It stops chaos and supercharges accuracy. It grants different access permissions to different users. It restricts access to one user at a time. It makes sure real-time updates are saved and not overwritten by two people looking at the same drawing. Echo prevents duplicates, flags problems, and identifies the right drawing with a satisfying green checkmark.

That green checkmark gives you peace of mind. Simple but powerful, when you see the green checkmark on your drawing, you know you’re looking at the most up-to-date accurate version available. In fact, echo flags old drawings that are outdated. Google Drive doesn’t do that. And since your facility runs on the accuracy of your drawings, Google Drive doesn’t make the grade.

Search Wizard—site-level and modular 

The power of echo lies in its friendly user interface, its safeguards, and the way it helps you find what you’re looking for. Just like Google, you can search by keyword. But if that doesn’t work (because if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, you probably don’t have the right keyword), you can tap into echo’s advanced search wizard functionality. 

Start by selecting the site—echo is location-based and handles multiple sites like buttah. Select your site in a single click. (In Google Drive, navigating to another site would mean clicking into a separate parent folder and drilling down through the folder hierarchies again—bummer.)

Then scroll through custom modules. Drill down by floor. Do you think the drawing you need is for the basement? Click basement. Now select the appropriate discipline. Do you need an architectural drawing or a mechanical drawing? Mechanical. Okay, click that. Is the drawing related to HVAC, plumbing, piping, or safety systems? HVAC it is. All relevant HVAC drawings for the basement of that building appear. 

There it is! Click to view that drawing—because that’s when the magic happens. 

Powerful dashboard—custom views for engineering drawings

Unlike Google Drive that provides a preview button (that greys everything else out), echo displays your drawing in a screen-sized preview with tools available around your drawing. What kind of tools

  • Verify it’s the right drawing with the green checkmark.
  • Review drawing data (available formats and revision history)
  • Request a CAD file
  • Zoom in to high-resolution detail
  • Add a comment
  • Star the drawing as a favourite
  • Download the drawing
  • Share the drawing
  • Create a report

Live support (from friendly folks)

Echo comes with amazing support and guidance. We aren’t a multi-billion dollar conglomerate like Google. Nope. We’re a North American firm built entirely around engineering drawing management. We’ve processed millions of drawings over the last XX years, which is long enough to know where the shortfalls exist in the world of drawing management. We filled one of those gaps with an online app that quickly became the most important tool in Facility Manager’s toolkits across North America, Europe, and now Australia.

Best in the business! I have been in FM management for 25 years and DCM gets it from a practical operational perspective because they listen to their clients.

 —Timothy Mackey from BGIS

Shameless plug

As leaders in the Drawing Management industry, DCM created echo engineering drawing management software to put all the things you need to do at your fingertips and prevent chaotic duplicates and unnecessary versions. You use echo to make sure you can’t do the things an ordinary storage drive lets you do. You use echo when you have hundreds or thousands—or millions—of large-format engineering drawings that call for a level of user-functionality that doesn’t exist in Google Drive. 

With echo, everything is visual, organized, secure, and searchable—from anywhere at any time on any device. 

You’re investing in tailor-made, drawing-specific functionality over and above a basic cookie-cutter file manager. You’re investing in accuracy delivered when you need it. 

Combine this functionality with DCM’s hands-on support and you have the most optimized digital library available today that gives you swipeable search-and-share functionality—and a backup crew when you need them.

DCM leads the way in all major industries including: healthcare, education, engineering, manufacturing, utilities, recreational, government, insurance and more. And our powerful cloud-based echo drawing library makes managing digital drawings faster and easier. Access the information you need the moment you need it.

All You Need To Know About echo Engineering Drawing Management System

echo

Replace your paper and digital archives with an online app! echo is a browser-based engineering drawing management system that’s fast, easy-to-use, and secure.

Why?

Why choose echo as your engineering drawing management system?

  1. Because accidents happen!
  2. Because time is precious.
  3. Because accuracy is essential.

Disintegration:
Paper is unreliable when it comes to engineering drawings. Water and fire destroy your physical assets. Over time, information fades as paper degrades.

