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Professional CAD/CAM tools built on Inventor and AutoCAD
Identify the methods for bringing content into a template, such as the Design Center, and the problems to avoid.
Type:
Tutorial
Length:
6 min.
Transcript
00:04
Content can be brought into ad WT file in some cases by dragging and dropping it
00:10
or by inserting it as a block
00:13
or by simply using the copy paste command.
00:16
While all these methods are certainly usable methods.
00:19
A better practice is to use the auto
00:22
C ad design center
00:23
to grab content from other files and bring it directly into your template file.
00:29
We'll take a look at the auto
00:31
C ad design center in just a bit.
00:35
Now, let's take a look at some of these methods for bringing Autocad content in.
00:40
If you have a drawing file that has content
00:44
that you want to bring in
00:45
simply browse to it and file, explore drag and drop it into the model space area
00:52
where you'll be prompted to specify an insertion point.
00:56
So in this case, I'm going to do zero comma zero,
00:59
specify the X
01:01
and the Y factor
01:03
specify a rotation angle.
01:06
And then if I do a zoom extents,
01:08
the content was brought into the drawing,
01:13
the elements will be in block format.
01:15
So notice as I hover over this, it shows up as one element
01:20
or a block,
01:22
you'll probably have to use the explode command for this.
01:26
If you don't want it inserted as a block,
01:31
while this method works at bringing content in for you.
01:35
The downfall is that it brings everything in from the selected file.
01:39
So you will most likely have clean up to
01:42
do to eliminate unwanted items in your template file.
01:47
Additionally,
01:48
this method has been identified as a method that can bring corruption
01:53
into the destination file.
01:56
The next method we'll look at is the copy paste method
02:04
using windows command such as control C and control V.
02:10
We can select items like north arrow blocks,
02:14
scales and other items.
02:19
So then control V
02:22
brings our blocks into
02:25
the destination drawing.
02:27
While this is a quick and easy method for grabbing specific content,
02:31
there are a couple of things to keep in mind.
02:34
One
02:35
if this content was already in your template file,
02:38
the project team member would not have to go looking for it in other files.
02:43
And two,
02:43
this method also has the potential to bring corruption in from another file.
02:50
Finally,
02:51
let's take a look at a highly recommended
02:53
option for bringing content into your template file.
02:57
The use of the Autocad Design Center.
03:00
Let's take a look at bringing some blocks into our template file.
03:04
Using the design center
03:06
to access the design center.
03:08
You can either type in A DC
03:14
or
03:16
you can go to the view tab
03:21
over to the pallets panel
03:24
and click on
03:26
the design center icon.
03:31
Now to grab specific content,
03:34
we browse to
03:36
where the file is that we want to grab the content from.
03:41
Once we click on the file that has the content we want,
03:45
we can expand that file and notice that it has different categories.
03:51
If we click on blocks. For example,
03:54
we get a preview of all the blocks
03:58
that the source file has in it,
04:02
select each north arrow
04:05
and drag and drop them
04:07
into our drawing
04:09
or template file,
04:11
just like that
04:13
we've brought in block content.
04:16
Now one thing to note about bringing a block in to our template file in model space,
04:23
we can erase these blocks
04:26
and they will still reside in the template
04:29
as
04:30
reference blocks.
04:32
So I will erase these blocks.
04:35
And if I go to insert
04:39
those blocks are still in
04:41
the template file,
04:44
we can also bring in other content like layers,
04:49
layouts,
04:50
table styles, textiles
04:53
simply by dragging and dropping
04:56
into our template file.
05:02
After bringing all this content into your template file,
05:06
it's a good idea to take a look at the purge command
05:10
to see if there's anything extra
05:13
unwanted
05:14
or content simply not wanted in the template file
05:18
so that it can be cleaned out.
05:21
If we take a look at the purge command, we can see that there are three blocks
05:26
that we could purge out.
05:30
Another good idea is to run an audit on your template
05:33
file to make sure that there are no errors or corruption
05:38
in your template file,
05:42
zero errors found
05:44
and zero errors fixed.
05:47
So as you could see in these videos, template files are very important to create.
05:53
But there are many things to be considered during the creation process.
