CAD standards play a key role in creating drawing sets that have a consistent appearance.
Consistency is important for maintaining, publishing, and sharing drawings with a subcontractor or client. As a CAD administrator, you should help facilitate the creation and management of the CAD standards in your company.
CAD standards include, but are not limited to:
- Named objects in a drawing, which include layers, text styles, dimension styles, linetypes, and so on
- Title and detail blocks
- Annotation guidelines and methods
- Drawing layout and sheet set guidelines
- Object property conventions (ByLayer, ByBlock, or explicitly set)
Commands and utilities that help you manage CAD standards include the following:
- Block Editor – Edits the objects within a block contained in a drawing, such as a detail or title block. (BEDIT command)
- Write Block – Exports selected objects or a block from a drawing to a new drawing (DWG) file. (WBLOCK command)
- Layer Properties Manager – Creates and manages layers in a drawing. (LAYER command)
- Text Style Manager – Creates and manages text styles in a drawing. (STYLE command)
- Dimension Style Manager – Creates and manages dimension styles in a drawing. (DIMSTYLE command)
- Linetype Manager – Imports and manages linetypes in a drawing. (LINETYPE command)
- Multileader Style Manager – Creates and manages multileader styles in a drawing. (MLEADERSTYLE command)
- Multiline Style – Creates and manages multiline styles in a drawing. (MLSTYLE command)
- Table Style Manager – Creates and manages table styles in a drawing. (TABLESTYLE command)
- Detail View Styles Manager – Creates and manages detail view styles in a drawing. (VIEWDETAILTSTYLE command)
- Section View Styles Manager – Creates and manages section view styles in a drawing. (VIEWSECTIONSTYLE command)
- Layout Tabs – Creates and manages layouts in a drawing. (LAYOUT command)
- Drawing Templates – Drawing files that contain established named objects, title and detail blocks, and other information that are used to create new drawings. Drawing templates have a file extension of .dwt and are created using the SAVEAS command.
- AutoCAD DesignCenter – Imports named objects from another drawing into the current drawing. (ADCENTER command)
- Layer Translator – Merges layers and changes the properties of layers in a drawing based on a layer mapping table. (LAYTRANS command)
- CAD Standards Checker – Checks for and fixes standards violations in the current drawing against those defined in a drawing standards (DWS) file. (STANDARDS command)
- Batch Standards Checker – Checks for standards violations in selected drawing files against those defined in a drawing standards (DWS) file.