Posted on

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

Posted on

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.

Posted on

CAD Basics 101 – Drawing Cleanup

Drawing Cleanup is another important aspect of being a good CAD Drafter. Your drawing can start from scratch or from existing drawings. Most of the time it is the latter and we inherit someone else’s mess. This post we will talk about some of the things that can be done to clean your drawing up, before it gets copied across and entire project. How do you clean a drawing? What exactly are we cleaning in our drawing? Our drawing file is essentially a self-contained database. As with any database, it will perform better if it is optimized or free of clutter. Here are just some things that can clutter your drawing.

Empty Text – Text with nothing but spaces.
Empty block references – a hidden block (empty attributes of points)
Nested Block References
Proxy entities or records – Third party custom objects.
Linetypes
Text Styles
Annotation Scales
Wipeouts
Layers
Dimension Styles
Table Styles
Points (Nodes) – use PDMODE and PDSIZE to find these
The List goes on and on…

Here are a few things to consider to help clean up or keep your drawing cleaner.

PURGE COMMAND

PURGE can be used to remove things like Empty text strings from the drawing, Unused layers, block, linetypes, text styles and more. PURGE is pretty much the easiest step to take towards a clean drawing. Keep in mind that you may need to purge a few times because of nesting of objects. If block A has 5 layers defined in it, and you purge block A from the drawing , then it leaves behind the 5 layers. There is an option for purging nested objects, but just know PURGE is a multi-depth process. When PURGE no longer offers anything to purge, then you are done with PURGE.

Tip: If you ever get an older drawing that you think might have empty text strings and want to see just how bad it is, use the QTEXT command and turn QTEXT on. Then REGEN the drawing, zoom extents and see what kind of trash is in the drawing. QTEXT places a box around the contents of text without displaying any fonts. It was used on early releases of AutoCAD to provide faster Regen and redraw times.

SCALELISTEDIT

ANNOTATIVE Scale Factors can be removed from a drawing using SCALELISTEDIT. Why remove scales from the list? SCALELISTS can grow to a massive number of entries, causing more processing on AutoCAD’s part. Every time you reference a drawing or insert a block you have the potential to add more and more entries. There are automated routines out there to help facilitate cleaning these from your drawings. There are a number of tools on the internet to help assist in automatically purging extra scales from your drawings.

 TFRAMES

WIPEOUTS are invisible and often end up driving someone crazy. A less experienced user may open a drawing and plot it. Then notice there is a hole or a portion of something not plotting. They look in the drawing to see and all looks good. They plot again and again. A Wipeout is covering something and can’t be found. The TFRAMES command will allow you to make your WIPEOUTS visible. Review the WIPEOUTS and remove the ones that are not desired. TFRAMES is a Toggle to Toggle a frame to show the wipeout. Sometimes it takes a REGEN to see them, sometimes TFRAMES just doesn’t work. If you find there is no difference, exit AutoCAD and get back in and try again.

How to Find Invisible Blocks

What happens when you have that one block that just won’t go away? This is where you have to do a little detective work. Sometimes it is easy and it is just a hidden block that is nothing more than a block that contains hidden attributes, but nothing you can actually see on the screen. You can use the ATTDISP setting and set Attribute display to ON. ATTDISP set to ON will force hidden attributes to show on the screen, but if the attributes themselves have nothing in them, you still won’t see them. If you set QTEXT to ON and REGEN, then the blank attributes inside the block will show up. Often Third Party software systems will create these for tracking or initializing the drawing. If it is just one and you know it is part of your Software system then leave it, but if you find multiples, you may want to get rid of the extras and let the Third Party software reset itself.

Tip: Another quick way to find out how many times a block is in a drawing, is to use AutoLISP to find them. Start the SELECT command (or any command that you select objects with) and type the following:

(SSGET “X” ‘((0 . “INSERT”)(2 . “BLKNAME”)))[Enter]

Replace BLKNAME with your block name you are looking for. This will add all occurrences of that block to you selection set, note that different space selections will show they were excluded from the selection set. Visit my AutoLISP Teaser Post if you want to play with some more AutoLISP.

Extra blocks

Some other issues that can cause problems is when a user uses the Clipboard copy methods and paste as block. This creates an auto generated blockname that typically looks like A$7EDF1341A. You can easily end up with lots of these blocks that may just be nested blocks. Often times the user may just wish to copy a block from one drawing to another, so they think, copy as block. Unfortunately that is not exactly what happens when selecting copy as block. What happens with that approach is AutoCAD creates a nested block that contains the block you selected and creates a new auto generated block name for your new block. To do this operation properly, simply select a block in Drawing A (it is already a block) simply Ctl-Shift+C (Copy with basepoint); select the insertion point of the block. If INS osnap does not show, then it is probably not a block. Then select the block and press enter. Open up the destination drawing (Drawing B) and simply use Ctl+V (Paste) pick your insertion point and you are done. The only block definition is the one you wanted. If you find lots of Auto generated Block Names in your drawing you will want to check their block definition and if they are just nested blocks, explode them to un-nest them. Then you can purge the Auto generated block. If the block is comprised of entities and such that are desired to be a block, then use the RENAME command to rename the block to an appropriate name.

