Drawing Prototypes

Drawing prototypes act as a template for any new drawing generated with Advance Steel. Their main role is to maintain the page format and the header. Prototypes can be reused as many times as required to output drawings from a project.

Prototypes are created for certain paper formats (ANSI, ISO) and already have a drawing frame, a title block, BOMs if required, revision tables and any additional information. When creating a drawing using a drawing style, you need to select the appropriate prototype. Prototypes are DWG files stored in the content folder path of Advance Steel. To edit prototypes you must use Advance Steel.

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

Prototype file location

Prototype files can be found in two locations:

Default location

On the Windows drive ...\ProgramData\Autodesk\Advance Steel 2022\[INSTALLATION LANGUAGE EXTENSION]\Shared\Support\Prototypes

By project

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

For example, if the model file name is drawing1.dwg and it 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.

Access the command

In the Output tab Document Manager panel, click (Edit prototypes).

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\Advance Steel 2022\[INSTALLATION LANGUAGE EXTENSION]\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

You can create new prototypes 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, you can make various changes:

• 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 re-create the block.
• Modify the frame.
• Add additional notes.
• Add geometric entities.
• Define dimension styles.

For only several small modifications to existing prototypes (for example changing logs, or adding a new bill of materials list), it is recommended to start from an existing prototype and apply all the modifications.

For a new prototype, it is recommended to start from an empty AutoCAD file. Advance Steel entities can then be copied in from other prototypes, if needed.

Prototypes, like drawings, use the layout space, and not the model space - so any modification needs to be done only in the active layout:

Use the flexibility of the AutoCAD editing tools to build your prototype:

• Move or copy created lines and blocks.
• Add attributes.
• Set up the page.
• Add printing size and colors.

The 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 you create a drawing Advance Steel will complete all attributes with recognized tokens as tags.

The title block displays the project information.

To modify the title block

1. Go to the prototypes default location and open the desired prototype file.
2. Select the title block.
3. Explode the HYPERSTEELPAGEHEADER block.
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 re-create the block using the same name: HYPERSTEELPAGEHEADER.

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

The 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.