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Are you taking advantage of Fields?

What is a Field?

Fields are placeholders in a text string that are sourced from a data element or property value. Many of us have gotten accustomed to seeing a Drawing number automatically set in the Title Block, based on the file name. As shown below.

Sample Title Block using a Filename Field element to auto populate the Drawing number.

This is extremely useful for making sure you have the right drawing number in your title block. There are a number of advantages this offers. It prevents people from making a copy of the file and updating it instead of the actual drawing. Well it doesn’t actually prevent them from doing that, but then when they plot their file it stands out that it is a copy.

So if the file gets a new name, the drawing number automatically updates. Cuts down on confusion. It is pretty frustrating when you have two prints, that are different drawings but share the same drawing number. That will happen if someone copied the file and then failed to update the Title block Drawing number Attribute. What happens when you issue two different drawings with the same Drawing number? Ouch. That is a mess and I hope your Document control group catches that before sending it out to your client.

I think most of us can agree, that is a pretty cool feature. Fields have been around for a number of years now, 2005 I believe. That’s 15 years ago!

What else are they good for?

Fields can be expanded to use Sheet Set information and help keep more of your title block information more consistent. Project Name, Site Name, Project Site Location. All of those could be tied to an element in a sheet set or other property. I won’t dive to deeply into Sheet Sets or the other external properties you can take advantage in this Post, but recommend you look into what else you can do to take advantage of this feature. I will however talk about how you can take advantage of them in your drawing.

You can link data from one entity to another.

Sample Block Diagram using Field Data pulled from hidden text elements.

Above you can see the highlighted field area that are controlled by something else. These attributed blocks are automatically updated when a simple text string is updated. This will take your template to a whole new level, if done right.

So how do you set that up?

Fields are just another part of AutoCAD. The interface is not the most conducive for setting this up, but you can use AutoCAD straight out of the box and set this up. I have created some useful AutoLISP routines to make it more efficient, but I’ll show you how to do this with just AutoCAD.

First you will need the Source and the Destination AutoCAD entities present in your drawing.

S1 = The Instrument Type
S2 = The Tag Number Prefix
S3 = the Tag Number (minus prefix)

First lets get the S1 field Data to go into the ATTRIBUTE spot. Run the Field Command.

Select Object on the left side of the dialog.
Select the Select Object Button and then select the PT (Instrument Type) Attribute.
Next Select Value in the Middle (Property Column – Wow notice all those properties!) Then select Uppercase in the Right Column (Format – See the Preview). Highlight all the Text in the Field Expression Box, Right Click and Copy. Then Pick Cancel. (If you select OK AutoCAD will start placing an Mtext entity with the Field Expression as the text value. (you can hit cancel if you accidently hit OK)

Double Click on the ATTRIBUTE (Attribute Tag inside the Cable Tag Block) to edit the Value. and paste the value inside of it.

Notice the Value shows a Shaded PT in the Value Spot. That’s part 1 complete.

Next we need to repeat the process to get the other two parts of the CABLE Tag.

This one is slightly different as this entity is TEXT, so the Dataa we want is in the CONTENTS Property. Select Uppercase and Then highlight the Field Expression and right Click Copy.

Double click the Cable Tag Attribute (Currently showing PT).

Click in the Value Area and then make sure you are at the end of the text string type in a separator “-” and then paste the Field Value. Should now look like it appears above.

Let’s now get the third part of the Tag. Run the Fields Command and do the same steps but now pick the S3 (Source 3) Text Entity.

Now we have the Last part of the Cable Tag. Right Click and Copy. Make sure that Preview shows what you expect it to be “S3”

Double Click the Cable Tag Attribute and add the suffix (aka part 3).

Be sure to click to the end of the Value or you may erase the other two parts you worked so hard to get to. Add a separator “-” and then paste the next Field Expression (Ctl+C)

While we have the Last part Tag Number, we can go ahead and update the Instrument bubble to link to that value as well. Double Click on the ATT of the Instrument Bubble. and paste the value into the attribute.

Paste the same thing in this Attribute of the Instrument Bubble.

Ok That’s neat and all but that was a lot of work for two text values.

