AutoCAD 2005 For Dummies (2004)
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5.Type a Sheet Number, Sheet Title, and File Name in the text boxes, and then click OK.
The previous procedure describes what the Sheet Number and Sheet Title are for. File Name determines the name of the DWG file that AutoCAD creates. AutoCAD generates the default file name by combining the sheet number and sheet title. You probably want to remove the sheet number from this automatically generated name, for the reasons described in the following Tip.
Don’t type .DWG in the File Name box. AutoCAD always adds the file extension, so if you type .DWG, AutoCAD will create a file named Whatever.Dwg.Dwg.
If you anticipate ever having to renumber sheets on your project — and even if you don’t anticipate it, it may happen! — you should name your sheet files based on their general contents rather than their (current) sheet numbers.
For example, when you create an architectural floor plan that you anticipate will be sheet A-201, name the sheet file A-FP01.dwg (first floor plan in the series) instead of A-201.dwg. By giving sheet files names that are independent of their sheet numbers, you retain the flexibility to renumber sheets automatically later with just a few changes in the Sheet Set Manager.
Assembling sheet views from resource drawings
After you create a new sheet (or add an existing one that doesn’t yet contain all the necessary drawing components), you use the Resource Drawing tab to compose views on the sheet. A view can be simply the entire drawing, or it can be a named view that you’ve created in the resource drawing. In all cases, the Sheet Set Manager attaches the resource drawing as an xref to the sheet drawing and creates a properly scaled viewport on the sheet drawing’s layout. Each sheet can contain one view (for example, a large plan) or more than one (for example, several elevations or a dozen details).
To place an entire resource drawing on a sheet, follow these steps:
1.On the Sheet List tab of the Sheet Set Manager palette, double-click the sheet to which you want to add the resource drawing.
AutoCAD opens the drawing for editing.
2.Click the Resource Drawings tab.
3.If you haven’t yet specified the folder that contains the resource drawing that you want to use, double-click Add New Location, browse to the directory, and click the Open button.
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You can add more than one folder to the Resource Drawings tab.
4.Right-click the resource drawing that you want to add to the sheet, choose Place on Sheet, and move the cursor into the sheet drawing’s layout.
AutoCAD attaches the resource drawing as an xref and creates a viewport for it. You position the viewport with the cursor.
5.Right-click.
A scale menu appears, as shown in Figure 14-5.
6.Choose the proper scale for the resource drawing.
AutoCAD rescales the viewport, and you continue to drag it with the cursor.
7.Position the viewport where you want it and click.
AutoCAD places the viewport on the sheet.
If you need to adjust the viewport later, select it and use grip editing, the
Properties palette, or the Viewports toolbar to make changes.
8. Click the View List tab on the Sheet Set Manager palette.
Figure 14-5:
Adding a view to a sheet.
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AutoCAD has added the resource drawing that you just used to the list of views for this sheet set.
9.Right-click the new view name and choose Rename and Renumber.
The Rename and Renumber Sheet dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 14-6.
10.Type a View Number and View Title in the text boxes, and then click OK.
As I describe earlier in this chapter, you can direct the Sheet Set Manager to use this information to create automatically updating labels. For example, if you place a detail on a sheet, AutoCAD feeds the information in this dialog box to a label block in the sheet drawing that shows the detail number and title. In addition, you can create callouts on other sheets that refer to this detail. If you later change the information in this dialog box, the Sheet Set Manager changes it in the detail label as well as in the callouts that reference the detail. (You create label and callout blocks in separate drawings, as described in Chapter 13. You then right-click the sheet set name or a view name and choose Properties to configure the sheet set or view to use these blocks.) Look up “callout blocks (for sheet views)” and “label blocks (for sheet views)” in the AutoCAD online help system for detailed instructions.
Figure 14-6:
Specifying a view’s number and title.
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After you specify callout and label blocks on the View List tab, use the view’s right-click menu to place either kind of block.
On the View List tab, you can create view categories by right-clicking the sheet set name and choosing New View Category. Each view category can use different callout blocks — right-click the view category and choose Properties to configure callout blocks.
Placing a named view on a layout is just like placing an entire resource drawing, except that on the Resource Drawing tab you click the plus sign next to the drawing name to reveal its named views, right-click the desired view, and choose Place on Sheet. (If you haven’t yet created the named view that you need, open the drawing by double-clicking it on the Resource Drawing tab, and choose View Named Views to open the View dialog box. See the section titled “A View by Any Other Name. . .” in Chapter 7 for instructions on how to create named views.)