PROXY Entities – Hate em’

Proxy objects are essentially custom objects (graphical and non-graphical) that were defined and created by a Third party application that is not currently loaded into AutoCAD. Keep in mind that could be an AutoDesk AutoCAD-addon application too. Custom Objects come from Applications like CADWorx or AutoCAD Civil or… To get rid of the proxy you will want to load the correct object enabler for the object. When you see the dialog box stating proxies, you will also see what application it is looking for in the list, so don’t just dismiss it. Review it and find the correct enabler. If you do not want the proxies in your drawing but you want the graphics they represent, you will need to use the enabler’s exporttocad ability. Each enabler does not necessarily provide this functionality. You will need to research it and find out the correct command name to do so. I’ll probably write a post on this later. Once you rid your drawing of them, then you should be in pretty good shape for that drawing. Proxy objects prevent things like Wblock, or Binding Xrefs and can easily propagate into other drawings if you don’t take care of them.

What else?

There are a number of other things, Microstation linetype issues, Annonomous groups, and more that can get in to your drawing and make it a nightmare to just pass on and inherit to multitudes of other drawings, so always start with a fresh drawing and copy just what you want from existing drawings. Save it and check the drawing size. If it gets large quick, you may have copied in something corrupt. Work through what you copied and try and isolate what or where the corruption is. Since things like Drawing Templates or Title Blocks are used throughout projects it is VERY IMPORTANT to make sure these drawings are CLEAN.

AutoCAD Drawing files have become very complex with all the new features that AutoDesk keeps adding into AutoCAD. I did not cover everything here, but I tried to cover some of the most common things. Do your best to avoid passing on corruption or trash in your drawings. This will improve quality and keep your system operating more efficiently.

Posted on

CAD Basics 101 – Plotting to PDF

I just read that one of the features of AutoCAD 2018 will be better PDF plotting features. As our industry has migrated more and more toward electronic distribution. The PDF file format has become the standard format for transmitting in electronic format. Benefits of Electronic distribution include just about instant access for those you are issuing the drawings to, cost savings on large distributions lists, electronic features, and more. Let’s talk about some basics that need to be addressed on PDF files: size, quality, and use. Size of the PDF should be the intended actual size the drawing was originally created for. The quality of the drawing should be as good or better than the printed formatted would have been. The practical use of your PDF file will be for review on a computer screen, printed at full size, printed as a reduced print, and used for archiving purposes. It is significantly important to make sure your delivered PDF file meets all of these with best possible results.

Plotting to a PDF is relatively easy, but there are some things to consider that are often overlooked. PDF Size, Not File Size, is important to understand and get right. If your drawing is an ANSI D size sheet, then you need to plot to an ANSI D size sheet PDF file. Plot to fit is not a deliverable when dealing with scaled drawings. Your deliverable is a Drawing, if that Drawing is a scaled drawing of 1/4″=1’-0”on a sheet size of 22”x34”, then your PDF file should be 22”x34” and be plotted to 1/4″ = 1’-0”. If using paper space settings, your plot scale is 1=1. Some would argue that plotting to 11×17 results in the same thing it’s just half scale. True, but since your sheet size is 22×34 you would need to pick FIT to 11×22 and depend on AutoCAD to fit the sheet size into 11×17 or actually print at a scale of 2=1. Are your setting correct? Did you catch everything was anything sticking outside of the limits, extents, was your windows set correctly. All of these factors affect the drawing when you plot to fit. Truth is your drawing is actual size, and since your deliverable is now a PDF, it should also accurately represent that drawing size. It is easy enough to print that pdf to 11×17 by your client, so no need to worry about delivering a separate set of 11×17 PDF’s. Proper Size drawing file helps insure quality. You are professionals, take pride in your work.

