Chapter 26: Keeping Control of Your Drawings

In This Chapter

Working with the Content Explorer Using the DesignCenter Removing unused components Opening drawing content with the Tool Palettes window Establishing standards for drawings Creating sheet sets Managing your drawings Taking care of security Managing referenced files Troubleshooting errors and crashes Handling drawings from prior releases

When you create a drawing, you not only create objects, but you also create a complex structure to support those objects. You create named blocks, layers, layouts, text styles, dimension styles, multileader styles, table styles, and linetypes to help define those objects. And you spend a lot of time creating them! All these named drawing components can be reused and organized for greater efficiency, using the Content Explorer or the DesignCenter.

Tool palettes are a multifaceted solution that enables you to execute commands, as well as to insert hatches and blocks. You can also insert tables, xrefs, images, gradients, and more.

Unused components make your drawings bloated and overly confusing. You can use the PURGE command to delete unwanted layers, blocks, and more.

Having standards for named drawing components, such as layers and text styles, is important for consistency and readability. AutoCAD offers a comprehensive system for maintaining CAD standards. Security is also important, and AutoCAD offers excellent features to help you with this. AutoCAD LT does not contain all these ...

Get AutoCAD® 2012 & AutoCAD LT® 2012 Bible now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.