Making an Automatic Sheet List
After you create sheets and assemble views on them from resource drawings, you can take advantage of the additional sheet set features described in the “Using an Existing Sheet Set” section earlier in this chapter. For example, you can batch plot all the sheets for a project by right-clicking the sheet set name and choosing Publish Publish to Plotter. (Chapter 16 describes the PUBLISH command.)
Before you publish your CAD magnum opus, however, you probably want to create an index. As long as you’re diligent about filling in the sheet number and title properties, as I advise in the “Adding existing sheets to a set” and “Creating new sheets for a set” sections earlier in this chapter, the Sheet Set Manager will build a drawing index for you automatically. Even better, when you add, remove, renumber, or rename sheets, AutoCAD updates the index automatically. The Sheet Set Manager creates the drawing index, using AutoCAD 2005’s new table object, for which reason it’s called a sheet list table. (See Chapter 9 for information about tables.)
Use the following steps to create an automatic and automatically updateable sheet list table:
1.On the Sheet List tab of the Sheet Set Manager palette, double-click the sheet to which you want to add the drawing index.
AutoCAD opens the drawing for editing.
2.Right-click the sheet set name and choose Insert Sheet List Table.
The Insert Sheet List Table dialog box appears.
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3.If you’re not happy with the fonts, text heights, colors, or text alignment of the table in the Table Style Settings area, click the ellipsis button to open the Table Style dialog box, create and configure a new style, and then click Close to return to the Insert Sheet List Table dialog box.
Chapter 9 shows how to create table styles.
The default alignment for the data cells is Top Center. You may want to change it to Top Left (that is, align sheet numbers and titles left flush rather than centered).
4.If you want to change the number of columns, which data appear in each column, and what the column headings and table title say, use the Table Data Settings area to do so.
Click the Add button to create an additional column. Drop-down lists in the Column Settings area show the types of data that you can include in the table. (Double-click the entry in the Data Type column to display the drop-down list.) Much of the additional, optional data come from the Drawing Properties dialog box, which I describe in Chapter 3. (The Sheet Number, Title, Description, and Plot data all come from the sheet set properties.)
5.Click OK.
By default, AutoCAD displays a dialog box reminding you not to edit the sheet list table manually, because the Sheet Set Manager handles it automatically.
6.Click OK.
AutoCAD creates the table, and you drag it with the cursor.
7.Position the table where you want it and click.
AutoCAD places the table on the sheet. Each of the data cells is a field that gets its value from the sheet set properties (see Figure 14-7) or drawing properties.
After you make changes to the Sheet List, such as adding a sheet or editing a sheet title, select the table, right-click, and choose Update Sheet List Table. Now are computers great, or what?!
If you didn’t quite get the sheet list table properties right on the first try, select the table, right-click, and choose Edit Sheet List Table Settings.
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Figure 14-7:
An automatic sheet list created from a sheet set.
Although sheet sets are too new to know for sure, they’re poised to alter profoundly the way that people create and manage drawings in AutoCAD. Like all software innovations that increase the sophistication of a process and manage dependencies, sheet sets require some study, some configuration, and significant coordination on everyone’s part. (One good resource is the group of sheet sets tutorials in Help New Features Workshop.) In this case, those who expend the effort are likely to be well rewarded.
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Chapter 15
CAD Standards Rule
In This Chapter
Making the case for CAD standards
Choosing from existing standards
Rolling your own standards
Taking advantage of cool standards tools
If you’ve ever worked with other people to create a multichapter, visually complex, frequently updated text document, then you probably understand the importance of coordinating how everyone works on the parts of
the document. Even if you’re someone who churns out documents from your one-person office or lonely cubicle, you probably try to ensure a reasonably consistent look and feel in similar documents. You employ consistent fonts, the same company logo, and the same paper size in most documents — or if you don’t, you probably at least think that you should!
CAD exacts similar demands for reasonable consistency, only more so:
Most companies would like to take pride in the clarity and consistency of their drawings. Sloppy drawings with randomly varying text heights and lineweights don’t reflect well on you and make your drawings harder to read.
CAD drawings that don’t conform with some logically consistent scheme usually are harder to edit and to reuse by others who work on the project and by you when you work on other projects.
