In this Article...
This is your first challenge in the Work Better with AutoCAD program.
In this first challenge, you will set goals. You will define what you are going to achieve and what problems you have when you work. Your first task is to examine your existing drawings.
Find drawings that you consider to represent your current standard. You may work with more than one type of drawing. If you are working in multiple disciplines, collect an example for each type of drawing that you will work with in the future.
Your existing drawings can be hardcopy, but it will be better if you have the DWG file.
The objective
After “Preparation”, your next challenges will be based on your standard and what drawings you plan to produce. Therefore, this first step is quite important.
When you decide on your standards, you can plan what you will put in your drawing template. If you do not yet have a standard, it’s a good time for you to explore available standards for your industry and location.
After you know what type of drawings you will produce, you can create the necessary reusable contents and customization.
If you are already implementing CAD standards, use this step to examine if you need to update them. Are there any layers, annotation styles, or reusable content you need to add? Have you implemented features like sheet sets, layer states and filters, dynamic blocks, or annotation scaling? Do you plan to implement them later?
Practical guidelines
In your drawings, find what objects and settings you have in common. You can use these questions as your guide:
- What layers, annotation styles, and scales do you have in your drawings? Do they cause problems when you collaborate with other companies?
- What objects do you repetitively draw? Do you need to have them in your library?
- What objects require a lot of time and are prone to errors when you revise the drawing?
- What processes require a lot of time during drawing creation? Can you automate them?
You can add more questions in the comment section below and share them with others.
Why is using a CAD standard is important?
Why is a CAD standard important? Shaun Bryant puts it this way:
CAD Standards are necessary and very important to the industry to allow designs and drawings to be interchanged between teams on projects. Sometimes large projects use multiple CAD platforms, so CAD Standards are essential for the project to function.
You can also share from your experience why you think CAD standards are important in the comment section below.
Discuss it with us
Now that you have collected your drawings and taken this first step tell us what you found.
How many drawing types do you have? Can you define your standard drawings now? Do you think this standard will help you to better collaborate with your team and other companies?
What problems do you have with your current workflow? Where do you think you can improve it?
Please discuss this in the comment section below. If you read this in a feed or the email newsletter, please visit the website and leave your comments there. Please share your experiences, as they can help others. Don’t forget to share obstacles you encounter as well; we might be able to help!
If you are finished, go to the next challenge: create an AutoCAD template.
Thank you very much to Michel Mattson for the editorial correction!
Working in manufacturing engineering — custom sheet metal and progressive stamping — we deal with a lot of different drawings from various companies. We have created a block that has a component of each of the layers that are in our company template.
The block is named, “^LAYER_PROPERTIES_PROGRAMMING.dwg.”
When we open a customer’s drawing — we run the script below — that inserts the block and sets up our drawing standards. From there, it is pretty much MA (match properties).
;LAYER PROPERTIES PROGRAMMING.scr
;Sets layers up in alien drawings.
audit
y
-layer
set
0
-color
bylayer
-linetype
set
bylayer
-lweight
bylayer
pickadd 1
pickauto 1
‘-units
2
8
1
1
0
no
measurement
1
-scalelistedit
reset
yes
exit
tilemode 1
zoom all
_ucs
world
_ucsicon
or
_ucsicon
on
-layer
unlock
*
thaw
*
on
*
set
0
-insert
“C:\^CAD Script Files\^LAYER_PROPERTIES_PROGRAMMING.dwg”
scale 0.5
rotate 0.0
0,0
zoom all
-layer
;linetype
L
continuous
*
L
center
^CENTER
L
hidden
^HIDDEN
L
phantom
^PHANTOM
L
dashed
^PUNCH
L
divide
^SECTION
-layer
;lineweight
LW
DEFAULT
*
LW
0.15
“^DIMENSION COMMON”
LW
0.15
“^DIMENSION PRODUCTION”
LW
0.15
“^DIMENSION TOOLING”
LW
0.35
“^OBJECT 1”
LW
0.35
“^OBJECT 2”
LW
0.35
“^OBJECT 3”
LW
0.35
“^OBJECT 4”
LW
0.15
^ATTRIBUTE,^CENTER,^HIDDEN,^PHANTOM,^PUNCH,^TEXT
LW
0.50
^BORDER,^SECTION
-purge
All
n
-style
standard
romans.shx
0.000
1
0.0
no
no
no
-layer
freeze
z_HIDE
lock
z_HIDE
ORTHO
ON
qsave
end/
I like the challenge that you offer about setting standards. I will state that people should NOT name their standards, “Standard”. If they do, and they send their drawing else where, and their standards are “Standard” with with different text type, at a different size, their drawing is going to come across as garbage. I usually name my Text style after the font style, ie RomanS. It becomes easier for others to load the proper text font. On the other hand, I will name Dimensions styles after the company that I am working for. It is easier to share something later.