Save time!
Let’s say you have the most organized archive on the planet with every piece of paper neatly rolled alphabetically. You still have to walk to your store room, locate the dusty document you need, unroll it on a table, and wonder if what you’re looking at is the right one. If your field workers are asking for it, you need to get it to them, or they need to come to you to read it. echo makes those steps unnecessary. Search for the document you need online and find it in seconds, then share it with the person who needs it at the click of a button. Or! Ask the on-site employee to log in from her phone and grab what she needs.

What if you could pull up a drawing on your smartphone and know it’s always the right one?

Accuracy

Paper creates problems. Duplicates, messy mark-ups, and lost documents cause stress.

Digital files are a nightmare. Navigating through the hierarchies of an excel database is a time-consuming, frustrating task. Your ability to find what you’re looking for depends on how the file was labelled and where it was put. If your digital files are stored on a CD, obsolescence is a problem—most computers don’t come with CD drives anymore. Not to mention that CDs degrade over time and become unreadable if scratched.  

And, when you think you’ve finally found the document or digital file you’re looking for…

  • Are you sure that particular drawing is the most current version?
  • Is your team working off the construction drawings or the as-built drawings?
  • Is there a marked-up hard copy on someone’s desk?
  • Is the document missing because Norm took it home?

Your team will have one set of master files for new projects. One. They won’t waste time searching for drawings. They won’t discover that the drawing is damaged or lost. The version they access is the right one. Every time.

What?

What are the benefits of the echo app over paper and digital chaos?
Think of echo as the modern equivalent of “the drawing room.” But echo replaces mountains of disorganized, ageing, outdated documents stuffed on shelves and the nightmare that is your digital database mess, with a fast, searchable, online engineering drawing management application.

What can you do with echo?
A lot. Every detail has been captured with precision so you can find exactly what you’re looking for fast. Presto! It’s magic.

Access
Your drawings are always there when you need them. They aren’t lost in a basement, locked in Gladys’ cabinet, hiding in the dungeons of an excel file, or mislabelled in the wrong folder, degrading on a CD. Never rummage through backroom mayhem or desktop disaster again!

Interactive portability
Share the engineering drawing with your team. Log in from any device anywhere—on your office computer or your smartphone in the field. Every department and every subcontractor checks into and out of the same library.

echo replaces mountains of disorganized, ageing, outdated documents stuffed on shelves and the nightmare that is your digital database mess, with a fast, searchable, online engineering drawing management application.

Speed

Drawings are a few clicks away, which is important when a pipe bursts and the boiler room is flooding. Engineering document control software at your fingertips!

Version control

One updatable version means what you’re looking at is the right drawing every time. Update the document in real time using check-in/check-out status.

Easy to use

The user interface (UI) is intuitive. With on-screen tooltips, direct access to training videos and support, the ability to set reminders, make comments and post feedback, echo makes it easy to find what you’re looking for.

Reports

Create a report. Track relevant building information and cross-reference what you have with what you still need. Download single CAD drawings as PDFs, or download entire folders of drawings as zip files.

Secure backups

echo is an encrypted browser-based app that lives in the cloud, hosted by DCM. So you won’t lose your files when a hard drive crashes. And if something goes wrong, one click restores your database. Your files can’t be lost or damaged. Your drawings are securely protected for the future.

How?

How is echo different from other CAD drawing management software?

echo manages engineering drawings. Engineering drawings come from multiple sources, have a longer life cycle, undergo multiple revisions, and often have many versions. This creates an environment for inaccuracy where accuracy is essential.

echo keeps accuracy at your fingertips, replacing paper and CDs with organized digital drawings protecting the past for the future.  We can also convert drawings into a workable CAD file (ask us!).

echo makes your life easier. A simple interface on a powerful database.

LET’S TAKE A SNEAK PEEK


echo Quickstart

Introducing echo! A digital library that keeps track of engineering drawings and makes your life easier. A simple interface on a powerful database.

echo is easy to use.

You’ll be up and running in about 3 minutes.

Log in.

The first time you log in, a short welcome video introduces echo’s user-friendly interface and shows you around.

With screen tips enabled, you will always know what options are available for the screen you are on.

echo gives you four main shortcuts:

Access these four shortcuts at any time by hovering your mouse over the echo logo in the top left corner of the screen.

echo options

Search
The search tool drills down by building, location, discipline, project, and author, allowing you to stay broad or get as specific as you want. Click on the “Advanced search” option for extra search fields. Apply filters and select multiple drawings.

