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868 Part V ✦ Organizing and Managing Drawings You can do the following with the DesignCenter: ✦ Browse and insert named drawing components, including blocks (and dynamic blocks), xrefs, layers, text styles, table styles, dimension styles, linetypes, and layouts. You can also access custom objects that are created by third-party applications. ✦ Create shortcuts to drawings and locations that you use most often. ✦ Search for drawings and named drawing components. ✦ Open drawings by dragging them into the drawing area. ✦ Create tools for your tool palettes. ✦ View and insert raster image files by dragging them into the drawing area. Navigating with the DesignCenter To open the DesignCenter, choose DesignCenter from the Standard toolbar, or choose Tools➪ Palettes ➪ DesignCenter. As a shortcut, press Ctrl+2. The DesignCenter appears as shown in Figure 26-1. Four tabs provide access to folders, open drawings, history, and DC Online, where you can find content provided by Autodesk, manufacturers, and other users. Figure 26-1: The DesignCenter with the Folders tab displayed. The Folders tab displays a tree view of any location— your hard drive, network, or the Internet — that you can access. This tree view is very similar to that of Windows Explorer. Click the plus sign next to a drive or folder to display its contents. Use the vertical scroll bar to display any location. Tree view Content area Tree view toggle Preview Description Description area Preview area 36_788864 ch26.qxp 5/22/06 7:42 PM Page 868 869 Chapter 26 ✦ Keeping Control of Your Drawings A selected drawing displays its named components in the content area on the right side of the palette. (Use the Views drop-down list to choose the type of display that you want.) You can also click the plus sign next to a drawing to display these components in the tree view. Then click a component type, such as blocks, to see a list of the blocks in the drawing, as shown in Figure 26-1. Click Preview on the DesignCenter toolbar to see a preview in the pre- view pane of blocks, drawings, and raster images. Click Description to display a description, if one is saved. After you narrow your search, you may want to click Tree View Toggle to toggle off the tree view, thus hiding the navigation pane. By default, the navigation pane displays your desktop, including the files and folders on your hard drive and network. To narrow your search, you can click two other tabs from the DesignCenter: ✦ The Open Drawings tab displays currently open drawings. ✦ The History tab displays the most recently opened drawings. Finding named components and drawings What do you do if you don’t know the location of the drawing that you want? Suppose you know the name of the layer, but not the name of the drawing that contains that layer. The DesignCenter includes a Search feature to help you. Choose Search from the DesignCenter toolbar to open the Search window, shown in Figure 26-2. (You can also right-click in the Content area and choose Search.) Figure 26-2: Use the Search window to locate drawings and drawing components. Here’s how to use the Search window: ✦ Click the Look For drop-down list to choose what you’re looking for. You can look for blocks, dimension styles, drawings, drawings and blocks, hatch pattern files, hatch pat- terns, layers, layouts, linetypes, table styles, text styles, and xrefs. 36_788864 ch26.qxp 5/22/06 7:42 PM Page 869 870 Part V ✦ Organizing and Managing Drawings ✦ Click the In drop-down list to specify the drive that you want to search. By default, the Search subfolders check box is checked so that the search looks in all folders and sub- folders within the drive. ✦ Use the tabbed area to specify the name of the components that you want. The tab’s name and content change, depending on what you chose in the Look For drop-down list. For example, if you chose Layers, the tab is called Layers and asks you for the name of the layer. If you’re looking for drawings, you have three tabs to work with: • The Drawings tab enables you to look for a drawing by filename (the default), title, subject, author, or keywords. Choose one of these options in the In the Field(s) drop-down list. Then type the text that you want to look for in the Search for the Word(s) text box. You can use the wildcards * (to substitute for any number of characters), and ? (to substitute for any one