Taking pride in your work is another part of being a good drafter. When you plot that drawing out, it should look as intended. Your elements on the drawing should stand out as priority for your discipline. The background should not be overwhelming your content, but present enough information that the content is clear. Printing to PDF means your client or end user will be printing from that PDF. Printing from AutoCAD your files may look great. Then you send it to PDF and never look back and suddenly your end user can’t distinguish pipe from concrete in the drawing. Wipeouts, text masks, lineweights, dimensions, Title Blocks, Logos, solids, hatch patterns can all be affected in a PDF print. When setting up your Pen settings, Layers, processes or things like wipeouts, lineweights and such; it is important to make sure that they print cleanly from AutoCAD directly to your printer, and PDF. Send that PDF to the same printer, how do they compare? If your AutoCAD plot looks great and your PDF looks like trash, what will your end user see? Exactly, the trash! Follow through and make sure your drawing looks as intended. Too many times I have seen people print to a PDF and send it to a client only to find out their client’s printer prints black masks over all the wipeouts in the drawing. Imagine how that looks.

Tip: If you select True Colors for your Layers or an entity, there will not be an associated Pen setting to go with it. If all pens are set to black the true colors will plot in color, or grey scale on a B&W printer. Sometimes this is a cool way to highlight Project, company or client Logo. This could cause issues though if you are trying to figure out why one entity is plotting in color. Unless your drawing is a color drawing the content should be black and white.

Consider all the uses of your PDF file. Who will use them? How will they be used? What will they do with them? It is simple to understand that you will send the file electronically to the distribution list and everyone that needs to print it will print it. Right? Basically, that is true, but there is more. Is your PDF file searchable? Is the text in the PDF able to be recognized? Document control systems offer the ability to scan through thousands of documents and find that one file you were looking for by some simple text string. Make sure your drawing is friendly for searchable text. We already discussed the importance of accurate scaling. Another reason it is important is the scale is often still measured off printed drawings. If you scale your drawing to fit you lose the accuracy of your scale. Material take offs, or estimates can be very misleading if your drawings are incorrectly sized. Accuracy is important here. MTO’s allow the people building what you drew to procure the proper materials needed to do so. Make that information easy for them to get. PDF Files now have layer control as well, are you taking advantage of that? Keep in mind if you do start sending your layers over via PDF, you may find you want to have a clean set of layers in your drawing as well. Your files will be plotted and used to build buy, the will also be archived and kept around for years to come. Keep in mind you may very well come across a drawing you did 20 years ago, and smile at your work.

Deliver the best product you can to your end user. The PDF becomes your deliverable, ultimately you may or may not deliver the DWG file, but both are a reflection of your work. Before you send out your PDF’s, a good practice is to print them and review each of them. Batch Plotting and PDF files can often uncover some drawing issues and blindly sending those files out could prove embarrassing not only for you, but for the company your drawing is representing.

Posted on

CAD Basics 101 – Snap, OSnaps and Ortho

AutoCAD is as precise as you are when you are drawing. AutoCAD, last time I checked (which was long time ago) can actually handle up to 16 point decimal accuracy (It only displays 8). That’s pretty damn accurate if you ask me. Most of the time for the drawings I deal with 32nd of an inch is accurate enough. With tools like SNAP, OSnaps and Ortho, why would we find something that has a decimal value of something like 0.03570045687123. WHY? WHY? I ASK YOU, WHY? No reason. Excluding Metric conversions, and some occasional vendor data that have odd dimensional data. Let’s talk about these three very useful tools to help you draw more accurately and improve the quality of your drawings.

Snap allows you to set an incremental distance that the crosshairs move. Typically mine is set to 1/32nd of an inch. If I find myself needing to land in between that I use half of that 1/64th. Using Snap will prevent you from drawing on really oddball points. It always stuns the person when they tell me everything they draw is on 1/16th or 1/32nd and they don’t use snap. How does that work. Well it is actually simple. It’s called rounding. If your units are set to inches and architectural and your accuracy is set to 1/16th or 1/32nd, guess what will show up when you check the coordinate, or distance. Measurements are always shown based on your accuracy level in UNITS or Dimension styles. When you set your Units to Decimal with a decimal place of 8 decimals, then check that coordinate or distance, suddenly it makes sense. What read 1/8” before now read 0.125677301 or something like that. 1/8” is equal to 0.125” no more no less. Snap is simple enough to use F9 toggles it off and on.  Get in the habit of checking your drawing at setup. Establish a Snap length that works well for your drawing type. Check with your company standards or your drafting manager. Verify it.

TIP: Pair Snap with your Grid Settings and you will have a really good environment to producing better quality drawings.

Often times we work with existing drawings. Existing drawings brings work from others that might not be as disciplined as yourself. They may not know what snap or OSnap is. They may have just pulled up AutoCAD and started picking points, or the drawing may be the compilation of 20 years of copy, paste, modify from 10 to 20+ people working on it. The beauty of OSnaps is you can pick which one you want or use a preset setting of them to draw with. If you set Endpoint, MidPoint, and Intersection on, then AutoCAD will find the closet one that matches when you hover over an object or objects. Takes the guess work out. If you know you want the Endpoint, you can type it in at the command prompt, which is how I do all my OSnaps (yes, I type a lot), then AutoCAD will select the endpoint nearest to where you pick. F3 toggles OSnaps on and off. OSNAPS Command will pop up the Dialog box to let you set your default OSnaps.

