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Improving Your Design Productivity with the AutoCAD Architecture Toolset

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Description

A recent study designed by Autodesk and commissioned by an independent consultant showed that the AutoCAD Architecture toolset provided a 61% overall productivity gain throughout the time taken to accomplish specific tasks in basic AutoCAD software. If you’re an architect, drafter, or facility designer and you'd like to boost your productivity, improve your design output, and maximize your AutoCAD investment, this class is for you. In this session, we’ll explore how AutoCAD Architecture software’s end-to-end workflows—conceptual design, space planning, design, documentation, and cloud collaboration workflows using Autodesk Docs—can enable architects and drafters to transition from AutoCAD to AutoCAD Architecture by maximizing the software’s 3D capabilities to increase efficiency, reduce rework, improve collaboration, and achieve better design output.

Key Learnings

  • Learn massing techniques within AutoCAD Architecture.
  • Learn how to apply AutoCAD Architecture space planning, development, and scheduling to improve your CAD-based output.
  • Learn about developing quicker 2D to 3D CAD-based workflow for architectural building planning, design, and documentation.
  • Learn about key productivity improvements using AutoCAD Architecture over AutoCAD for architectural design documentation.

Speaker

  • Avatar for Emmanuel Maenda
    Emmanuel Maenda
    Emmanuel works at Autodesk as a Technical Specialist helping the Autodesk direct led sales and partners in Africa promote Autodesk technology solutions supporting our customers' business requirements I am a trained civil/structural engineering technologist with 10 years of experience working in East Africa holding many positions as a civil/structural engineering technician, industrial piping designer, a once seasoned Autodesk Certified instructor, and a BIM specialist.
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      Transcript

      EMMANUEL MAENDA: Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to Autodesk University. This session today will be about improving your design productivity with the AutoCAD Architecture toolset. Just a few seconds to just look at the Safe Harbor Statement. You can go back at it and just take a look at it.

      Today's agenda will be about AutoCAD and AutoCAD Architecture and the industry toolset. We're going to go about the automations in AutoCAD Architecture, the drawing management, and the concept of detailed design documentation workflows in AutoCAD Architecture, covering massing, space planning, documentation productivity, and collaboration.

      If you are a new Autodesk AutoCAD subscriber or you have an AutoCAD Architecture toolset that's working in your office and you're wondering if this is the right session for you and you want to maximize your investment on using AutoCAD Architecture, this session will be for you.

      Our learning objectives for today will be about learning the massing techniques and application of the AutoCAD Architecture space planning, development, scheduling, techniques that you would use to improve your AutoCAD based output. We're going to show you how to develop quicker 2D to 3D CAD based workflow for your architectural building design, planning, and documentation. And also identify key productivity improvements using AutoCAD for architectural design documentation.

      A bit about myself, my name is Emmanuel. I'm a technical sales specialist working at Autodesk. Joined in 2019, but have had a stellar career as a civil structural engineering technologist working in very many different roles in the CAD design, design supervision in the architectural construction industry, as well as the processing plant.

      But other than that, I do also have other interests, like for example, what you see there. I am into flying. I circle a lot, and I'm also very passionate about environment and sustainability.

      So why AutoCAD Architecture? Did you know that the average productivity gain was about 63% for tasks completed using a specialized toolset. And users have been able to save hundreds of hours in their processes across seven industries with their industry toolsets. So if you have an AutoCAD subscription, you have seven different industry toolsets, specialized tools for you that empower you to do different kind of tasks, mechanical, electrical, map, and name it.

      But today, we just want to zero in on the AutoCAD Architecture toolset and some of the things that really make this tool a very useful one for architectural design and documentation. So if you are an AutoCAD Architecture user, you can benefit from the AutoCAD Architecture toolset in many ways because one, you'll be able to automate floorplans, sections, and elevations. You'll be able to create and detail concept plans, plus many other building automation and industry specific workflows.

      So let's go about the user interface differences. What you noticed from the start is the difference in the look of the ribbon interface. They use the interface where they are dedicated tools and commands for AutoCAD Architecture toolset. And as much as you're using lines, arcs, and circles in AutoCAD, the AutoCAD Architecture toolset has specific tools built for specific tasks such as walls, doors, windows, name it.

      In addition to that, you also do have an expanded tool palette that gives you access to many more options, you know, drop-downs of many commands, library of objects. And in addition, AutoCAD Architecture comes with the Autodesk Content Browser that comes with it with hundreds and thousands of equipment and many systems that you can use for your architectural design workflows.

      I can't talk about AutoCAD without talking about layers and specifically, layer keys. Any object, as you know, being displayed in AutoCAD defaults to a layer, which represents the identification in the CAD workspace. Here you can see me trying to draw a representation of what we have as a window in a door. I'm drawing lines, arcs, text, and circles that should represent different objects and layers playing a very big role in organizing the objects that are being displayed in the drawing.

