This British Standard supersedes BS308-1:1993, BS308-2:1985 and BS308-3:1990, which are all withdrawn.  Drawing conventions which applied to BS 308-1'2'3 in general also apply to the European Standards referenced in BS 8888.

This standard is provided to unify all of the recently implemented ISO and EN ISO standards related to Technical Product Documentation (it references them).  Most designers and engineers should have no difficulty in working to the new standards. BS 8888 references standards covering all aspects of technical product documentation including:

An important difference between BS 308 and BS 8888 is in the marking of the decimal place.   In BS308 the decimal place is indicated with a decimal point.   In BS 8888 the decimal place is indicated with a comma with each group of three digits from the decimal provided with a space e.g. 14 234,012 8 .

For manual drawings this is not really a problem.   For Autocad drawings on a Windows based PC it is most convenient set the decimal point to display as a comma on the regional settings on the control panel (This option is available if you set the Country to German or France). .

It is important that anyone working to BS 8888 has convenient access to the referenced European standards. All of the standards referenced in BS 8888 are grouped into four "Kits".    These kits, with linked lists, are provided below.

The kits can be procured from British Standards Publishing, see link below, or they are available for reference in the UK at Central Libraries.  British Standards also sell a CD which includes all of BS 8888 and all of the associated standards..

Note:In the 2004 edition of the BS 8888 CD a number of addition standards has been included. These are listed in the linked page "2004 Added Standards "