AutoCAD and Drawing Setup

Before starting a new project in Design Master Plumbing, it is necessary to set up your drawings. This process varies between companies. Typically it involves inserting the title block, inserting xrefs, and setting scale factors. It is beyond the scope of this tutorial to teach you how that is done in your company. If you have questions about this, please see your CAD Manager or the person responsible for setting up projects.

However, there are three tasks that are part of the typical project setup that will not be part of this tutorial that we want to highlight:

1. It is necessary for the drawing you are working in to be saved in a project folder. Each project needs to be in a separate folder. All of the drawings in a folder are assumed to be in a single project and share a single Design Master Plumbing database.

For the introductory tutorials, the files for each tutorial are in a different folder. The result is that each tutorial is seen as a separate project.

2. The AutoCAD system variable DIMSCALE needs to be set correctly. Text and blocks are sized according to this variable. In this tutorial, DIMSCALE is set correctly for you. You can read more on our website about how to set DIMSCALE (http://www.designmaster.biz/Support/QandA/HowtoSetDIMSCALE.html).

3. The AutoCAD system variable LTSCALE needs to be set correctly. This variable changes how linetypes are displayed in AutoCAD. Typically, LTSCALE is set equal to DIMSCALE.