TIP: An OSnap you might not know of is M2P (midpoint of 2 points). If you have a box or rectangle. How do you get the center point of that box. You can use M2P, then when it prompts for first point pick the ENDPoint of one corner and the second point will be the opposite (not one of the adjacent) corner of the box. The point returned is the center point of the box. You could also use POINT filters to do the same if you desired. Look that up. They come in very handy.

Ortho Mode basically means a straight line along the current axis. Most of the time this will be along the X plane or the Y plane, but keep in mind you can rotate your crosshairs using snap angle or even about a UCS. Keep in mind that if you use snapang, that your snap setting applies to the angle, so the snaps most likely won’t be where you thought they would be. That gives you some pretty good flexibility to draw a perfectly straight lines at any angle. For the most part though they will be along one of the AXIS, that can be X, Y or Z. The Toggle for Ortho is F8. Practice using this setting. You can pick a point and then try and line up the crosshairs so it looks straight and pick your next point, and it very well may look straight, but unless Ortho is on or Snap is on, it is highly probable the line is not actually straight. To verify, set your units to decimal and accuracy to 8 decimal places, then list the line. Check the points that should match, do they?

Snap, OSnaps, and Ortho are all great tools to help you draw better and more accurately. AutoCAD is not MS Paint after all. You can draw with precision and should. Remember if you are getting paid to use CAD. You are a professional, so be professional and produce quality consistent drawings. Like, share and / or comment. Let me know how I’m doing. Let me know if you have some topics you would like me to discuss.

Posted on

CAD Basics 101 – Scales Part 4 (Paperspace)

This is the Last part of Scale factors. Today we will discuss Paperspace and how scale factors work with Paperspace. Paperspace is a feature that was added to AutoCAD R11, That’s R11 in 1990 and not 2011. R11 also introduced ADS (AutoCAD Development System) a C programming interface that extended the AutoCAD API significantly and eventually migrated to what is now ARX (AutoCAD Runtime Extensions) a C++ programming interface. Sorry, I started down another tangent there. Back on track. So Paperspace introduced a whole lot of different ways to present your data, but for the most part, people left it alone and continued utilizing only Modelspace.

Paperspace was slow to start and if I remember right a Regen occurred at every zoom. This was painful on slower 286 and 386 systems. Fast forward to today and Paperspace has evolved significantly over the years. It has been abused and exploited in ways probably not intended by AutoDesk. For the purpose of this post I will stick to talking about a single Paperspace tab. Paperspace allows you to use your titleblock in a space that actually represents the printed media you intend for your drawing to be printed on. This means 1/4″ text is actually 1/4″ in Paperspace. This also means that symbols placed in Paperspace are inserted at a scale of 1. Some symbols are appropriate for Paperspace and some are better left in Modelspace. So for the most part there is no scale factor applied to your objects in Paperspace, this does not include scaling to compensate for unit conversions handled by AutoCAD in the background.

So, where does the inverse scale factor, presented in Part 3, come in? The Inverse scale factor is used when setting up your viewports inside Paperspace. A Viewport is essentially a window that allows for zoom levels. You could also think of it as a camera lens if you like. Your viewport is typically a small polygonal area, typically a rectangle that can be used to show Modelspace content on your paperspace drawing area. This is accomplished by creating a viewport using the MVIEW command. Once created your viewport will typically zoom the extents of the Modelspace and show that in your viewport. Your viewport can be set to a desired scale. Click on the viewport and look at the properties of that viewport. Near the bottom of the properties you will see standard scale and below that custom scale. If you do not see your scale factor in the standard scale drop down you can simply type in the inverse value of your scale in the custom scale input box. The list of scales presented in the standard scale is based on what scales are loaded into your current drawing. Drawings often have the extra scales purged to reduce file size. If you don’t see your scale in the list and want it you can use the SCALELISTEDIT command to add or delete scales. Once the scale factor is set. AutoCAD will zoom to the level based on the center of the viewport.

With your viewport set to the correct scale factor, you should now see your drawing as it will look when plotted. So how do you control what’s in the viewport. What if you have matchlines that you need to match, what if you have a particular area you want to show inside your viewport. There are a number of ways to configure your viewport to show where and what you want. If your matchline area is already in Modelspace and your viewport is proportional in size and proper scale to the matchlines, then you simply double click inside the viewport to make it active and use the ZOOM command with the Window option and pick the lower left and upper right corners to define your view, use your OSNAPS. Then switch back to Paperspace and set the viewport properties to locked to avoid shifting your view. “what if my viewport doesn’t match my macthlines?” You either make the matchlines match the viewport or the viewport match the matchlines. How? Let’s assume you want the viewport to match the matchlines.

