Learn how to enhance your CAD modeling skills by properly maintaining layer color sorting, turning off unnecessary layers, adding break lines, and correctly labeling sections of your design. This in-depth guide will also explain the significance of the dimension scale factor and how to efficiently manage the workflow in a team setting.
Key Insights
- Managing the visibility of certain layers in your design, such as turning off magenta layers or no plot layers, can help you focus on the specific sections you want to work on and prevent unnecessary information from cluttering your workspace.
- Adding break lines into your model enhances clarity by identifying independent sections within your design. This guide demonstrates how to create a new layer and draw a break line, as well as the need to adjust the dimension scale factor to ensure the break line symbol is properly sized.
- In a team setting, it's beneficial to differentiate the tasks between the geometry maintenance and the sheet file adjustments. One person maintains the drawing database (the actual geometry in the drawing file), while another can add notes and symbols within the sheet files. This efficient workflow allows for simultaneous work, especially in medium and larger sized offices.
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.
Let's start making some updates and some changes. While I'm here in my A3.3 file, what I'd like to do is to go to layers, I'm going to sort by color, and I'm going to take the magenta layers and make sure that they are all turned off. So I'm including turning off the section model no plot layers.
So my no plot layers are all turned off. You can see that I'm showing the arrows and the room names that are over here in the section model, which I do not want to show on this wall section file because they're on the wrong scale and they're just not going to look right. So I'm going to go back into layers, and this time I'm going to sort by name, and I'm going to slide down to where I get to my sections.
I'm going to take my Anno symbols, dimensions, and text, I'm going to turn them off, and I will also turn off the pattern layer. Because what you're going to notice, you're going to notice that the ground layer will turn off. But more importantly, when I turn off the pattern layer, you will see that now I can begin to see the volumes that are going on within this actual space.
And that's one of the things that's a main reason for the wall sections, where what I need to do is I need to call out the fact of what's going on inside these wall volume layers. Now, I'd like to go on and add some more information in, and one of the first things I'm going to start to do is to put some break lines in the drawings, so that we can more clearly identify where the independent sections are. So I'm going to go to layers, and I'm going to sort by name, and slide my bar up.
And you can see that I have my Anno text 48 layer in here, I have my no plot layer in here, but I don't have an Anno Sims layer in this drawing. So I'm going to go to layers, I'm going to create a new layer, I will let its color be white, and I will rename it to be A-Anno-Sims. And I'm going to type in 01, because these symbols would be on this sheet file, in paper space, at a scale factor of one.
I'm going to close the interface, and do control S to save. So I'm going to make A-Anno-Sims 01, my current layer, and I'm going to draw a break line. And I can choose break line by either going up to express, draw break line, or go to express tools, break line.
Now expect something strange to happen. Do you see how up at the command prompt, it says that the size is an eighth of an inch, how it's extending beyond where I'm going to be picking will be three thirty seconds of an inch. If I pick here, and if I pick here, and say put my symbol there, do you see a really big symbol that's going on? What's happening is that the break line symbol is relating itself to the current dimension style scale factor.
So I'm going to erase that. I'm going to go to annotate, and I'm going to go to the dimensions manager. And you can see that tick is my current dimension style.
If I modify it, you can see that it has a fit factor of forty-eight. So what was going on, is I'm just going to close this and press F2. With the dimension scale factor having been what it was doing, when I chose break line, it was using the block break line that is embedded within AutoCAD.
It was taking the eighth of an inch, multiplying it by forty-eight, the extension, multiplying it by three thirty seconds of an inch. So what I'm going to do is this. I'm going to go on and make leader my current dimension style.
And I'm going to do a right button, rename, go to the end, and type dash zero one. So I'm going to make leader zero one my current dimension style. Now you can see what the leader looks like.
It's the arrow that points to things. I'm going to go to modify, and I will give it a fit factor of one, and go okay, set current, and close. If I were to go back to express tools, choose the break line, say go from here down to there, put the break there, you can see that it looks much more professional.