character). Specifying a drawing’s title, subject, and keywords is discussed later in this chapter. • The Date Modified tab enables you to search by the last date that the file was saved or modified. You can specify a range of dates, or look in the last x days or months. • The Advanced tab enables you to search for text in drawing descriptions, block names, attribute tags, and attribute values. You can also search here by drawing size. ✦ When you’ve created your specifications, click Search Now. See Chapter 18 for information on creating block descriptions when you create a block. The main reason for creating a block description is to display it in the DesignCenter and use it in a search on the Advanced tab, as just described. For more information on searching for drawings, see the section “Finding drawings” later in this chapter. Using the Favorites folder The Favorites folder is a Windows convention that helps you to find files that you use often. This folder contains shortcuts to actual files. The files remain in their original locations. Choosing a file from the Favorites folder has the same effect as choosing the file from its source location. You’ll find an Autodesk subfolder within the Favorites folder, where you can store short- cuts to drawings and other files that you use often. You can then easily open the Favorites folder and find these files. Favorites is one possible place to keep drawings that contain block libraries. To add a shortcut to Favorites, right-click the drawing (or other file) in the DesignCenter and choose Add to Favorites. If you right-click in the Content pane and choose Add to Favorites, the DesignCenter adds a shortcut to the entire content of the folder. This is great for adding all of the items in a folder at once, but if you do it inadvertently, you could end up with more files than you want in Favorites. To add one item, remember to select it first. Caution Cross- Reference 36_788864 ch26.qxp 5/22/06 7:42 PM Page 870 871 Chapter 26 ✦ Keeping Control of Your Drawings To access the drawings in Favorites, click Favorites on the DesignCenter toolbar. You can also right-click the content pane and choose Favorites. The Favorites folder appears in the content pane. To move, copy, or delete shortcuts from Favorites, right-click the content pane and choose Organize Favorites. Accessing named drawing components As soon as you have the item that you need in the Content area, you need to insert it into your drawing. If you used the Search window to locate a file, then you can also insert directly from the results that you find. You can either drag the item onto the drawing area or right-click it and choose an option. Sometimes these two methods provide slightly different results. In this section, I explain how to insert drawing components into your drawing. Inserting drawings You can insert an entire drawing into your drawing. Choose the drawing’s folder in the naviga- tion pane so that the drawing appears in the content area. Drag the drawing’s icon onto the drawing area. The command line prompts you for an insertion point, scale, and rotation angle, using the -INSERT command (the command-line version of the INSERT command). If you right-click the drawing, you can choose to insert the drawing as a block, or attach it as an xref. Opening drawings You can open a drawing using the DesignCenter. Display the drawing in the content pane, right-click it, and choose Open in Application Window. The drawing opens, keeping your current drawing open as well. Inserting blocks In Chapter 5, I explain that you can use the Units dialog box (choose Format ➪ Units) to set a unit, such as inches, for automatically scaling drawings when they’re inserted from the DesignCenter. You can insert blocks in two ways: ✦ If you drag the block’s icon onto the drawing area, the drawing uses Autoscaling, which compares the current drawing’s units with those of the block, and scales the block appropriately, using the value set in the Units dialog box. The block takes on default scale and rotation. ✦ If you double-click the block’s icon or right-click it and choose Insert Block, the Insert dialog box opens, where you can specify the insertion point, scale, and rotation. Inserting raster images A raster image is a bitmap graphic file. You can insert raster images directly into your draw- ing (in AutoCAD only). See Chapter 27 for more information on raster images, including determining