Home
The home button opens a screen that displays all drawing categories. Click on any folder and scan the documents in that folder.

Folders:
Baseline drawings
Recently viewed
Popular documents
Favourites
By author
Project
Building
Discipline

My Activity
Continue where you left off last time.

Baseline
Go directly to your baseline drawings.

View large thumbnails organized in easy-to-view rows.

echo menu bar

The top menu bar is your central command. Anything you wish to do can be done from here.

The menu bar contains the echo logo (to access shortcuts), a browse option, a search field, support link, and a logout button. 

Support link

The support link drops down a menu with helpful tips, training videos, support contact info, and a feedback area. If you need help, support is a click away.

Open your drawing

When you find your drawing, click on it to open it. You can: 

  • zoom in on the drawing,
  • view all document data,
  • edit the document details,  
  • post a comment,
  • ask for help,
  • download a PDF CAD file, or
  • download all files as a zip file.

It’s that easy.
When you’re done, log out.
That’s it!

Who?

About DCM

echo is at the top of a detailed process that starts at the very bottom (literally—in basements and back rooms). DCM’s team of specialists makes the entire process a one-stop shop that comes to you. They gather every piece of paper in every condition, sort through smelly, damaged documents, outdated versions, and faded marked-up copies. They open stacks of CDs, scan databases from top to bottom, and grab all available files.

They consolidate, merge, and edge-match all sketches, notes, and markups into one integrated, architecturally-verified, master drawing that conforms to industry regulations.

Then, DCM uploads your new, organized, searchable, updateable, digital drawings to a powerful, super fast, online library—echo!

From chaos to organized management, your engineering drawings are now accurate and safe. You’ve protected the past for the future and everything is backed up in the cloud, accessible by you in a few clicks.

Powerful, simplified engineering drawing management brought to you by DCM Inc.

Clean up your paper mess and get digital files layered into one working document, managed by secure, searchable software as a service (SaaS). In a few swipes, echo finds what you need at top speed! Accompany echo with our other services. echo, created by DCM, loved by organized customers.

A good read: Leave a Legacy

Mobilize your Technical Workforce

The workplace of today goes well beyond the four cubicle walls and 9 to 5 hours.  The workforce of today is adapting to work where and when needed.  Work is performed in the field at remote or client sites, during impromptu meetings, from home and away on the road.
With the echo drawing management system from DCM Inc, your technical drawings and documents are always accessible to follow your mobile workforce where and when these resources are needed most.

The echo system is delivered as an Internet-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) application.  The echo drawing management system is fully mobile and accessible anywhere an Internet connection (wired, wireless or cellular-based), is available.  Whether your company provides end-user mobile devices, (such as laptops, tablets or smartphones), or has adopted a bring your own device (BYOD) mobility model, the echo system is ubiquitously available on any device as it only requires a standard web or mobile browser.

Using a secure and encrypted Internet connection, your entire repository of technical drawings and documents is available to your employees via the newly redesigned and seamless echo web-interface.   Handy personalized features such as recently viewed documents, marked favorites and automatic suggestions allow for quick access to common documents.  Touch-screen controls such as a simple swipe allow users to cycle through a set of drawing thumbnails.  Touch to click in order to make the drawing’s title block, revision information all visible.  Again, simply touch the thumbnail preview image to view the entire drawing in full screen, which allowing zooming and panning around the drawing as needed.  There is no need to download the entire drawing file or any special software required to simply view the drawing on any mobile device.

Using the efficient & powerful echo search feature, the exact drawing can be located in seconds.  Detailed document search criteria often includes client name, project number, location, wing, floor and discipline.

Mobile Drawing Access

An echo-based mobile drawing access solution will  empower your technical workforce with valuable information where and when needed.  There are numerous specific vocational use cases that demonstrate the benefit of a drawing management system across all levels of the enterprise and industries.

  • Building maintenance & facilities workers access the correct building schematics & equipment manuals.
  • Construction & renovation builders, and skilled trades accessing the latest architectural, building systems, services & as-built drawings.
  • Equipment & mechanical service technicians accessing manuals, equipment assembly and service documents.
  • Engineers & project managers accessing the latest design & engineering documents.
  • Executives, Management & Sales access the latest client proposal project documents and drawings.

Contact DCM Inc today to find out more about the echo Drawing Management System can do for your business.