Making Templates Your Own
You can create a template from any DWG file by using the Save Drawing As dialog box. Follow these steps to save your drawing as a template:
- Click Save As on the Quick Access Toolbar.
The Save Drawing As dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 4-8.
- From the Files of Type drop-down list, choose AutoCAD Drawing Template (*.dwt) or AutoCAD LT Drawing Template (*.dwt).
Figure 4-8: Saving a drawing as a template and applying options.
- Navigate to the folder where you want to store the drawing template.
The AutoCAD 2012 default folder for drawing templates is buried deep in the bowels of your Windows user profile. Save your templates there if you want them to appear in AutoCAD's Select Template list. You can save your templates in another folder, but if you want to use them later, you have to navigate to that folder every time you want to use them. See the Technical Stuff paragraph that follows this procedure for additional suggestions.
- Enter a name for the drawing template in the File Name text box and click Save.
A dialog box for the template description and units appears.
- Specify the template's measurement units (English or Metric) in the drop-down list.
Enter the key info now — you can't do it later unless you save the template to a different name. Don't bother filling in the Description field; AutoCAD doesn't display it in the Select Template dialog box. Don't worry about the New Layer Notification area shown in Figure 4-8 for now; I tell you all about drawing layers in Chapter 6.
- Click OK to save the file.
The Template Options dialog box closes and the template is saved to your hard drive.
- To save your drawing as a regular drawing, click Save As on the Quick Access Toolbar.
The Save Drawing As dialog box appears again.
- From the Files of Type drop-down list, choose AutoCAD 2010 Drawing (*.dwg).
Choose the AutoCAD LT equivalent, if that's your version. AutoCAD 2012 uses the AutoCAD 2010 DWG file format. Choose a previous DWG file format if you want to be able to open your drawing in AutoCAD 2009 or earlier.
- Navigate to the folder where you want to store the drawing.
Use a different folder from the one with your template drawings.
- Enter the name of the drawing in the File Name text box and click Save.
The file is saved. Now, when you save it in the future, the regular file — not the template file — gets updated.
The QNEW (Quick NEW) command, when properly configured, can bypass the Select Template dialog box and create a new drawing from your favorite template. The first button on the Quick Access Toolbar — the button with the plain white sheet of paper — runs the newer QNEW command instead of the older NEW command.
To put the Quick into QNEW, though, you have to tell AutoCAD which default template to use:
- Click the Application button, then click the Options button at the lower-right corner of the Application Menu.
- On the Files tab, choose Template Settings
Default Template File Name for QNEW.
The QNEW default file name setting is None, which causes QNEW to act just like NEW (that is, QNEW opens the Select Template dialog box). Specify the name of your favorite template here, and you get a new drawing file based on it every time you click QNEW.
AutoCAD 2012 stores drawing templates and many other support files under your Windows user folder. To discover where your template folder is hiding, open the Options dialog box. On the Files tab, choose Template SettingsDrawing Template File Location, as shown in Figure 4-9.
Figure 4-9: Seek and you shall find your template folder.
You don't have to keep your template files where that bossy Mister Gates tells you. Create a folder that you can find easily (for example, C:Acad-templates or F:Acad-custom emplates on a network drive), put the templates that you actually use there, and change the Drawing Template File Location setting so that it points to your new template folder.