Yes it actually is. It would be way easier just to edit the values and be done. Would it? As we all know, change is inevitable. Copying is what we do a lot of, and consistency is king! Let’s copy 4 more instruments down. Update the Instrument Types to as shown below.

Make sure you copy the Instrument Tag, Cable and Tag as a group. Copying as a group creates new links associated with the new copies. Notice the Cable Tags have not changed. If you copied them right they will however actually be linked to the right Instrument Tag. If you copy something that has a link to another entity and that entity is being copied as well. AutoCAD will set the field data to be associated to the new entities. Pretty awesome feature. If you copy something that has a link to an entity that is not in the selection, then it leaves the field data association as is.

Why aren’t my cable tags updated?

There are a few things to understand about Fields. One the update based on the settings in the FIELDEVAL AutoCAD Variable.

Screen capture of the AutoCAD 2019 Help System for the FIELDEVAL System Variable. This is a Bitcode value so it means you can add the values together and make it work with multiple things considered. I Typically set mine to 31.

Once you have the FIELDEVAL set to Evaluate to at least include “Updated on regeneration,” Then you can simply do a REGEN or REGENALL to get the fields to evaluate the expressions.

Notice the Cable Tags are all updated properly.

Still more benefits. Change! The Project Just came back and updated the Site’s Prefix and the tag number for the instruments is now known. Site prefix is “PA-01” and the Tag Number the instruments share is 2003. Update the S2 Text string to “PA-01” ad the S3 Text String to “2003”. Regen and look at the results.

That was easy!

Now imagine if you used this in a wiring diagram and all your wire tags were linked to the instrument’s tag.

I hope this opens your eyes to some of the benefits FIELDS provide. If you do find you would like to start using fields, let me know and I can send you over a few useful routines for managing the field links much better than they FIELDS command.

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Naming Conventions

I originally posted this on linkedin, but thought it would be a good add for the Blog Site as well.

Good morning everyone. I wanted to touch base on Naming conventions. We use Names in everything we do to uniquely identify or categorize the things we work with. In CAD We have a number of areas that we can do better in our naming efforts. This is not a rule or standard, but more of a practice that I suggest you adopt when naming things.
What kind of things?
Layers Blocks Folders Filenames (Drawings, Models, Excel Files, Word Documents…) Tabs (Inside Excel and other documents like Layouts in AutoCAD)
And just about anything else.
Back in the days of DOS (Disk Operating System) we were restricted to filenames of 8 characters and a 3 character extension separated by a period. Something like thisfile.ext. Now imagine today’s content being limited to that structure.

Todays operating systems (discussing Windows Systems) allows us to use a large number of characters (255 of them) for our filenames. This does not include the folder structure path, but it can impact limits in other ways for the folder and begin to limit the actual filename length below 255 chars. Add in sharing files across the cloud or on different Operating systems, and it can become a challenge. This gives us an array of options when naming our files. Often times we just throw something out and hope it is unique enough and easy enough to relate to the subject matter. Problem is haphazard naming will often lead to issues later in some form or fashion. You might not see them, you might not know they are causing problems for you or someone else, but they eventually do.

Have you ever tried copying a bunch of files to another location and had the computer prompt you with a message filename invalid or truncated? Something like this..
No alt text provided for this image
Imagine if you will, that you are archiving a project and this pops up. How many files are in that project that this affects. How about if the project has 12000+ files. Imagine if it was just 5% (That is over 600+) of the files that you had to go back and “shorten” the file names before you could archive the project? How would you make the decision to rename files or even folders. What files have data links, or dependencies on those filenames and locations. In other words, what is going to break when you rename files or folders? What good is the archive at that point?

Hopefully that at least presented one good reason to develop some habits in your naming conventions.