which type of files you can import, attaching images, clipping images, and controlling how they’re displayed. Cross- Reference 36_788864 ch26.qxp 5/22/06 7:42 PM Page 871 872 Part V ✦ Organizing and Managing Drawings To attach a raster image, drag its icon onto the drawing area. The command line prompts you for an insertion point, scale, and rotation angle. Knowing the appropriate scale of an image before inserting it is often difficult. When you move the cursor at the Specify scale factor or [Unit] <1>: prompt, you can see a bounding box that will help you visualize the resulting size of the image. Attaching an xref To attach or overlay an xref, right-click its icon and choose Attach as Xref to open the External Reference dialog box. Choose either Attachment or Overlay in the Reference Type section. Specify an insertion point, scale, and rotation (or choose to specify them on-screen), and click OK. If you drag the xref onto the drawing area, you see prompts on the command line that are similar to those of the INSERT command. Inserting layers and styles To insert a layer, layout, linetype, text style, table style, or dimension style into a drawing, drag its icon onto the drawing area. Of course, these items don’t appear in your drawing area, but they’re added to the drawing’s database. You can drag multiple items at one time. To select a contiguous group, click the first item, press and hold Shift, and click the last item. To select individual multiple items, click the first item, press and hold Ctrl, and click any other item that you want to insert. You can also double-click an item to insert it. The insertion process does not check for duplicate layer names. If you try to insert a layer with the same name as a layer in your current drawing, you see a message: Layer(s) added. Duplicate definitions will be ignored. You should check for duplicate layer names before trying to insert layers from the DesignCenter. Inserting content from DC Online The DC Online tab provides access to online resources, including standard parts and man- ufacturers’ information. Figure 26-3 shows some of the DC Online content. To insert any content, select it and drag it into your drawing. Follow the prompts for insertion point, scale, and rotation. Controlling the DesignCenter display The DesignCenter provides several controls that help you manage its display. A great feature of the DesignCenter is the preview pane. Click Preview and select the item in the content pane. You may or may not see a preview of a block. (A preview icon is created automatically when you use the Block Definition dialog box to create a block.) Usually, you’ll see a preview of drawings and raster images. No previews exist for layers, line- types, text styles, and so on. Caution Tip 36_788864 ch26.qxp 5/22/06 7:42 PM Page 872 873 Chapter 26 ✦ Keeping Control of Your Drawings Figure 26-3: The DC Online tab of the DesignCenter offers a large selection of content that you can drag into your drawing. If you have old blocks that don’t have preview icons, use the BLOCKICON command and press Enter at the first prompt to automatically create preview icons of all the blocks in a drawing. If you saved a description with a block, select the block in the content pane and click Description on the DesignCenter toolbar to see the description. To set the view, choose Views from the DesignCenter toolbar. The drop-down arrow lets you choose from four types of displays: large icons, small icons, list, and details. If you make changes in the structure of a folder while the DesignCenter is open— for example, by deleting a drawing using Windows Explorer — right-click the navigation or content pane and choose Refresh. The DesignCenter re-reads the data and refreshes the list. To dock the DesignCenter, right-click the title bar and choose Allow Docking. Then choose Anchor Left or Anchor Right to dock it to the left or right of your drawing window. To collapse the DesignCenter down to its title bar when you’re not using it, right-click the title bar and choose Auto-Hide; whenever you move the mouse cursor off the DesignCenter, it collapses. Just move the cursor back onto the title bar to expand it again. You can anchor the DesignCenter at the same side as other palettes; its title bar becomes shorter to fit. When you expand it, it rolls down to its full length. To avoid unwanted docking, either uncheck Allow Docking on its title bar or press