AutoCAD For Dummies. Ralph Grabowski

You can always change the current drawing scale later if the need arises.

At some point in your career, you may encounter a drawing that was created in an earlier release. In the appropriate chapters, I explain how to deal with scale factors in these older drawings.

      Entering drawing properties

I recommend one last bit of housekeeping before you’re finished with model space drawing setup: Enter summary information in the Drawing Properties dialog box, as shown in Figure 4-6. Click the Application button; in the Drawing Utilities section, choose Drawing Properties to open the Drawing Properties dialog box; then click the Summary tab. Enter the drawing scale and the drawing scale factor you’re using in the Comments area, plus any other information you think useful.

      

Don’t confuse drawing properties (which are really file properties) with your drawing’s object properties — they’re different things. The properties you enter here can help you or others you love when they open your drawing and wonder how you set it up. Object properties are a big enough topic to merit their own chapter. See Chapter 9.

      

Want to find a specific file hidden on your hard drive? You can search for values you've entered in the Drawing Properties dialog box by using Windows Explorer’s search functions.

      FIGURE 4-6: Surveying your drawing’s properties.

Making Templates Your Own

      You can create a template from any DWG file by using the Save Drawing As dialog box. Follow these steps to save your drawing as a template:

      1 Click Save As on the Quick Access toolbar.The Save Drawing As dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 4-7.FIGURE 4-7: Saving a drawing as a template and applying options.

      2 From the Files of Type drop-down list, choose AutoCAD Drawing Template (*.dwt) or AutoCAD LT Drawing Template (*.dwt).

      3 Navigate to the folder where you want to store the drawing template.The default folder for AutoCAD drawing templates is buried deep in the bowels of your Windows user profile, which by default isn’t visible in Windows Explorer. Hey, I never said this made any sense! Save your templates there if you want them to appear in AutoCAD’s Select Template list. You can save your templates in another folder, but if you want to use them later, you have to navigate to that folder every time you want to use them unless you change your Options settings. I explain how to do this later in the chapter.

      4 Enter a name for the drawing template in the File Name text box and then click Save.A dialog box for the template description and units appears.

      5 Specify the template’s measurement units (English or Metric) from the drop-down list.Enter the key info now; you can’t do it later unless you save the template to a different name. Don’t bother filling in the Description field; AutoCAD doesn’t display it in the Select Template dialog box. Don’t worry about the New Layer Notification area shown in Figure 4-7 for now; I tell you all about drawing layers in Chapter 9.

      6 Click OK to save the file.The Template Options dialog box closes, and the template is saved to your hard drive.

      7 To save your drawing as a regular drawing, click Save As on the Quick Access toolbar.The Save Drawing As dialog box appears again.

      8 From the Files of Type drop-down list, choose AutoCAD 2018 Drawing (*.dwg).Choose the AutoCAD LT equivalent, if that’s your version. Through the years, AutoCAD has changed the file format several times. A drawing produced with an older release can always be opened by a newer release, but the reverse is not always true. Chapter 24 explains which file versions can be opened by which release.

      9 Navigate to the folder where you want to store the drawing.Use a different folder from the one with your template drawings.

      10 Enter the name of the drawing in the File Name text box and click Save.The file is saved. Now, when you save it in the future, the regular file — not the template file — is updated.

      

Okay, do you want to know the real secret behind template files? One letter. That’s right, the only difference is that a drawing file has the extension DWG, and a template’s extension is DWT. You can convert a drawing to a template just by using Windows Explorer to rename the extension. The further secret to this is that a DWT can hold any information that you can put in a DWG. For example, you may often need to produce a drawing of a new machine shaft. All details are the same as previous shafts except for the length. Draw it once and convert it to a template. Now, when you need a new shaft drawing, just start it from the shaft template, change the length, and you’re done!

      

In Chapter 3, I warn you to not use the New buttons on the Application menu or the Quick Access toolbar. These buttons launch the QNEW (Quick NEW) command, which bypasses the Select Template dialog box and creates a drawing from a default template. The good news is that you can easily put the Quick into QNEW so that it uses your favorite template as the default. Just do this:

      1 Click the Application button and then click the Options button at the lower-right corner of the Application menu.

      2 On the Files tab, click + next to Template Settings, and then choose Default Template File Name for QNEW.The QNEW default file name setting is None, which causes QNEW to act just like NEW (that is, QNEW opens the Select Template dialog box). Specify the name of your favorite template here, and you get a new drawing file based on it every time you click QNEW.

FINDING YOUR USER FOLDER

      Microsoft insists that any program that uses files unique to or modifiable by individual users must be kept in a separate folder system for each user so that different people sharing a computer won’t mess up each other’s settings. There are just two minor flaws with this edict:

       Hardly anyone shares a computer these days. In fact, my tech editor claims that a typical user today has multiple computers, and brags (or complains) that he has two, not including Android models. I have three, and my wife has one.

       By default, this is a hidden system folder that you can’t see in Windows Explorer, making it difficult to copy, rename, or move files in it.

      The solution:

       Windows 7

      1 Start Windows Explorer.

      2 Choose Organize ⇒ Folder and Search Options .

      3 Under the View tab, click the Show Hidden Files and Folders button and then deselect the Hide Extensions for Known File Types check box.

      4 Click OK.

       Windows 8 and 8.1

      1 In File Explorer, choose the View tab.

      2 Click the Options button.

      3 Follow