Some other things to consider
a. Programming and automations systems – Often times special chars or naming limits become an issue
b. Databases – Special Chars and char lengths are important for these systems
c. Wild Card characters – Databases, search engines, operating systems use special chars as wild cards for searches
d. Search abilities – You want to be able to find things, not just you, but other people as well.
e. Memory limits for applications – Long Layer names and an abundance of them can cause AutoCAD to slow down, especially if you leave the layer Dialog box up.
Use names that make sense and work for the content
The following applies to more than just filenames.
Now for the part on suggestions for you to consider.
1. No special characters. Do not use things like a comma or period in the name unless it is for a good purpose
  a. Chars to avoid
    i. Parenthesis ()
 ii. Commas, single or double quotes and apostrophes ‘ , `“
  iii.Chars above numbers !@#$%^&*
  iv. Tilde and accents ~ `
  v. Greater than or Less Than < >
  vi. Question Mark ?
  vii. Vertical bar and Forward or Back Slash | / \
  viii. Curly or square brackets {} []
2. Avoid Spaces (Try using something like or similar to Camel Case, Capitalize first letter of each word and use no spaces)
  a. Samples of Camel Case (not getting into all the specifics)
   i. ThisIsCamelCase
  ii. DrawingForPiping
  iii.MyFile
  iv. MySpecialTab
3. Dashes and Underscores are ok, but can be distracting if over used.
4. Avoid adding redundant data if the file is a dwg file and you add Drawing to the file name it is redundant and not needed.
5. Consider Sorting
  a. If you want to sort by year for data put the year first 20190220(This sorts by Year Month day) instead of 02202019 (This sorts by Month day year)
 b. Sequential numbering. If you have 9 files 1 – 9 they will sort clean but as soon as you add 10 to the files it will sort with 1 then 10. Prefixing the sequence with 0’s will help the sorting process. If you know your max files will be less than 1000 then make sure you prefix with 0’s as needed to have a total of 3 chars in the sequence.
6. Avoid getting too long with your names.

Something else to consider is being consistent in your naming systems. It will help you find, sort and share your files much more efficiently

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Title Blocks – The start of a good drawing

Title Block Sample

Title Blocks are a critical portion of any drawing. They represent the area of presentation, the purpose of the drawing, and data about the drawings properties. The Title Block is a critical part of your drawing and it will set the pace for how your quality and presentation are perceived by the person reviewing your Drawing. That person reviewing your Drawing could be the person constructing your design, reviewing your design, approving your design. It could easily be the person paying for the design, your client. The Title Block is a very important part of your drawing. GET IT RIGHT!

Make it a BLOCK

Title Block should in the least be a BLOCK. It is right there in the name Title BLOCK. Creating a Title Block should be something well thought out and standardized. All the components of your Title Block should be within the Block definition of that Title Block.

Use good Block creation practices

Insertion Point: The recommended insertion point should be the lower left corner of the sheet size that the Title Block will print to. So if your drawing size is an ARCH D (24×36) Drawing. The insertion point should be 0,0 and the upper limit should be 36,24. You could draw a sheet outline an place it on a no plot layer if desired, but using Paperspace properly will actually show the paper size of the intended sheet.

Margins: Keep in mind you will want a margin on your drawing as well. So the Sheet edges is not the place for Line work or information you want to show up on a Drawing Print. The Left margin is often used for binding a set together and is usually larger thna the other margins. A typical margin set is 1.25″ from the Left, 0.5″ from the right, 0.5″ from the Bottom and 0.5″ from the top. Margins are something that vary quite a bit across title blocks. Find a good margin that works for what your content is. Maximizing your margins as close to the sheet size as possible is not recommended as you will find content loss when a printer or plotter can not print as close to the paper edge as desired.

Rotation: The Title Block Rotation should be appropriate to your industry. My industry the title block is in Landscape, hence the 36,24 for the upper right corner, referenced above. When inserted at 0 rotation the Title Block should come in as desired.

Layers: Your Title Block will be in every Drawing of the project. Keep your layers to a minimum, keep colors, line weights, and linetypes to BYLAYER Settings. This allows for flexibility down the road. Think about plotting, different Color Tables, different Disciplines, Display of certain Title Block Elements…

Use Attributes: Text that is not meant to change in the Title Block can be plain Text, it will remain Static within a block, but attributes are the best things to use for the Dynamic Text content in your Title Block. You can set these up as fields to link these to drawing properties (a common one is to link the filename to the Drawing Number. (This all depends on your document numbering and file naming standards, you have those, right?) Attributes can easily be extracted, linked to properties in Sheet Set Manager or tied to a database system. With consistent data, you could easily generate a Drawing index or Drawing Status Report from that data, directly from your Title Block data! Attribute tags (names) should all be unique.

