Project standards drawings are assigned to a project, but are not project drawings like elements, constructs, views, and sheets. The styles and display settings in project drawings are compared with the standards and updated as necessary during the synchronization process.
To create a project standards drawing, you need to create a drawing file or a drawing template containing styles and display settings that should be used in the project.
For example, you can create one drawing that contains the standard wall styles, and another one that contains the standard door styles, or mask block definitions.
Project standard files can be of the file format DWG, DWT, or DWS. If you select the DWS format for your standards drawings, you can simultaneously use them as your AutoCAD standards drawings.
A project standards drawing is a regular drawing file. The definition of the drawing as a project standards drawing is created when the drawing is added as a project standards drawing to the standards configuration of a project.
You can assign multiple standards drawings for project styles. During synchronization, project drawings are compared against the project standards drawings in the order you establish in the project standards configuration. If a style is located in multiple standards drawings, the first instance in the search order is used as the standard.
For display settings, you can assign only a single standards drawing. It must contain all standard display settings for the project. Note, however, that the same standards drawing can be used for both styles and display settings.
You can choose two different options for storing project standards drawings:
If the project standards drawings are located within the project, they are treated as project specific. Typically, drawings containing project-specific standards are stored inside the project folder. For example, if you create styles for only one building project, you would place them in a project-specific standards drawing within the project folder. Placing standards drawings under the project folder has the following implications:
You would place your standards drawings within the project if you want to keep the standards drawings specific to that project. You can copy the standards drawings to a new project, but any changes you make to one set of the standards drawings will not be propagated to the other one.
If project standards drawings are located outside the project, they are referenced from that location. You would do this typically for standards that are not specific to a project, but rather to the department or the company. In that case, copying the standards to individual projects would create a risk of version discrepancies being introduced in the multiple copies. Also, a change made to a company-wide standards file would not be automatically propagated to all projects using that standards file. Placing a standards drawing outside the project has the following implications:
| If you want to… | Then… |
|---|---|
| make the standards drawing specific to a project | save it within the project folder. Note: You can create subfolders for standards drawings.
|
| make the standards drawing available for general use within the company or team | save it outside the project folder. |