Where layers are concerned, I try to make a script or Lisp routine to load them. It comes in handy when a drawing comes back, if it has been purged, some of my layers might be missing. With a script, I just reload all the layers and look for the needed layer for whatever it is I am doing.
My best work in the past, was to set up Templates in Imperial and Metric for D size sheets. They were loaded with the proper Test Style, Layers, Blocks (Revision Deltas, Titles, Leader Bubbles) & DimStyles. I have shared my Layer Scripts with anyone who wants a copy. They do come in handy.
I work for a geotechnical engineering firm. We have a lot of civil and construction drawings. The company has been in business for around 20 years and their CAD people have come and gone leaving behind very few standards to follow. The engineers all do their own thing as well, each with their own preference. I have tried to create templates for the jobs we work on most to create consistency across the board. The biggest problem with my templates are text objects and scales lists. I have a bug that pops up from time to time that creates bold text when I use my onsnap. Also sometimes the alignment gets off and creates a separate paragraph or list in my mtext box. I work with PDF’s every day and use the background mask to make my text stand out. Very annoying when I can’t get the extra lines to go away. Also, is there a way to import a standard scale list for all drawings?
What layers, annotation styles and scales do you have in your drawings? Do they cause problems when you collaborate with other companies?
In a multi-discipline consulting firm, standard from other department like Architecture they have they own standards layers, structural have their own. For collaboration in AutoCAD, mostly we do this overlaying their drawing or attaching as xref. After xref attaching, we modify their layer as changing the color just to identify the difference(do this in layer state manager). Be sure that the xref’s drawing are detached before publishing(e-transmit).
What objects do you repetitively draw? Do you need to have them in your library?
Mostly block with attributes. Definitely, you can do it in tool palettes, or in separate menu application.
Cool, I’ve been working on this for the last couple months for my employer. We’re a small global company with offices in 4 countries/continents and there is intercompany work for the same clients in both different and the same projects so a standards pretty important.
I recently rolled out a global repository with updated templates which have been well received but are experiencing some “growing pains”. As well as starting to roll out standard set of reusable content which is no small feat as we have 500+ blocks all which need to be checked and possibly updated before being shared.
We’re also doing a rewrite/update of our in-house CAD standard documentation.
Thank you for sharing Chris,
That is quite a challenge to manage global companies. If you want to share your experience by writing an article or become a mentor in this challenge series, just contact me.
We can learn many things from you!
I’m an architect and I work with Interior Design usually.
I love standards and customization! And I am unable to do anything twice without creating a button or a dynamic block to make my job easier. For example, I created a button to extend the drawing, purge, save and exit at once. Another one adds all my standard layers in the current drawing. A third button creates marble patterns with just one click. So on and so forth.
I used to have a drawing as a template for all my drawings with layers, dimension styles, sheets, dynamic block, etc. But now I’m thinking about adopting the layers standard created by the ASBEA (which translates to Brazilian Association of the Architecture Offices). This standard is only a suggestion and is not enforced.
But I don’t see companies worrying about organization or accuracy of information standards. The usual is what Murray points: everyone works as they want, specially when time is short. Even though some of the standards are regulated by the ABNT (Brazilian Association of Technical Standards).
Nowadays I have been creating dynamic blocks for all objects that I have to use in a drawing: blocks of beds in all standard sizes, wardrobes that stretches to any measurement, titles in all scales I use, windows, doors, bathroom sinks, etc.
But I know that there are some topics that I don’t know much about and could make my job much easier, like annotative scale and filters.
I’m glad that we have a customization experts participated here!
It’s true that implementing CAD standards is very difficult. Sometimes it’s not because they don’t want to use it. It’s just they don’t see any value to implement it.
This is one reason why I want to have this discussions. To built awareness to the fellow CAD users that CAD standard is important. It’s not going to make our life worse. It’s to make our life better!
My company does a lot of governmental work and therefore we have embraced the use of the US Army Corps of Engineers A/E/C Cad Standard Release 5.0
I have found this standard to be very complete in terms of defining all the properties for drawings of high quality, The USACE Cad Standards website also provides fonts, blocks, linetypes and title blocks that concur with the document making this standard very usable and complete.
Carlos,
You are lucky you already have a high quality standard. I hope we all can have the advantages of implementing CAD standards after this series in completed.
thank you CAD notes for prompting me to do what ive been meaning to do for some time – get more organised with layer standards loaded into my drawing template on start up instead of me introducing the same layers into every drawing. Now they are there for ever. what stopped me was the purging of drawings, as you insert blocks you sometimes inherit layers unintentionally and then if you purge you risk losing the layers within the layers standards you havent yet used in the drawing. Hopefully I` ve eradicated that problem by making the layer state `drawing` so all layers show up as being used before I`ve drawn anything and threrefore when i `purge all` i will retain the layers i want to retain and purge those not in the layer standards – the proof will be in the pudding. i also perfected my annotation styles and went through my entire 2D block library re-titling logically for finding easily later of deleting unwanted never to be used again blocks. a good excercise to more efficiency and time saving.
