About Importing All Settings of a Drafting Standard (AutoCAD Mechanical Toolset)

The AMSETUPDWG command provides several methods to import drafting standard settings from another drawing.

You can use the command line to import all the drafting standards from a template or use a wizard to selectively import one or more drafting standards.

Some behaviors required by the drafting standard are implemented using AutoCAD system variables. When AMSETUPDWG imports a drafting standard, it imports the dependant system variables as well.

In a drawing, system variables derive their values from the current drafting standard. Because of this dependency, AutoCAD Mechanical toolset makes it mandatory that you select the current drafting standard for import, regardless of what other standard you import. After the import process, the current drafting standard of the source drawing becomes the current drafting standard of the current drawing.

Importing Custom Standards

A custom standard is a user-defined standard that is derived from one of the drafting standards included with AutoCAD Mechanical toolset. When importing a custom standard, you may already have a custom standard by the same name in the current drawing, which may be derived from a different base standard. Running AMSETUPDWG in such a case can change existing geometry significantly.

For example, your current drawing is based on a custom standard that is derived from the ANSI standard. The drawing you are importing from is based on a custom standard of the same name, but is derived from the ISO standard. If you proceed with AMSETUPDWG on the current drawing, the text heights change so significantly that annotations may overlap geometry.

Because of the significance of the changes that can occur, AMSETUPDWG displays a warning when it discovers a base standard mismatch. However, AMSETUPDWG does not prevent you from importing a custom standard when a base standard conflict exists. The wizard continues only when you confirm it is OK to proceed.