Ctrl as you drag. These instructions apply to all palettes in AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT. The drawings used in the following exercise on using the DesignCenter, ab26-a.dwg and ab26-b.dwg, are in the Drawings folder on the CD-ROM. On the CD-ROM Tip Tip 36_788864 ch26.qxp 5/22/06 7:42 PM Page 873 874 Part V ✦ Organizing and Managing Drawings STEPS: Using the DesignCenter 1. Open ab26-a-dwg from the CD-ROM. 2. Save the file as ab26-01.dwg in your AutoCAD Bible folder. This drawing needs an updated set of layers and a title block. It is shown in Figure 26-4. Figure 26-4: This drawing needs updated layers and a title block. Thanks to Vladimir Sevastyanov of Ukraine for this drawing of a gyrating swivel that feeds oil to an uncoiling machine used in the cold rolling of metal. 3. Choose Tools➪ Palettes ➪ DesignCenter. If the navigation pane is not displayed, click the Folders tab and then click Tree View Toggle on the DesignCenter toolbar. 4. In the navigation pane, locate ab26-b.dwg on the CD-ROM. Click its plus sign. 5. Choose Blocks. The ansi_d block appears in the content pane. Double-click ansi_d. Uncheck all Specify Onscreen check boxes and click OK. 6. Do a Zoom Extents. 7. In the navigation pane, click Layers for ab26-b.dwg. 8. In the content pane, click the first layer, press and hold Shift, and click the last layer to select all of the layers. Drag them onto the drawing area to import the layers. 9. Save your drawing. Accessing Drawing Content with Tool Palettes The Tool Palettes window is a tabbed palette that can contain drawings, blocks, hatches, images, gradients (AutoCAD only), drawing objects, xrefs, tables, and commands. By default, the Tool Palettes window contains over two dozen tabs in AutoCAD and seven tabs in 36_788864 ch26.qxp 5/22/06 7:42 PM Page 874 875 Chapter 26 ✦ Keeping Control of Your Drawings AutoCAD LT with sample content and commands. Each tab is considered a separate tool palette within the main Tool Palettes window. Figure 26-5 shows the default Tool Palettes window with the Draw tab on top. To open the Tool Palettes window, choose Tool Palettes Window on the Standard toolbar, choose Tools ➪ Palettes ➪ Tool Palettes, or press Ctrl+3. Figure 26-5: The standard Tool Palettes window has many tabs, each with a different category of commands or insertable content. The tool palettes are meant to be customized with your own content. You can easily create new tabs with your own blocks and other types of content, objects, or commands. After you create the tab, you can drag the items into your drawing. A tool is any item on a tool palette, and is represented by an icon. Because there are so many tabs, several of the tabs overlap together at the bottom so that you can’t see their titles. When you click these tabs, a menu pops up, listing the names of all of the tabs. Click the tab you want from the menu to display that tab. In AutoCAD 2007, materials used for rendering are on several new palettes; other new palettes contain visual style, light, and camera tools. Creating a new tool palette When you create a new tool palette, you add a tab to the Tool Palettes window. To create an empty tool palette, right-click in the Tool Palettes window and choose New Tool Palette. A label appears so that you can name the tool palette. Type the name and press Enter. When you have a new tool palette, you’re ready to add tools to the palette, as I explain in the following sections. You can also create a new, empty tool palette by using the Customize dialog box. See the “Customizing Tool Palettes” section in Chapter 29 for details. Cross- Reference Note 36_788864 ch26.qxp 5/22/06 7:42 PM Page 875 876 Part V ✦ Organizing and Managing Drawings You can add descriptive text and separator bars to any tool palette. For example, you can include instructions that explain a tool and organize commands into groups using separator bars. To add text or separators, right-click any tool palette and choose Add Text or Add Separator from the shortcut menu. Adding content tools The easiest way to create a new tool palette is from the DesignCenter, discussed in the previ- ous section of this chapter. When you use this method, you simultaneously create not only the tool palette, but also its contents. To create a new tool palette, follow these steps: 1. Open the DesignCenter. 