Text Styles: Non-Standard Fonts are not always available to every user, Try and make use of standard fonts and text styles. Highly recommend setting up and Text Styles specific for your border, so plotting and display are not affected by user updates to body text styles used. If you make use of standard text style for your title block with a different font, you could lose the formatting you had intended. See images below.

Disclaimer Text as intended to look.
Disclaimer Text after a simple style update from Romans to TXT

Revision Information: Revision History is an important part of a Title Block. Revision History can be part of the Main Title Block or it can be a separate block inserted into a designate are of the Title Block. My personal preference is to keep the Revision History Attribute data associated within the Main Title Block. Just make sure you set your Prompt Order is right.

Attribute Prompt Order: Attributes are great to use, but if your attribute prompt order is all out of whack it may cause frustration and lead to someone just placing text in your border. Not a good idea. When creating your block be sure to select the attributes in the order you want to be prompted for them. If you mess up the order, you can use BATTMAN to adjust the order, just make sure you set this up properly before using the Title Block on several hundred drawings. Keep in mind if you do, you at least can automate updating all those drawings, because you have a standard Title Block.

Drawing Information: Each industry will have its own required data elements. I recommend the following as a minimum.

Drawing Number
Revision (current issue of the drawing)
Project Name
Project Location
Project Number
Drawing Title Line 1
Drawing Title Line 2
Drawing Title Line 3
Drawing Title Line 4
Scale (Scale Factor of the Drawing)
Drawn Date (Date Drawing was started)
Drawn By (Initials or name of person that created drawing)

There are many more you could add (approvals, stamped by, engineer…)

Plot Stamp: A plot or file stamp will show some basic information that is useful that may or may not be evident in the title block data. A plot stamp will typically show the date the file was plotted, who it was plotted by, who the file was saved by and when, and sometimes the filename including the path. The plot stamp can easily be static text with fields within the Title Block. It does not have to be an attribute.

Plot or File Stamp

Title Block Name: The Name you give your Title Block is important. Use a defining name that uniquely identifies your Title Block. A generic name like “BORDER” could easily be the same as another block, and create a conflict in the drawing. If someone inserts another BORDER block into their drawing and accepts the Re-Define, then your Title Block suddenly looks like whatever the user is inserting. I recommend combining a few things to name your Title Block Name like CompanyName, sheet size, year created.
Example: ABCDrafting-ArchD-2020

Logos: Company Logos often make a Title Block look all that more professional. Problem is most Logos are Raster based images. I highly recommend NEVER EVER placing Images in your drawing files. Take the Time to create the Logo in AutoCAD and Create a separate block for the Logo. You can insert the Logo block directly into your Title Block or you can place it in the drawing in an area of the Title Block. Either way works. I personally place it within the Title Block Definition, so it is part of the Title Block. The benefit of having the log as it’s own block means if you ever get a new logo, you simply redefine the block and you are done. Easily automated as well.

Plotting: Your border is intended to plot to a specific size, and it should be plotted to that size. Not “FIT” Your scale should be 1=1, if you are plotting from Paperspace. This insures a scale factor reference is accurate. If you want to plot a drawing to a B-Size printer that is fine “FIT” works for that, but the sheet size for that page layout should properly be set to the drawings actual sheet size. If your drawing Sheet size is ARCH D (24×36) That is the size you should print to, even if you are plotting to a PDF file. Use the correct size, otherwise scaling is inaccurate and could lead to bid or construction errors. A scale bar on the drawing is often helpful in those cases.

Block Size: Your Title Block will be used in all your projects drawings, This could be 10 drawings it could be thousands. When you write the block to a file, you can see how big the file is in Bytes. A typical Drawing size (excluding complicated models) should be around 100-300K including your Title Block. The goal is to make your Title Block as least impactful on the drawing size as possible. A Basic Title Block (without a logo) can be around 30-50K. Adding a logo, depends on the complexity can easily bump that up above 100K. try and avoid that. Work on your logo to adequately show the logo, but also not be over detailed that it affects the drawing size significantly. Purge the Title Block File of anything unused. You can store some standard layers in the Title Block if Desired, just don’t go crazy.

