A Template for Success

When you start in either the Drafting & Annotation workspace (as I do throughout this book) or the old AutoCAD Classic workspace, AutoCAD creates a new, blank drawing configured for 2D drafting. Depending on where you live (your country, not your street address!) and the dominant system of measure used there, AutoCAD will base this new drawing on one of two default drawing templates: acad.dwt for the imperial system of measure, as used in the United States, or acadiso.dwt for the metric system, used throughout the rest of the galaxy. (In AutoCAD LT, the two default templates are acadlt.dwt and acadltiso.dwt.) When you explicitly create a new drawing from within AutoCAD, the Select Template dialog box, as shown in Figure 4-3, appears by default so you can choose a template on which to base your new drawing.

Figure 4-3: A toolbox of templates.

You may be familiar with Microsoft Word or Excel template files, and AutoCAD drawing templates work pretty much the same way — because Autodesk stole the idea from them (encouraged, of course, by Microsoft).

A template is simply a drawing whose name ends in the letters DWT, which you use as the starting point for another drawing. When you create a new drawing from a template, AutoCAD makes a copy of the template file and opens the copy in a new drawing editor window. The first time you save the file, you're prompted for a new filename to save to; the original template file stays unchanged.

Using a suitable template can save you time and worry because many of the setup options are already set correctly for you. You know the drawing will print correctly; you just have to worry about getting the geometry and text right. Of course, all this optimism assumes that the person who set up the template knew what she was doing.

The stock templates that come with AutoCAD are okay as a starting point, but you'll need to modify them to suit your purposes or create your own from scratch. In particular, the stock AutoCAD templates are probably not set up for the scales you'll want to use. The instructions in the rest of this chapter tell you how to specify scale-dependent setup information.

So, the only problems with templates are creating good ones and then later finding the right one to use when you need it. Later in this chapter, in the “Making Templates Your Own” section, I show you how to create templates from your own setup drawings. Here I show you how to use an already-created template — say, one of the templates that comes with AutoCAD 2012 or one you get from a CAD-savvy colleague. If you're lucky, someone in your office has created suitable templates that you can use to get going quickly.

Follow these steps to create a new drawing from a template drawing:

1. Run the NEW command by pressing Ctrl+N or clicking the Application button and choosing New.

   The Select Template dialog box appears.

   The first button on the Quick Access Toolbar runs the QNEW (Quick NEW) command instead of the ordinary NEW command. If you or someone else has changed the Default Template File Name for QNEW in the Options dialog box, QNEW will not open the Select Template dialog box; instead, it simply presents you with a new, blank drawing — possibly not the one you wanted. You can take advantage of QNEW, though — for information about how, see the “Making Templates Your Own” section, later in this chapter.

2. Click the name of the template you want to use as the starting point for your new drawing and then click the Open button.

   A new drawing window with a temporary name, such as Drawing2.dwg, appears. (The template you opened remains unchanged on your hard drive.)

   Depending on which template you choose, your new drawing may open in a paper space layout, not in model space. If that's the case, click the Model button on the status bar before changing the settings described in the next section. (I describe how to set up and take advantage of paper space layouts in Chapter 5.)

3. Press Ctrl+S or click the Application button and choose Save to save the file under a new name.

   Take the time to save the drawing to the appropriate name and location now.

4. Make needed changes.

   With most of the templates that come with AutoCAD, consider changing the units, limits, grid and snap settings, linetype scale, and dimension scale. See the next section for instructions.

5. Save the drawing again.

   If you'll need other drawings in the future similar to the current one, consider saving your modified template as a template in its own right. See the section “Making Templates Your Own,” later in this chapter, for the lowdown on saving templates.