2. In the tree view or content area, navigate to a folder, drawing file, block icon, graphic image file, or hatch icon. 3. Right-click the item and choose Create Tool Palette. • If you select a folder or drawing, choose Create Tool Palette of Blocks. • If you select a hatch file ( *.pat), choose Create Tool Palette of Hatch Patterns. After a few seconds, the new tool palette tab displays, showing each drawing, block, or hatch on the tab: • If you chose a folder, the tab includes all drawing files in the folder. • If you chose a drawing file, the tab includes all blocks in the drawing. • If you chose a block icon, the tab includes the block. • If you chose a hatch pattern file, the tab includes all hatch patterns in the .pat file. (See Chapter 31 for more information about creating hatch patterns in .pat files.) • If you chose a hatch icon, the tab includes the hatch pattern. Another way to add content tools is to drag content directly from an open drawing. This method is the only way to add gradients to a tool palette, but it works with any other type of content as well. Just select the object, then click and drag it onto the tool palette. The tool palette assigns a name, but you can change it to anything you want. Right-click the tool and choose Rename. Type the new name and press Enter. When you drag content from your drawing, you’re creating a tool by example. The properties of the tool match those of the object in your drawing. For example, if you drag a hatch on layer object onto a tool and then use that tool to hatch a closed object in your drawing, you create a hatch on layer object. Adding command tools You can add commands to tool palettes. You choose your methods, depending on the amount of customization that you want and how you want to organize your commands. You can add commands by dragging objects from a drawing, buttons from a toolbar, or commands from the Commands List pane in the Customize User Interface editor. 36_788864 ch26.qxp 5/22/06 7:42 PM Page 876 877 Chapter 26 ✦ Keeping Control of Your Drawings Dragging objects from your drawing You can drag drawing objects, such as circles, text, and so on onto a tool palette. AutoCAD creates a command tool that draws an object with the same properties as the original object. For example, if you regularly need to enter text on the Annotation layer using the Annotation text style, select some existing text with those properties, and drag it onto a tool palette. The tool is now called simply MText. Right-click, choose Rename, and enter Annotation or another meaningful name. This command tool contains the properties of the object that you used. When you click the selected object to start dragging it, don’t click it on the grip handles. When you click, you’ll see the drag-and-drop arrow cursor, and then you can drag the object to the tool palette. To drag a table, you must drag-and-drop with the right mouse button; otherwise, you simply select one of the table cells. When you create certain types of command tools, the tool palette recognizes the command as one of a group of commands, and creates an entire group, or flyout, of command tools that all use the same properties as the original. This technique works with dimensions and com- mon drawing geometry objects, such as lines and circles. Figure 26-6 shows an example of such a flyout on a custom tool palette. Note, however, that the tool palettes include these flyouts by default. Figure 26-6: Creating one dimension tool automatically creates a flyout of all of the dimension tools. Dragging buttons from a toolbar You can drag buttons from a toolbar onto a tool palette. These can be the standard toolbar buttons or custom buttons that you’ve created. To transfer toolbar buttons to a tool palette, follow these steps: 1. Display the toolbar that you want to use. 2. Choose Tools➪ Customize ➪ Tool Palettes or right-click in the Tool Palettes window and choose Customize Palettes. The Customize dialog box opens. 3. One by one, drag the buttons that you want onto the tool palette. (The Customize dia- log box doesn’t seem to have any function here, but you can’t drag buttons off of a tool- bar without it.) Note 36_788864 ch26.qxp 5/22/06 7:42 PM Page 877 [...]