Why do people create multiple symbols for the same items?

[simbob]

I've just 'inherited' 4 floors of an office building with existing furniture on, which i need to use for a major project. The drawings are generally very badly drawn, almost every element is made up of individual lines (most of which don't join up) every door is a different size, but whoever did this has chosen to make every chair (several hundred) a separate symbol all numbered individually!

I've seen this done before with certain architectural elements, but not furniture. I am not sure why anyone would want to do this as it defeats the point of using symbols and makes file size big and the drawing slow & clunky. Also the time taken to produce them all would be huge.

The worst thing is i can't just swap them out as all the locus points are different and just to make things worse the user created them all on different and often unrelated classes.

Before i mention to the supplier of these drawings just how badly drawn they are, i wondered if anyone could shed some light as to why anyone might use this as a process.

[Dieter @ DWorks]

I think this has become through copy paste and just do not care how it is drawn, just that it looks ok. I know a lot of people who draw like that, and it's a disaster.....

[Peter van der Elst]

I think the drawing was originally an dog with blocks that has been imported?

We sometimes have the same with constructiondrawings we get where every column is a symbol...