This stuff is important enough in CAD that it has a special name: CAD standards. Those people compulsive enough to fret about it all the time and sadistic enough to impose their fretting on others also have a special name: CAD managers. This chapter won’t turn you into a CAD manager — a reassurance you’re probably grateful for — but it does introduce the most important CAD standards issues. This chapter also suggests some ways to come up with your own simple CAD standards, in case you’re going it alone and don’t have the
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benefit of a ready-made company or project CAD standards document to guide you. The chapter ends with an overview of AutoCAD tools that can help you comply with and check conformity to CAD standards.
Why CAD Standards?
Throughout this book, I emphasize things like setting up your drawings properly, drawing objects on appropriate and consistent layers, and specifying suitable text fonts and heights. These practices amount to conforming to a CAD standard.
You need to do these things if you work with or exchange drawings with others. If you don’t, several bad things will happen. You’ll be pegged as a clueless newbie by experienced drafters, who understand the importance of CAD consistency. Even if your ego can handle the contempt, you’ll make everyone’s work slower and more difficult. And if the project has electronic drawing submittal requirements, you may find that your client rejects your DWG files and demands that you make them conform to the CAD standards in the contract.
Even if you work solo and don’t have any particular requirements imposed from outside, your own work will go more smoothly and look better if you adhere to a reasonably consistent way of doing things in AutoCAD. You’ll certainly find plotting easier and more predictable.
CAD standards originally grew out of a desire to achieve a graphical consistency on the plotted drawings that mirrored the graphical consistency on hand-drafted drawings. Before the days of CAD, most companies had manual drafting standards that specified standard lettering (text) sizes, dimension appearance, symbol shapes, and so on. Sometimes these standards were based on standard industry reference books, such as the Architectural Graphic Standards.
As CAD users became more sophisticated, they realized that CAD standards needed to incorporate more than just the look of the resulting plot. CAD drawings contain a lot more organizational depth than printed drawings — layers, screen colors, blocks, xrefs, text and dimension styles, and the like. If these things aren’t subject to a modicum of standardization; then different people who work on the same drawings or projects are likely to end up stumbling over — or throwing things at — one another.
In short, the first job of CAD standards is to impose some graphical consistency on plotted output. CAD standards also encourage consistency in the way that people create, assign properties to, organize, and display objects in the CAD file.
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The aesthetics of CAD
Manual drafting veterans frequently complain that CAD drawings don’t look as good as the drawings that they used to create by hand. “Too ‘flat,’ too cartoonish, and inconsistent” are some of the refrains that you hear. These complaints are not just the whining of old-timers. Good manual drafters were justifiably proud of the appearance of their drawings. They focused on making the finished bluelines look sharp and read well.
When computers and CAD software got into the act, it became easy for CAD drafters to focus on the screen image and pay less attention to the plotted output. In the early days, CAD users struggled with a new way of making drawings and didn’t have as much time to make them look
good. By the time that CAD became commonplace, a new crop of CAD users had grown up without the benefit of discovering how to make good-looking drawings on paper.
There’s no reason that CAD drawings can’t look as good as manual drawings. It’s a matter of understanding the look that you’re after and caring enough to want to achieve it. If you see some especially clear and elegant printed drawings, find out who drew them and take that person out to lunch. You’ll probably uncover some techniques that you can translate into making better CAD drawings. You may also gain new respect for the skills of those who made handsome and functional drawings with the simplest of tools.
Which CAD Standards?
If CAD standards are as important as I claim, you might expect that industries would’ve settled on a standardized way of doing things. No such luck. Although the manual drafting conventions in many professions have carried over to some degree into CAD, a lot of the things that need standardization have been left to the imagination of individual companies, departments, or people. For example, you’ll find that different companies usually name layers differently and employ different schemes for mapping object screen color to plotted lineweight (see Chapter 12). In particularly disorganized companies, you’ll find that different drafters use different layers and color-to-lineweight. And in the worst cases, the same drafter will do these things differently in different drawings!
As you can imagine, this proliferation of nonstandard standards makes sharing and reusing parts of CAD drawings a lot more difficult. You can at least minimize the pain within your own office by conforming to any existing CAD standards or, if there aren’t any, by encouraging the development of some. (Later in this chapter, I give some suggestions for how to get started.)