Let’s talk about how to get the matchlines and the viewport to match proportionally and by scale, then talk about an easy way to make them match. Measure your matchlines rectangle, let’s stick with some easy ones say X direction is 100’ and Y direction is 50’. Our scale for this drawing is 1/4″ = 1’-0” meaning we have a 48 scale factor and a 1/48th inverse sale factor. This tells us that to find out how big our viewport dimensions need to be X distance is (100’ times 1/48th ) and our Y distance is (50’ times 1/48th). In this case that is X=25” and Y = 12.5”. Remember that we have to convert feet to inches before multiplying. Otherwise your measurement will result in a feet and decimal foot measurement. 12.5” would be 1.042’ hardly something we want to use as our measurement because there is a rounding issue involved. Inches are much better to work with than decimal feet. Yes Mappers will disagree, grin. Now just use the grips of the viewport to match the size we need. You can draw a box around your viewport and match it, or use lines to offset it, or use coordinates to get it there, but you will need to get the viewport to match the measurements.

Yes there are easier ways. You don’t even have to know the measurements of your matchlines. One simple way is to use Ctl-Shift+C to copy your matchlines with a base point, preferably lower left corner, and hopefully it is a closed polyline. Switch over to Paperspace, Ctl+v to paste it at the lower left corner of your viewport. Use the Scale command to scale the “Last” object and select the lower left corner. Then either use scale by reference (48 : 1) or provide the inverse scale factor of 0.02083333. Personally I would use the Scale by reference as it will be more accurate. 0.02083333 is a run on decimal and we obviously can’t run it out forever. Yes there are a number of alternate methods. I suggest you get familiar with different ways and discover which one works best for you. The outcome is the same regardless, or should I say the desired outcome. Hints at another method is CHSPACE command, but your viewport should be large enough to contain the object you are changing space from. Keep in mind it will move the object selected to Paperspace, so if you want to keep the Modelspace object, use a copy of it to move to Paperspace.

Hopefully this has been educational for you or has the potential to be useful to someone you know. This concludes the scale factor 4 part post. Take a look back if you missed any of them. Please comment and share.

Posted on

CAD Basics 101 – Scale factor Part 3

Now that we know how to get a scale factor for our drawing, how do we know which scale to use? Luckily there are standard scales to be used. Engineering, Architectural, Metric are some of the more common ones in use and are actually physical tools for measuring distances on actual drawings. If you have been in design or drafting for any length of time you have seen one. These are standards that we need to maintain and use. Yes we could make up our own to better suit our drawing or fit closer to the title block size, BUT we will avoid doing that, as it will cause problems and issues later.

One of my favorite sayings is “Just because you can do something, does not mean you should.” This is also why I am writing these blogs, to help educate some of the best practices in our industry and hopefully help my readers better understand and share the purpose of them.

Let’s talk Architectural Scales: You have heard 1/4″ = 1’-0” in my previous posts. That is an Architectural scale. Pretty easily to identify as it has inches and to a foot ratio. Here they are:

Standard Scales Scale Factor Inverse Scale Factor (used in paper space)
3” = 1’-0” 4 1/4th or 0.25
1-1/2” = 1’-0” 8 1/8th or 0.125
1” = 1’-0” 12 1/12th or 0.0833333
3/4″ = 1’-0” 16 1/16th or 0.0625
1/2” = 1’-0” 24 1/24th or 0.0416667
3/8” = 1’-0” 32 1/32nd or 0.03125
1/4″ = 1’-0” 48 1/48th or 0.0208333
3/16” = 1’-0” 64 1/64th or 0.015625
1/8” = 1’-0” 96 1/96th or 0.1041667
3/32” = 1’-0” 128 1/128th or 0.0078125
1/16” = 1’-0” 192 1/192nd or0.00520833

 

We will get to Paperspace next post, but I wanted to list those values used in paper space here.

