Drawing Prototypes

The drawing prototypes are blank drawing sheets used to create the drawing views on.

Prototypes are created for certain paper formats (ANSI, ISO) and already have a drawing frame, a title block, BOMs if required, revision table and any additional information. When creating a drawing using a drawing style, the appropriate prototype must be selected.

Advance Steel provides a set of typical drawing sheets. Additionally, some aspects can be customized to suit your company.

Prototype file location

Prototype files can be found in two locations:

Default location

On the Windows drive ..\ProgramData\Autodesk\AdvanceSteel\2016\Shared\Support\Prototypes

By project

If the prototypes are in the model folder created automatically by Advance, the location is set out by the project.

For example, if the model file name is drawing1.dwg and is saved on the Windows drive in ..\MyDocuments\Project\ClientA\Model1.dwg then the prototypes are located in ..\My Documents\Project\ClientA\Model1\Prototypes.

This option allows having different prototypes for different projects.

Open drawing prototypes

Opens the folder with the installed prototypes.

To access the command

Ribbon: Output > Document Manager:

Command line: _AstM10EditPrototypes

The Edit default prototypes dialog box (a standard file selection dialog box) appears, displaying the list of prototypes available in ..\ProgramData\Autodesk\AdvanceSteel\2016\Shared\Support\Prototypes.

You can open a prototype and modify it according to the requirements.

Prototype file name

Advance Steel can use two types of prototypes for drawing creation:

• Metric: prototypes file names start with ASDETPROTO or mm_ASDETPROTO (for ANSI formats)
• Imperial: prototypes file names start with ASDETPROTO (for ANSI formats)

Note: Metric ANSI prototypes should be renamed to the typical name (e.g. without mm_).

The file name is followed by the sheet format for General Arrangement drawings.

For fabrication drawings, it is followed by:

• Single-sheet format for single part drawings
• Assembly-sheet format for main part drawings

Modify drawing prototypes

New prototypes can be created starting from an existing prototype.

The prototypes are stored in the Advance Steel installation folder on the hard disk.

A tool allows opening the drawing prototypes folder at the correct path.

After opening the file, various changes can be made:

• Add a revision table
• Add an additional structured list
• Modify the title block (header, footer etc.): to modify a block, explode it, make the necessary modifications then create the block.
• Modify the frame
• Add additional notes
• Add geometric entities
• Define dimension styles

Title block

The title block on any drawing prototype is a block named HYPERSTEELPAGEHEADER. You must not change the name of this block. You may edit the block to any geometry you wish and replace the Autodesk logo with your company logo as desired.

Warning! Although the block has the same name in all the prototypes it is not actually the same block. Do not blindly copy the block from one file to another.

Within the title block Attributes are used for the drawing information.

To automatically complete the values of an attribute with intelligent text using the Project Data completed when creating a new Project file, you must use attribute tags from the list of recognized tokens. Whenever creating a drawing Advance Steel will complete all attributes with recognized tokens as tags.

The title block displays the project information.

To modify the titleblock

1. Go to the prototypes default location and open the desired prototype file.
2. Select the titleblock.
3. Explode the block HYPERSTEELPAGEHEADER.
4. Purge the block from the drawing (select the HYPERSTEELPAGEHEADER block and click Purge).
5. Make the necessary modifications:
   • Add, move or delete the lines that are contained in the title block.
   • Add and move around the different attribute tokens available for the title block.
6. Select all elements of the current title block and recreate the block using the same name: HYPERSTEELPAGEHEADER.

Warning! Make sure that everything is fully included in the selection.

Drawing frame

The drawing frame on any drawing prototype is a block named HYPERSTEELPAGEFRAME. The geometry of this frame may be edited according to requirements but the name of the block must not be changed.

BOMs and revision tables on a prototype

Additionally, BOMs, revision tables and, if necessary, text and geometric entities can be added. For example many prototypes have notes regarding standard bolts, holes or welds.

All the prototypes already include revision tables but different ones can be inserted.