- [Instructor] In this particular chapter up until now
we've talked about units and options.
Now, obviously once you've set your units in a drawing
you can work to those units
and develop your design in AutoCAD,
but wouldn't it be nice if you could preset,
not just your unit settings
but also a lot of other settings in a drawing
and then save it as a particular template file
so that you can open a new drawing from it.
Well, it's very, very quick and easy to do.
I'm going to show you how to create a very simple template.
So what you would normally do is start with a new DWG file.
So you'd go to new in AutoCAD
and go to either a metric or imperial setting
in that particular DWG file.
So the first thing you would do in my case
because I'm working in metric is set my units.
So we go to the units com like we've done previously
and set all of my drawing units
so that when I create anything in this drawing
it's working to a metric setting.
If I was work in feet and inches,
things like my length might be architectural
instead of decimal, for example.
So you set all of those settings up accordingly
to work with your particular environment, your standards,
your corporate standards, project standards, et cetera.
So I've set all of my units up the way I want them to.
I've got my clockwise untick,
my direction is set to east as you can see there.
I'll okay that and I'll okay.
So that's all set up.
So my units are ready to go.
Now, the other thing that I might set up in a template
is my layers, my AutoCAD layers.
Now we did cover these later so don't worry.
If I go to layer properties like so you'll notice here
I've got various layers available
to create things in my drawing.
So I've got a layer for center lines,
a layer for objects, a layer for text,
and they're all set up with line types,
line weights, colors, et cetera.
So that when I draw anything on those layers
they have their own individual color line type,
line weight so that I can distinguish
those objects on the screen as I work.
So I've set all of my layer properties up
and then what I might do is set my current drafting layer
which at the moment is objects.
So I could potentially make text, my current drafting layer
by clicking on that little green tick icon there.
Can you see the green tick, it goes next to it
and it says current layer text.
If I go back to objects, click on the green tick objects
is now the current drafting layer.
If I close the layer properties manager
by clicking on the cross in the pallet
you can see the objects on the layer dropdown
is also the current drafting layer there as well
if I just want to use the layer dropdown.
So I've got all of that set up.
Now, other things
that I might set up might be dimension styles
and text styles in a template.
So in my annotation drop down on the home table
on the ribbon you can see
I've got some text style set up there.
I've got notes layout 3.5 millimeters
and a title layout, 10 millimeters.
You could set up as many text styles
and dimension styles as you wish in AutoCAD.
So obviously from a dimension style viewpoint
if I click on the arrow again,
if I go to dimension styles here
there's my dimension styles.
Those are just the default AutoCAD ones in this case
but you could create all different dimension styles.
Again, we're going to cover how to set these up
in the course later.
So I'll just close that for the moment.
So that that's all set up.
Now talking about things like text and so on,
I've also set up a title block
in one of the layout tabs in the drawing.
So if you go down to the bottom left part of this drawing
and click on ISO A3-Landscape,
we've got a simple ISO A3-Landscape title block set up,
ready to go as well.
Now I will cover how to set up a title block
and work with the title block later,
but the whole idea is you use your layout tabs
to communicate your design intent with scaled view ports.
So the view ports go in the title block
and basically scale any objects that are large in real life
from the model tab to the layout tab
and we'll cover all of this later on, but the whole idea
is you can have all of this preset as a template.
So I'll go back to the model tab now
and you can see there that my simple template drawing
is ready to go.
So what I might do there is just save this here like so,
clicking on save first to make sure
that the DWG file is saved
'cause that's the basis of my template.
Save the DWG file
and then you might want to create other templates from it.
I then do a save as up here
on the quick access toolbar as well.
And what I can do now is I can save this as a DWT file,
which is a drawing template file.
So I come down to files of type
and instead of using a DWG, I select DWT there like so.
As soon as I do that, you'll notice it goes
to a different folder.
Now you remember we went into the options dialogue box
where we showed all those files
and where all the different files went to,
including our automatic safe files
or there's a template location in there as well.
So that's where this is go to,
the default template location and you can see
we've got various default AutoCAD templates available.
So I'm just going to save it in the default template location
and I'm going to click here and I'm going to call it ISO A3
like so and then I'll just put dash and landscape
for example 'cause it's in a landscape orientation.
So that's my ISO A3-landscape template.
So when I click on save now that'll save
in that template folder as a DWT.
And you'll notice that it prompts me
for a little description, so I'll put in there ISO A3
and we'll just put metric template.
Everything else on those settings there,
you can pretty much ignore apart from the measurement one.
The measurement one is important
because we decide on whether we're using English,
which is imperial or metric
which is obviously something like millimeters.
So we just want to make sure there
that we've got the right measurement.
So when I click on okay now that template is saved
and you'll see that the top of the screen
is now ISO A3-Landscape.dwt.
So if I click on save again on that title bar
you'll notice now that the file name
as you can see ISO A3-Landscape.dwt.
And you'll also notice that on the file tab here, top left.
So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to create
a new drawing.
I can leave the template drawing open, that's fine.
And I can just go up to new here
on the quick access toolbar.
As soon as I do that, it'll open up select template
and you'll notice we have an ISO A3-landscape DWT file.
So I'm going to create a new DWG now from my preset DWT.
So when I click on open, it'll open up a new blank drawing.
You can see there drawing two in the file tab.
And if I look at my layers
there's all my preset layers in place like so.
If I look down here you can see there's my layout tab
with my title block and if I go back to the model tab now
and just type units you'll see that my unit settings
are what were preset in that DWG file before I converted it
to a template.
So you can see that the drawing units are all set.
I can just okay that now
but now I can save this file using save as as a DWG
and start creating a whole new drawing
with those preset settings in the AutoCAD template.