A properly setup Title block can make your life as a Drafter much less complicated and present you and your company in a much more professional way. Quality and consistency start with that Title Block.

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Hello Everyone!

Welcome to SeeMSixty7, a place to discuss AutoCAD, Databases, Development and More. We don’t have to limit ourselves to just AutoCAD, though CAD in General.

Where to Start…. Why Start this Blog? Well I’m frustrated and disappointed in the direction of Drafting/Design. Over the years it seems quality has gone down, in my opinion. So let’s open that up for discussion. Keep in mind this is not a debate, just a place to talk about how to improve our industry.

AutoCAD has grown into a powerful CAD system that offers tons of features and abilities. Drafting in the last 10 years though has not improved as a result, from what I have seen. I believe there are a number of factors that are influencing this trend; younger drafters that have not been properly mentored or trained; offshoring to places like India; data driven systems that produce drawings; older designers that never really learned CAD efficiently. There are more, but I think those are the big ones.

Younger Drafters typically learn AutoCAD and have the belief this now makes them a drafter. Not quite. Drafting has evolved over the years in so many ways and has so many guidelines and semi-standards that should be followed. Keep in mind drafting in one industry compared to another may in fact contradict each other’s standards. The problem is made worse when a young drafter holds a position as a drafter for a year, and suddenly believes they are now a designer or worse senior designer. Reality is you are setting yourself up to fail if that is the case. Do your time and become a good drafter, before taking on being a designer. Your time drafting and better understanding of what you are presenting will help you be better at both. Learn from the older guys. they might not be the best at CAD, but they should be better at the design and the drafting. Something else to keep in mind, Engineers are not drafters, and unless they started as a drafter, they probably are not the best at instructing you on how you should draft or present your content on the drawing. That is not a knock against Engineers, but they are typically engineers because they are good at engineering, not drafting!

Offshoring to India is  sore subject when we see jobs leaving our cities to go to another country. Typically the people that trained many of those in India were designers/drafters who were reluctant to teach them how to draft, and frankly probably wanted them to fail. This is not a knock against the drafters in India or the people of India in any way. It is just a fact that people don’t like to train their replacement and then get laid off. I’m going to avoid the political points on all of this, but from what I have seen, the results coming out of India are the same as the previous paragraph, lack of experience in drafting and design. Quality is still not where it needs to be.

Data Driven systems that produce ISO’s, Loops, P&ID’s, One-Lines, Wiring Diagrams… I have been automating drawing processes for nearly 30 years. I created Loop generators from lotus 123/excel data back in 89. I Managed to generate over a thousand loops in a few hours. Keep in mind 286 processor with 2 MB of RAM back then. It wasn’t exactly fast. They were good looking Loops too, because I worked the templates to be clean, I knew the format of the data, I knew all the nuisances that would come up and wrote my code to compensate. Data Systems are typically taken out of the box, and data thrown into them and drawings start spitting out. These systems are written to fit a generic template or layout with a particular data format that works with the generic. When you tweak the data formats, the data model input into the system you tend to blow that consistency up, resulting in poor quality drawings. Automated systems are great. I love them, but they need so be flexible enough and the time needs to be taken to properly implement them.

Old Guys, of which now I’m either in that group or pretty close to it. LOL. I’m still in denial on that. Some of the “more experienced” designers started on the board, and begrudgingly moved into CAD in the late 80’s and early 90’s. I personally started on CAD and did some board drafting. I have a lot of respect for the board drafters, some serious skill and tedious efforts in that. Some took to CAD like a fish to water, others adapted as best they could. Keep in mind they didn’t grow up with  computer in the house. Technology was added much later in their years. Some it is natural, and some it isn’t. These are the people you can learn from. Appreciate their opinions, just because you know more about CAD than they do, does not mean you know more about drafting/design than they do. My father once told me. “You can always learn something from someone, and there is always someone that knows more than you do.” The “more experienced” can also learn some CAD from the “less experienced.”

This has been a lengthy intro, but hopefully we can start some good dialog and start sharing knowledge to make us all better. Thank you for participating. Create a login and start contributing. I will be sharing a wealth of information, tools and best practices with blog members.