Discover how to create the A201 sheet file using a template and then inserting a title block and attaching a floor plan. Understand the use of an external reference and its advantages in keeping your file size small, enabling collaboration, and maintaining consistent updates across multiple sheets.
Key Insights
- The A201 sheet file can be created using a template, where the title block and floor plan are inserted. It's essential to remember to use floorplan.dwg, not .bak during the file insertion process.
- External references offer an updating link to the original drawing, allowing consistent updates across multiple files. This feature enables real-time collaboration and keeps the file size small, promoting efficient workflow.
- A firm's architecture and practices can affect the use of external references. Therefore, understanding the organizational structure and processes is crucial when working on a file that could be referenced in many other files.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
in this video we will create the A201 sheet file. Let's go file new, use the template, and file save. In this case we're going to name this drawing CAD 101-A201.
Hit save, and now we can insert our title block, but first we want to attach our floor plan. We talked about how inserting a block, or inserting a drawing, allows you to place many instances or copies of that drawing. An external reference is slightly different.
It creates an updating link to the original drawing. What do we mean by that? Well, let's first attach our floor plan, and then we will see how it updates. I'll come up here to the insert tab, reference panel, attach command, and I will find floor plan.
Again, we want to find floorplan.dwg, not.bak. I'll hit open, and now we see a box similar to the classic insert dialog box, but in this case we see that our scale is set to 1, our insertion point is set to 0,0, our rotation is 0. There are two other options here, which we'll talk more about in future courses, but that's our relative path type, and our reference type, which we can leave as attachment. I'll hit okay, and zoom extents control S to save. Now this looks identical to our floor plan file, except for when I click to select, the entire drawing is selected at once, and also I have one grip, which is the insertion point, or 0,0,0 in our original drawing.
Now what makes a reference special, is that it is an updating link from our original drawing. I'll come back over to the floor plan drawing, and I will draw a circle. I'll just draw in this bedroom here, and notice that the floor plan needs to be saved, so now I can save, control S to save, and when I come back to CAD 101 A201, I will see a little bubble appear from my manage xrefs button at the bottom.
It says an xref was modified, which we just did, and we can reload the floor plan. Now I'll uncheck compare changes for now, and click reload floor plan. The circle now appears, because the link was updated.
This allows you to work on a file, and have it referenced in many other files all at once. It allows you to collaborate with co-workers, or keep your file type small, by creating multiple sheet files that reference the same model file. This is a best practice, but some architectural firms might not follow it, so please make sure that you understand what your architecture firm or other organization is doing.
If I go back to the floor plan, and I delete the circle, and draw a line in this bedroom, control S to save, and go back to A201, I can see that it prompts me to reload the floor plan again. This time, I will hit the checkbox to compare the changes, and then click the blue link. This takes us into the xref compare window.
The xref compare window will show us, in gray, all of the elements that have not changed, in red, any elements that were deleted, and in green, any elements that were added. If I understand these changes, I can hit the checkbox to say that I'm done. And now our CAD101 A201 xref matches our floor plan, because the link was updated.
I'll go back to floor plan, delete the line, control S to save, and one last time, I will update by reloading the floor plan, and saying that I understand the changes. That is our updating external reference link. Now we can insert the title block by using the blocks dialog box, and then our sheet file will be complete.
In this course, we will use model space for both of these elements, but in future courses, we will use paper space. I'll move the drawing over to the side using the pan tool, and then I will go I enter on the keyboard. I was the old school command insert, but now it automatically references the blocks dialog box.
In order to insert the title block, we need to first go to the button here, and browse for it. I'll scroll down until I see vdci-ttlb.dwg, open, and again, we can see that it is coming in because our insertion was set on screen, and our scale was set to 48. For now, I can't see the perfect spot to place this, because I want the two no plot views to line up.
So I will place it over here to the side and click, and our attributes dialog box will appear. The attributes are an interesting part of a block that do not exist with xrefs, in that per instance, each time you place the block, you could fill out specific text. In this case, there's only one title block, but each title block might be different per sheet.
So let's first change our name, and this will be your name. The date can be today's date. The scale is automatically filled in at one quarter inch equals one foot dash zero inches, and that's because this title block is typically used with that scale, but as it is an attribute, you could change this value.
The sheet number is going to be A2.1, and drawing title is going to be floor plan, but you can see that it has a three dots box on the right, and this is because this is a multi-line text attribute. When I hit this button, it will open up a text formatting window, and I might need to pan over and find that location on my title block. Now I can type floor plan, hit okay, and hit okay to finish my attributes.
We can see that the attributes were added. Here is my name, here is the scale and the date, the drawing title, and the drawing name. These are all included with my block.
Now, in order to align my two drawings, you can see why we used the no plot. The no plot was built to match the printable space in our title block. Because the floor plan is located at zero zero, and it is a real-world element, I'd prefer to move the title block to match instead of the other way around.
So, let's go move, pick our title block, and try to lock it in. I'll choose any of these four corners. I'll choose this top left corner, and I'll place it at the top left corner of the no plot.
Because the no plot was brought in at quarter inch scale, which is a scale factor of 48, and the title block was brought in at the same scale, these align perfectly. Now we can control s to save, and throughout the rest of this course, we will come back to the A201 sheet file and see how our project is being updated. Then, at the end of the course, we will print this sheet file as a PDF.
However, for now, we can hide our no plot layers by hitting the light bulbs, because they won't be printed in the end. Zoom extents and control s to save. Now, even if someone asked for a quick update, we could show them our update.
For now, let's close the A201 sheet file, close our blocks dialog box, and control s to save.