So what I'm going to do is now to erase this out and do it the way I should. So I'm going to do a break line symbol. I'm going to go up here.
I'm going to go down here. I'm going to press F3 to turn my running O snap off, and I will let my break point be right about there, so you can see that I have that break line. I'm now going to move that break line ever so slightly to the right, and then copy the break line from there over to here, go to here, pan back.
I'm going to go to there, to there, and back over to here. I'm then going to zoom in and do move this symbol to the left. I'm just going to confirm as I go just to make sure that it looks neat.
This is being really picky. Move it a little bit to the right. Move this guy a little bit more to the right as well.
Control S to save. So again, we have the building sections with their appropriate break lines being presented on the screen. The next thing we want to do is to go in and start making some modifications.
Now, one thing I know is that in this building section A, that we have the living room here, and we have the patio here. So, let's just put some labeling in there just so we can make things a little bit clearer. So, I'm going to go to the home tab.
I'm going to go to single line text, and I'm just going to pick an arbitrary base point. The justification will be fine. The eighth of an inch is fine.
And I'm going to type in for room one, living room. I'm going to type in patio. I'm going to type in, I already have living room, and I think that's all I really need.
I'm going to move these symbols from here down into here. And I'm going to copy patio from the insertion base point of patio to the dot Y of the insertion base point of living room, and copy it over to there, and then I'm going to erase that out. Yes, I could have moved it.
Now, I have this section that's going on in this room. Let's just confirm we know where we are. So, I'm going to go back into my section drawing.
So, this is where we were, living room and patio. Zoom dynamic, go over to here, and so now I have dining room and family room. So, I'm going to go back into my 303 drawing.
I'm going to copy window from here to there. Double click this. This will be family room.
I'm going to copy family room from there over to here. And again, my running OSNAP threw me off. I'm going to undo.
Copy family room from here over to here, and once again to here. Double click on this. Go to home tab, type in dining, delete, delete, delete, and enter.
And then I'm just going to do move window and move these room names down so that it's again clearer what room names we're in. Now, these again are on the Anno Sims 01 layer. I have an Anno Text 48 layer in this drawing, so I want to create an Anno Text 01 layer.
So, I'm going to go to layers. I'm going to choose Anno Sims Text 48. While it's selected, I will do a right button, new layer, A-Anno-Text-01.
And again, it will be a duplicate copy of all of the information I had in Text 48 because that was my current style when it was selected. I'm going to close the interface. I will now select these entities.
You can see that they're currently on A-Anno Sims 01. I will select A-Anno Text 01, hit escape, control S to save. So, what we've done so far is we've put the room names in the paper space environment of the sheet file.
Let me start discussing another situation. When we have geometry that's in a source file like the section file that's being referenced into a sheet file, if we were to have all of the information for the building sections and the wall sections in that wall section component of the building section file, so if all of the information for building sections and wall sections were in the building section file, then only one person could work on it. By having the geometry in the building section file, but having our break lines, our text, and our keynotes here in the sheet file, then we can have more than one person working on a project.
We can have one person maintaining the drawing database, the actual geometry in the drawing file. We can have someone else going through the multiple sheets and adding notes and symbols and so on within the sheet files. You find in medium and larger sized offices that that is the typical practice.
Having everything in the model file is not a typical practice, because then you can only have one person working on the drawing or the drawings because of how the referencing is going on. So again, very standard practice to have geometry being maintained by one person, sheets being maintained by another person. One thing that frequently happens in production is that when it's time to get the deadline done, people say, who's available to help me work on the project, and you will have more than one person helping you to meet the deliverable.
The only thing that always, from an annotative layer, always goes on in the model file is dimensioning. Room names, symbols, call outs can frequently happen in the sheet files, but dimensioning is always in the model file because the dimensions are associative to the actual geometry. Okay, so we're ready to continue.
We've had enough lecture for right now. Control S to save. And now we can start going into our model file and actually enhancing the geometry.
We'll do that right after we get back.