Chapter 20: Automating Drawings: The Basics
Creating Drawing Templates
Document-specific settings are an important part of the template, and it is probably best to get one
drawing size completely set up the way you want it, and then create the other sizes from this draw-
ing. This helps to ensure that the settings, such as bent leader length, font, and line weight, are the
same for all the templates. Uniform settings on drawings give them a consistent look and make
them easier to read. Drafting standards are also controlled by drawing templates.Using Pre-defined Views in drawing templates
When I use drawing templates, one of my favorite techniques to get to a multi-view drawing
quickly is to put one Pre-defined View on the template along with appropriate views projected
from the Pre-defined View. A Pre-defined View establishes an orientation and location on the
drawing sheet. You can add multiple Pre-defined Views and align them with one another on the
drawing sheet so that a drawing is automatically populated by the model, but this is not recom-
mended because if you decide to change the orientation of the drawing, you have to change each
Pre-defined View independently. If you set up a single Pre-defined View and make the rest of the
views with Projected Views, changing the orientation of the Pre-defined View causes all the
Projected Views to update associatively. You cannot directly change the orientation of a Projected
View. Pre-defined Views and views projected from Pre-defined Views appear blank until they are
populated with model geometry. The pre-defined part of a Pre-defined View is the orientation and
placement of the view.
Figure 20.21 shows a template using Pre-defined and Projected Views. You can access Pre-defined
Views on the Drawings toolbar; although it is not there by default, you can place it on the toolbar
by choosing Tools ➪ Customize ➪ Commands and using the interface. You can also access Pre-
defined Views by choosing Insert ➪ Drawing Views ➪ Pre-defined. Projected Views are also
accessed from the Drawings toolbar.Once a Pre-defined View has been placed, you can select an orientation for it from the
PropertyManager. Figure 20.22 shows the Drawing View PropertyManager. The orientation for a
view is set in the top Orientation panel. In addition to orthogonal views, you can also create iso-
metric and other custom views as Pre-defined Views.