Hi Chris,
I hope doing this together with fellow AutoCAD users will encourage you to complete this task.
Thank you for sharing your experience! I hope you can find this series will help.
We will cover more about layer in templates in the next task.
Hi, Mr Prakoso.i download the book that you introduce for learning autocad(Donnie Gladfelter)but i have some problem .where i can ask this question from you?can i have you email adress?please help me
thank you
thank you .you are very good teacher.
I have been with my company for 13 years now, and when I came on board, I discovered what a NIGHTMARE the CAD files/practices were.
In a nutshell, no two people were doing the same thing (textbook case). These things included:
-Text: Different Heights, Fonts, Pen Weights, Justifications, Properties (e.g. italicized vs. non italicized), Single Line, not Using Ctrl Codes (e.g. %%U)
-Dimensions: Exploded, different properties like arrowheads, etc.
-Blocks: NONE! (never mind blocks with wipeouts or multiline attributes, etc)
-Title-Sheets: Exploded, Title-block text had different characteristics (see “Text” above), Contradictory information pertaining to the Project
-Design Work & Details: No Layer standard, By-Entity objects, No intelligent objects like Polylines or Blocks, Exploded Hatch Patterns, No XREFs, Not Georeferenced, Breaking away objects instead of using Wipeouts, Details not drawn 1:1 OR proportionally, Conflicting Linetypes, Details Physically put in Paperspace instead of using a scaled Viewport, Everything was “eyeballed” instead of using Object Snaps or commands like Offset, Array, or Measure.
-CAD Management: NONE whatsoever even though there was a man who had the title c/w the paycheque. His CAD Manager skills was limited to ordering plotter supplies. Everytime someone had a problem, he would say “there’s a bug in the software’ and wouldn’t be able to trouble shoot the problems
(breath, Murray, breath)
Oh heck yeah…. Over time, I started to prove to people how to do things correctly, and after a long decade of blood sweat and tears, I am NOW the company “CAD Manager”. The previous “CAD manager” (or “CAD MANGLER” as I called him) was finally exposed for the fraud that he was, and kept getting demoted a little bit at a time up until his retirement.
Unfortunately, he had a number of supporters who refused to acknowledge the truth, and still practice CAD the same way to this day. Luckily, we have enough newer/younger people that take over certain jobs from the “old salty dogs” and actually take the time to fix them.
In the last two and a half years, I’ve been part of our ISO committee to write and enforce proper CAD standards and practices. I have written close to 1,000 pages of documentation which include: “Proper Drawing Preparation” (i.e. how hard copy drawings are supposed to look); “Proper CAD Practices” (i.e. all the “do’s” and “don’ts” of preparing CAD drawings), “Drafting Guides” (i.e. guidelines/checklists for discipline specific drawings); “Tutorials” (i.e. I created tutorials on how to use MText, Design Center, Associative Dimensions, Sheet Set Manager, etc)
I have also created enough templates so that everything is “idiot proof”, and all the CAD user has to do is simply open the template and start working. There are templates for each discipline c/w their layer standards and symbology, template library for Annotation Symbols, and detail library for each discipline where the details are properly formatted.
Fascinating to read your story :-)
Somewhere in July 2014 I started to use AC LT 2015 for the first time in my life (55 years…) in order to add ome symbols to existing *.dwg files.
In August I started a very simple drawing project, which I finished in the mean time. We have subscribed on a monthly basis and my second month ends Sep 18… I will be disabled for a few weeks or months…
I have fortunately lots of time available on my job (techinical service of a small village) and have no really high workpressure. So I have been able to experiment a lot with AC.
Trying out all the commands, looking in the forums for solutions etc.
I don’t know the purpose of it yet, I mean what Abba has for me in petto with this, but I can imagine that it is very easy to start drawing and doing things without thinking about the impact for later.
I think I have discovered many things that even long time professionals are not aware of.
So thank all of you for tips, insights, teaching etc. really helpfull!
I have a similar story. WAY back in 1991, my mother bought be an AutoCAD “Quick Command Reference Guide” which had every AutoCAD command in alphabetical order.
That winter was an especially bad one with a lot of snow and school closures, and being a single guy with no kids, I had no trouble getting to work – but other coworkers weren’t so “lucky”, and I spent many many many days in the office alone.
In my “down time” I decided to learn EVERY command in that book. I started with the “ARC” command in January, and as finished with the “ZOOM” command by the end of February.
I learned every commands’ function, options, tricks, and related system variables
I highly recommend getting one of these books.