Engineering scales are recognized by 1” equaling a multiple of 10’. Standard Engineering scales are:

Standard Scales Scale Factor Inverse Scale Factor (used in paper space)
1” = 10’ 120 1/120th or 0.0083333
1” = 20’ 240 1/240th or 0.0041667
1” = 30’ 360 1/360th or 0.0027778
1” = 40’ 480 1/480th or 0.0020833
1” = 50’ 600 1/600th or 0.0016667
1” = 60’ 720 1/720th or 0.0013889
1” = 100’ 1200 1/1200th or 0.0008333
1” = 200’ 2400 1/2400th or 0.0004167

 

Metric Scales are pretty nice as the metric system is based on factors of 10. Metric Scales offer something the other scales don’t. You can mix and match the units as they fit your need. Typically they are used as in mm to meters, but can be adjusted to be any metric distance measurements to any metric distance unit. Common Metric Scales are (using millimeters to millimeters to avoid any confusion:

Standard Scales Scale Factor Inverse Scale Factor (used in paper space)
1mm = 20mm 20 1/20th or 0.05
1mm = 25mm 25 1/25th or 0.04
1mm = 50mm 50 1/50th or 0.02
1mm = 75mm 75 1/75th or 0.0133333
1mm = 100mm 100 1/100th or 0.01
1mm = 125mm 125 1/125th or 0.008
1mm = 200mm 200 1/200th or 0.005
1mm = 250mm 250 1/250th or 0.004
1mm = 300mm 300 1/300th or 0.0033333
1mm = 400mm 400 1/400th or 0.0025
1mm = 500mm 500 1/500th or 0.002

 

Keep in mind if you start mixing the metric units, you will need to increase or decrease the values in the table accordingly. For instance if you said 1mm = 1m that would not b1 1=1 that would be 1 = 100. So if you applied the same 1mm = 100m scale you would need to increase the value in meters to be 10000. Because there are 100mm in every meter. So keep that part in mind the above table is mm to mm.

Note: There are different units you can apply to your drawing as well in AutoCAD. The system Variable INSUNITS controls what unit setting your drawing is using. You can access it or change it easily via the UNITS command. This allows AutoCAD to automatically apply unit conversions when inserting or referencing different drawings into your drawing.

Now we see a number of different STANDARD Scales we can use in our drawings. Stick with these and it will improve the quality of and make your drawings easier to use and manage.

A few reasons:

  • Industry standards already in place
  • More likely to have tools, physical and automated systems are more likely to work with standards
  • Drawing quality and consistency

Next up is Paperspace and how all this comes together.

Posted on

CAD Basics 101 – Scale factor Part 2

So, we have a Model needs a border with a scale factor of 48. Where else do we use this scale factor? Symbols, Text heights, Dimensions, Leaders, Linetype scaling, line work settings, Grid and snap settings and don’t forget plotting your drawing, and more I’m sure. I won’t go over every possibility, but will cover some to make sure we understand the concept. In another post I will help those of you that are wanting to learn more about automating with AutoLISP or other AutoCAD API’s, develop your own setup commands to help set drawings up consistently and take some of the headache out.

A Symbol is typically something that is used in drafting to represent something that otherwise might not stand out in a drawing. Things like a North Arrow, Section Marks, Material Bubbles, Receptacles, Lights, Welding callouts, and so much more. If your standard North arrow is 1.5” long on your drawing, then you want it to appear that way on every drawing. I will write another post on which way is up later, lot of debate on something that should be simple. Back on track… The North Arrow will be scaled consistently in your drawing to match the scale factor of the title block you are using or the scale factor of the drawing as established earlier. Keep in mind we are still not discussing Paperspace. We are focusing on understanding model space for the time being. It is also a good practice to maintain a position relatively close to the same spot on the drawings. You figure out the distance and the multiply that by the various scale factors of your drawings and they all come out the same, regardless of scale. It is important to start with a 1=1 drawing and figure out where it goes.

Text can get a little more depth, but it is the same principal as we discussed in the previous post. Take the desired plot size for the media you are printing to. Multiply that by the scale factor and that is the height of your text. I highly recommend setting up styles for each text height. At one point we had Leroy styles to match as close as possible to the Leroy pen sets that were used in manual drafting. This concept was very beneficial, because, when pen plotters took forever to plot a drawing, the occasional word being misspelled could be picked up by a manual drafter instead of sending the drawing to the plotter again and waiting 30-60minutes, and wasting ink and paper. Today’s printers take seconds to print, so that is not much of an issue any more. Another method of just using text styles like T125 for 1/8” text T25 for 1/4″ text has been around for a while. The 125 and 25 being the decimal equivalents of the fractions.B125 would represent Bold text and could either be a different font, or just simply shown on a different layer that plots with a heavier pen setting to make it stand out.

Let’s move on to Linetype scaling. If you load a linetype into your drawing, you will notice it shows up pretty good in a base drawing, but what happens when you draw that line in a drawing that has a scale factor of 48. That line was designed to be displayed in a drawing of 1=1, so at a scale of 48 it is pretty much too small to see. In AutoCAD there is a system Variable called LTSCALE. I have seen LTSCALE set at 1.0, 0.5, 0.375, and even 0.25. What does that mean? Well LTSCALE is a factor applied to the dashes dots and parts that make up the linetype. LTSCALE applies to all lines in the drawing. Line definitions are stored in the drawing file once loaded, so keep that in mind when you are trying to track down why two drawings are different looking. They may actually have different linetypes loaded for the same name. Using 1.0 for our test case we discussed last post would mean out LTSCALE should be 48.0. If we had a standard setting of 0.5 LTSCALE, then our LTSCALE would be 0.5 * 48.0 = 24.0.