... Drawings folder on the CD-ROM STEPS: Creating and Using a Tool Palette 1 Open ab26-c-dwg from the CD-ROM 88 1 36_ 788 864 ch26.qxp 88 2 5/22/06 7:42 PM Page 88 2 Part V ✦ Organizing and Managing Drawings 2 Save the file as ab2 6-0 2.dwg in your AutoCAD Bible folder This drawing, shown in Figure 2 6 -8 , needs some blocks and a hatch pattern inserted You’ll also add a dimension 5 1 2 3 4 Figure 2 6 -8 : This back porch... of the problems were handled, as shown in Figure 2 6-1 2 You can click the Next button again to recheck the drawing 5 Click Close to return to your drawing Figure 2 6-1 2: The completed standards check report 88 7 36_ 788 864 ch26.qxp 88 8 5/22/06 7:42 PM Page 88 8 Part V ✦ Organizing and Managing Drawings Checking Standards for Multiple Drawings What do you do if you want to check standards for hundreds of... associated standards file, choose Check Standards from the CAD Standards toolbar to start the CHECKSTANDARDS command (or choose Tools ➪ CAD Standards ➪ Check) and open the Check Standards dialog box, shown in Figure 2 6-1 1 Note If you just finished associating a standards file with a drawing, you can click Check Standards in the Configure Standards dialog box 36_ 788 864 ch26.qxp 5/22/06 7:42 PM Page 88 7 Chapter... the CD-ROM The drawings used in the following exercise on managing CAD standards, ab26-e.dwg and ab26-e.dws, are in the Drawings folder on the CD-ROM 36_ 788 864 ch26.qxp 5/22/06 7:42 PM Page 89 3 Chapter 26 ✦ Keeping Control of Your Drawings STEPS: Managing CAD Standards 1 Open ab26-e.dwg from the CD-ROM 2 Save the file as ab2 6-0 3.dwg in your AutoCAD Bible folder 3 Click the Linetype Control drop-down...36_ 788 864 ch26.qxp 87 8 5/22/06 7:42 PM Page 87 8 Part V ✦ Organizing and Managing Drawings New Feature In AutoCAD 2007, you can add commands from the Command List pane of the Customize User Interface dialog box Right-click the Tool Palettes window and choose Customize Commands Then drag any command from the dialog box to any Tool Palette tab Copying... Institute of Architects (AIA) and the Construction Standards Institute (CSI) publish layering standards for members 36_ 788 864 ch26.qxp 88 6 5/22/06 7:42 PM Page 88 6 Part V ✦ Organizing and Managing Drawings Associating a standards file with a drawing As soon as you have your standards file, you associate it with a drawing or template that you want to check, using the STANDARDS command If you use a template... Save on the Batch Standards Checker toolbar In the Batch Standards Checker — File Save dialog box, save the standards check file A standards check file (.chx) contains information about which drawings and standards files you’re using for the batch standards check AutoCAD gives the file a default name, but you can change the name if you want 36_ 788 864 ch26.qxp 5/22/06 7:42 PM Page 88 9 Chapter 26 ✦ Keeping... palettes with others You import and export tool palettes on the Tool Palettes tab in the Customize dialog box See “Customizing Tool Palettes” in Chapter 29 for details 87 9 36_ 788 864 ch26.qxp 88 0 5/22/06 7:42 PM Page 88 0 Part V ✦ Organizing and Managing Drawings To rename a tool palette, right-click the palette and choose Rename Tool Palette To rename a tool, right-click the tool and choose Rename In both... When you fix nonstandard objects — for example, layers or linetypes with nonstandard names — AutoCAD purges these objects from the drawing For example, after you change the layer Layer1 to the layer Notes, objects on Layer1 are changed to the layer Notes, and Layer1 is purged 88 9 36_ 788 864 ch26.qxp 89 0 5/22/06 7:42 PM Page 89 0 Part V ✦ Organizing and Managing Drawings Specifying CAD standards settings... drawing.) Select layers by clicking them You can also select multiple layers You can type a selection filter in the Selection Filter text box to select certain layers CrossReference See “Filtering the layer list” in Chapter 11 for more information about filtering layer lists 89 1 36_ 788 864 ch26.qxp 89 2 5/22/06 7:42 PM Page 89 2 Part V ✦ Organizing and Managing Drawings To load existing layers, choose Load . the CD-ROM 36_ 788 864 ch26.qxp 5/22/06 7:42 PM Page 88 1 88 2 Part V ✦ Organizing and Managing Drawings 2. Save the file as ab2 6-0 2.dwg in your AutoCAD Bible folder. This drawing, shown in Fig- ure 2 6 -8 , needs. off of a tool- bar without it.) Note 36_ 788 864 ch26.qxp 5/22/06 7:42 PM Page 87 7 87 8 Part V ✦ Organizing and Managing Drawings In AutoCAD 2007, you can add commands from the Command List pane. AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT. The drawings used in the following exercise on using the DesignCenter, ab26-a.dwg and ab26-b.dwg, are in the Drawings folder on the CD-ROM. On the CD-ROM Tip Tip 36_ 788 864