05:57
Following these guidelines can assist you as well as your
06:01
design team in having a successful project every time.
Video transcript
00:04
Content can be brought into ad WT file in some cases by dragging and dropping it
00:10
or by inserting it as a block
00:13
or by simply using the copy paste command.
00:16
While all these methods are certainly usable methods.
00:19
A better practice is to use the auto
00:22
C ad design center
00:23
to grab content from other files and bring it directly into your template file.
00:29
We'll take a look at the auto
00:31
C ad design center in just a bit.
00:35
Now, let's take a look at some of these methods for bringing Autocad content in.
00:40
If you have a drawing file that has content
00:44
that you want to bring in
00:45
simply browse to it and file, explore drag and drop it into the model space area
00:52
where you'll be prompted to specify an insertion point.
00:56
So in this case, I'm going to do zero comma zero,
00:59
specify the X
01:01
and the Y factor
01:03
specify a rotation angle.
01:06
And then if I do a zoom extents,
01:08
the content was brought into the drawing,
01:13
the elements will be in block format.
01:15
So notice as I hover over this, it shows up as one element
01:20
or a block,
01:22
you'll probably have to use the explode command for this.
01:26
If you don't want it inserted as a block,
01:31
while this method works at bringing content in for you.
01:35
The downfall is that it brings everything in from the selected file.
01:39
So you will most likely have clean up to
01:42
do to eliminate unwanted items in your template file.
01:47
Additionally,
01:48
this method has been identified as a method that can bring corruption
01:53
into the destination file.
01:56
The next method we'll look at is the copy paste method
02:04
using windows command such as control C and control V.
02:10
We can select items like north arrow blocks,
02:14
scales and other items.
02:19
So then control V
02:22
brings our blocks into
02:25
the destination drawing.
02:27
While this is a quick and easy method for grabbing specific content,
02:31
there are a couple of things to keep in mind.
02:34
One
02:35
if this content was already in your template file,
02:38
the project team member would not have to go looking for it in other files.
02:43
And two,
02:43
this method also has the potential to bring corruption in from another file.
02:50
Finally,
02:51
let's take a look at a highly recommended
02:53
option for bringing content into your template file.
02:57
The use of the Autocad Design Center.
03:00
Let's take a look at bringing some blocks into our template file.
03:04
Using the design center
03:06
to access the design center.
03:08
You can either type in A DC
03:14
or
03:16
you can go to the view tab
03:21
over to the pallets panel
03:24
and click on
03:26
the design center icon.
03:31
Now to grab specific content,
03:34
we browse to
03:36
where the file is that we want to grab the content from.
03:41
Once we click on the file that has the content we want,
03:45
we can expand that file and notice that it has different categories.
03:51
If we click on blocks. For example,
03:54
we get a preview of all the blocks
03:58
that the source file has in it,
04:02
select each north arrow
04:05
and drag and drop them
04:07
into our drawing
04:09
or template file,
04:11
just like that
04:13
we've brought in block content.
04:16
Now one thing to note about bringing a block in to our template file in model space,
04:23
we can erase these blocks
04:26
and they will still reside in the template
04:29
as
04:30
reference blocks.
04:32
So I will erase these blocks.
04:35
And if I go to insert
04:39
those blocks are still in
04:41
the template file,
04:44
we can also bring in other content like layers,
04:49
layouts,
04:50
table styles, textiles
04:53
simply by dragging and dropping
04:56
into our template file.
05:02
After bringing all this content into your template file,
05:06
it's a good idea to take a look at the purge command
05:10
to see if there's anything extra
05:13
unwanted
05:14
or content simply not wanted in the template file
05:18
so that it can be cleaned out.
05:21
If we take a look at the purge command, we can see that there are three blocks
05:26
that we could purge out.
05:30
Another good idea is to run an audit on your template
05:33
file to make sure that there are no errors or corruption
05:38
in your template file,
05:42
zero errors found
05:44
and zero errors fixed.
05:47
So as you could see in these videos, template files are very important to create.
05:53
But there are many things to be considered during the creation process.
05:57
Following these guidelines can assist you as well as your
06:01
design team in having a successful project every time.
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