NOTE: CELTSCALE is not the same as LTSCALE and something that should be set and stay set at 1.0. Nothing worse than tracking lines with individual settings of an LTSCALE. Yes entities can have individual LTSCALE settings, not a good idea to use this feature as a normal process.

Grid and Snap are important drawing tools to help you draw more consistently and accurately. If you are drawing in a 1=1 drawing like a wiring diagram, P&ID, Or even a legend sheet, you will find your snap settings are pretty simple, something like 1/4″ grid and 1/16” snap. This allows you to have snap points between the grid points that are always 1/16” apart. This keeps you consistent, and often keeps your fellow CAD designer Drafters happy. We will cover proper use of these in another post. Will snap and grid setting work in a drawing that has a scale factor? Of course it will. But keep in mind sometimes, dimensional data may force you to draw off grid and off snap. Parts are manufactured all over the world and dimensional data isn’t always cooperative from vendors. Make use of these tools. To use them in your scale factor drawings simply multiply the scale factor by the typical/standard setting and you have your new value.

That is all for this post. Next post we will cover Industry Standard Scales and why you should not make up your own. Good luck and thank you for reading. Sign in and leave some comments, or ask questions.

 

Posted on

CAD Basics 101 – Scale factor Part 1

Scale factors – Wait… That’s basic?? Yes, yes they are. Scales or scale factors are used to provide a method for presenting a large area or small area on the desired media size that is readable by the end user. What does that mean? Well, a scale factor allows us to present our design to the people that will be fabricating or building it and present it on a piece of paper that they can actually hold. Scale factors can be found using good ole math. There are factors used in Scale Factors to size the things presented on your drawings accordingly. What does it mean to draw 1=1 (one to one)? Why draw one to one? I thought you said we draw so that it fits on a smaller sheet. Scale Factors tend to confuse more drafters that it should. They are actually quite simple to understand and apply, but if you don’t understand their purpose it can become confusing on knowing when and how to apply them.

Scales allow us to draw a building that is 60’ wide and 40’ deep and show it on a piece of paper that is 22” x 34” long (aka ANSI D-Size). CAD allows us some advantages over traditional drafting on the board. CAD allows us to draw full size (1=1) then scale our title block (border) around the full size (model) and then print it to fit (using proper scale) within the boundaries of a piece of paper. Board drafting required us to draw at scale. This meant that if you wanted to represent the 60’x40’ building on a 22”x34” ANSI D Size drawing, using 1/4” scale (1/4” = 1’-0”), you as a drafter would draw a line 15” long to represent a 60’ side of the building. That line is 15” regardless and it is on a piece of paper, or vellum, or Mylar or whatever media was being used. The point is, it was scaled, down, for the paper and not full size (1=1). With CAD we can draw in our real world model and create a building that is in fact 60’ x 40’, then scale our border up to allow the building to fit inside our border. This means our border is actually huge 136’ x 88’ in size. No at full size this will not fit on a 22”x34” sheet of paper. We can plot this drawing using a scale factor to make it fit on the 22”x34” piece of paper. Please note when applying scale factor for drawings we always use a scale that maintains aspect ratio. Not to confuse you, but that means whatever scale we apply to one plane of the drawing we apply to the other plane. On paper we have 2 planes, X and Y. Let’s do the math. 1/4″ = 1’-0”. First let’s fix the units so they match. There are 12” in a foot. So now our equation is now 1/4″ = 12”. For an equation to work we are apparently missing something.

Apparently it’s Algebra:

Next let’s verify our equation:

We now have a scale factor of 48. So what do we do with it? Our scale factor is used to calculate the size of something relative to the paper size to appear appropriately with the actual size of the drawing. Our title Block is 22”x34”, so if we multiply 22” x 48 = 1056” -> 1056” = 88’: 34” x 48 = 1632” -> 1632” = 136’ that is the size of our border in our full size model. Please note we are NOT discussing Paperspace….yet. Everything we are discussing is Model space at this time. This same principal applies to text and Symbols. If we want text to be 1/8”(0.125) tall in our drawing (model) then we would need to apply the scale factor to the text. 0.125” * 48.0 = 6.0” This means your 1/8” text would need to be 6” in height to print at on a 22×34 ANSI D Size sheet of paper. So what would the height of the text be if we plotted this same drawing to 11×17 (ANSI B Size)? Notice the sheet size is a 1/1 ratio scaled by half of an ANSI D size sheet of paper. That means the 1/8” text would now be 1/16” in height on the printed 11×17 print.

