Buy Autocad 2017 Price: This article is the second in a series of articles designed to make your AutoCAD drafting much faster and more productive. We got a lot of responses and good tips from our readers for the last batch of AutoCAD time savers. And have another set of them for you! Here we go.
Tip 1: The Glory Of Blocks
First and foremost, is using blocks and layers to automate your work flow. Now, blocks and layers are the bread and butter of anyone who uses AutoCAD. A block is basically a group of shapes that are linked together to make one object. You can think of them as a template of something you draw often.
Now, one of the nifty things about template documents in AutoCAD is that you can pre-load blocks that you’re going to re-use from multiple projects into them. You can also do the same thing with layer sets. And once you’ve used standardized layer sets, you’ll never go back to creating them ad hoc. You can even put blocks and layer sets on a network share so that everyone can use them, which greatly aids consistency. Remember the cardinal rule of AutoCAD: Lots of problems have interesting solutions. But it’s better to get a solution that works and re-use it than re-create the wheel.
One of the hidden benefits of blocks and layers is that AutoCAD only loads a reference to the block in your drawing, pulling it from the database to re-use it. Since a block is treat as a single object. This can cut file size down rapidly on large drawings, and make your workstation more responsive.
The other great thing about blocks is that they’re more than just drawing information. You can embed text objects (attributes), which can extracted to a database or spreadsheet. Thus, your block can include things like what material an object is make of, who you get it from, and part numbers. This sort of detail is why AutoCAD is use for engineering diagrams. However, far too many people are unaware that they can embed that text information into an AutoCAD block object. With later versions of AutoCAD, you can even make these text attributes hyperlinks to the manufacturer’s catalog.