We will continue this in my next post…. Coming soon.

Sign in and share your comments.

 

Posted on

CAD Basics 101 – ByLayer, ByLayer, ByLayer

I can’t tell you how many times I have said this over my nearly 30 years of using AutoCAD. It still holds true. One of the beautiful things about CAD is control over the various aspects of the elements with ease. Proper drawing setup helps facilitate that and make your drawing more useable and reusable. If one thing CAD has brought to drafting, it is COPY and PASTE! Grin. I’m sure you have inherited a drawing or two from a previous project. One of the goals was draw once, use many, right? Layer, Linetype, and Lineweight should be set to bylayer. Resist the option to change any of these at the entity level. Why? Well, bylayer allows you to change any of those properties at the layer level and affect all entities on that layer with ease. Bylayer allows you to easily update a drawing to match other drawing standards. Bylayer helps others use your drawings and control their appearance without need to modify your drawing to better suit their requirements. This promotes better team environment and helps facilitate project communications.

First off you need to appreciate the purpose of a Layer. A Layer is an attribute or property of a drawing entity. Yes you can draw everything on Layer 0 and use different colors, linetypes, and lineweights all day long, but in the end you have something that is just not flexible or easily updated. Layers allow you to isolate components or elements that are logically grouped together. For instance, all Conduit goes on one layer called conduit and it is red. You could normalize even more if you like and create a conduit layer for each size of conduit. You could go even further and have a layer for Above and Below Grade Conduit and each size of conduit. Suddenly you have a large number of layers. Database rule: Normalize till it hurts, then de-normalize till it doesn’t. We will discuss databases and AutoCAD in another post. We also have other ways to identify conduit sizes, we can discuss that too in another post. With our Conduits split among two layers AboveGradeConduit and BelowGradeConduit we can control their color, linetype and lineweight from the properties of the layer command. Above grade conduit will typically have a linetype of continuous, and the belowgrade will typically be hidden or dashed. In an Electrical Drawing, Conduits should stand out more. The lineweight or color needs to allow for that. Both layers could share the same color and weight. The lineweight can be controlled by the color we plot to or by the lineweight property of the layer. Layers allow you to control visibility of those same elements. You can easily see all the conduits or specific elements of your drawing with simple toggles on layer visibility.

If you work for an Engineering company, you may have worked with multiple standards for different clients. You may have discovered that the colors don’t match, the linetypes don’t match or the layer names don’t match your company standards. With Layers and entities set at bylayer, bylayer, bylayer, it is easy enough to rename the layer, change the color, the linetype and or lineweight and you are done. Your drawing can now be used on another project that requires different standards. You can even automate that process easier if you are consistent in your normal approach. We can cover automation of tasks in another post. Manipulating properties at the layer level gives you a quick view to what changes on the screen. Imagine opening a drawing you were expected to copy from one project to another and there were minimal layers, and entities with color, and linetype controlled at the entity level. How much time does it take to look through the drawing and change what may or may not be conduit to a new color, and a different linetype? Don’t’ forget about the rest of the drawing entities.

Projects typically consist of team members, sometimes one, sometimes many drafters/designers working on a project and multiple disciplines. How often have you used another discipline’s background for your own? A piping designer will often reference in or use the background from the Structural department. When using another discipline’s background for your own, you should not need to modify their background in order to use it. As an Xref or even as a block, you can manipulate the properties of the Layers inside their background to control how it displays as yours. This process facilitates usability and ease of use. Imagine if the background you wish to use is not organized by layers and using bylayer settings. Imagine trying to control the display of those lines on your print. If the background uses red and your drawing uses red to show as a primary focus, how will your elements stand out. Simple, right, just open the background (your copy) and make the changes to all the entities that need changes at the entity level. Reference in or insert into your drawing as a block. Done, only took 10 minutes. 5 Minutes later, they updated the background because some equipment moved. Just do the same process. 10 minutes and you’re done. A few days later, and your lead wants to issue the drawing, you discover they changed the background yet again, lucky you checked. So again 10 minutes and you are done. Had this been done via layers, the updates would have been automatic / semi-automatic, and would not have required any time or minimal time to insure the update. This is one drawing we are discussing. I’m not sure about you but the last project I was on we had over 7000 drawings, and that was just the electrical group.

Take time explore layers and layer management, avoid drawing entities with individual color settings, linetype settings and or lineweight settings. This will make you a better CAD Drafter / Designer. If you benefit from this post, hit the like and or even share. Let others know you want to start bringing quality back into drafting.