      But AutoCAD Architecture has a very interesting way of doing this. In AutoCAD Architecture, you're working with AEC objects that have layers and layer keys hard-coded into them, which means that as soon as you draw an object in AutoCAD Architecture, it automatically assigns a layer and a sublayer and a layer key.

      This is a setting you can easily access from the Drawing Setup dialog box, and we will show you how to go about this. From the Application button on the top left, I will click on the Drawing Utilities and the Drawing Setup will be shown.

      So you can easily change to any of the layering systems that have been shipped with AutoCAD Architecture and it dynamically updates any new objects that you place in your drawing environment. And this really gives you the flexibility that you need when you're working with different clients or different projects in different geographical places that require specific layer naming standards, naming conventions, or even layer configurations.

      Another key differentiator is the use of Multi-View Objects. This excites every new AutoCAD Architecture user, and it gives us an advantage over vanilla AutoCAD. AutoCAD Architecture's objects have different representations being shown in different view directions, hence the term multi-view objects our multi-view blocks. They represent items like walls, fixtures, tags, or even annotation. So what you draw on plan, you switch the view to an isometric view, you can actually see that it turns it down into a 3D object, which should excite you as an AutoCAD Architecture user.

      Not only that, you have display configuration, which are preset with the software that helps you to control specific elements displays, such as the level of detail. And you can actually see this from the illustration on the PowerPoint where they can adjust their load detail and height detail and many other display configurations that come shipped to the software.

      These global settings can be modified from the Display Manager, which itself is a collection of display settings that you can customize and assign to different view directions. And you can set not just the global settings, but these kind of settings can apply to specific instances of objects that you're placing in your AutoCAD Architecture project environment.

      And you can use these options from the properties palette where you can adjust specific elements, proper visibility properties for specific instances such as this example of a door where, in this example, I just wanted to highlight or even show the framing of the door. So this is a setting that can just apply to that one instance of the object without necessarily having to apply the same setting to all the other objects in the project.

      Another big one, something very important here is the drawing management. Drawing management is indeed the backbone of AutoCAD Architecture, and it's the preferred way of working because it helps you to automate the processes that relate to how you model, how you design, or even document a project, because it provides you with the tools that help you to manage how you view, how you construct your building models.

      And there are so many advantages of drawing management like the automation or the semi-automation of XREFs. You can accommodate any project regardless of the type or size, and really the integration of the Sheet Set Manager.

      This forms the hierarchy and the separation of different elements in AutoCAD Architecture. A typical AutoCAD Architecture project consists of two things, the model and the reports generated from the model. Model will consist of model elements and constructs, and the reports, which are generated from the model, will be the views and the sheets.

      So we can go to the next one, which would be how to go about the concept to construction model? And you just kind of ask yourself, is it possible with AutoCAD Architecture? Yes, it is possible for you to carry out that end-to-end CAD-based workflow for your AutoCAD projects. You can actually start with a sketch and convert that sketch to a 3D solid, which you can later convert to an AutoCAD Architecture mass.

      This mass, we can work on it to further refine it into an actual AutoCAD Architecture 3D Building Model, from which we are going to generate the construction drawings, because you can extract views from the model and take advantage of the automatic dimensions and many other key user enhancements and productivity gains using the AutoCAD Architecture toolsets for this kind of workflows.

      So let's get started. Well, whether you want to start with a 2D drawing, it's very possible for you to create rooms and spaces leveraging the power of AutoCAD Architecture, because AutoCAD Architecture has automated space planning tools that help you to create spaces. You can use the linework in a 2D floorplan sketch itself to quickly generate 2D tagged spaces.

      And here, you can explore different space creation methods. Here you're seeing there from the Space Command, one the manual, one-at-a-time generation, and the automatic generation.

      From this demo here, you can see that I'm actually creating a space object from a flat 2D plane. And using the Space Command as an architect, you can quickly start taking advantage of this AutoCAD Architecture because you can input some of these many spatial information from your 2D plan. Very useful for you to start doing your plans.

      So consider doing this using the usual AutoCAD [? Catch, ?] adding text, formatting that text. You can actually see the productivity gain by adding this spatial information into your 2D plan as well.

      And there's also the automatic generation where, when I click on the Generate Space, from the Properties palette, I can see that setting this option to be automatically generate allows AutoCAD Architecture to actually look for closed loop lines that I can automatically start placing my spaces.

      So this is also another fantastic way of getting started to document your spatial information. And you can also define generic spaces to identify specific room types in AutoCAD Architecture, and these spaces feature specific room names and corresponding color fills.

      So from this example here from the Tool palette, I can apply a space type property to a this space here called the porch. I can now, using the manual Space placement method, I can place a room or a space in there. Right click, press Enter, and then select that specific porch or that new space that I've just created. Right click, and then apply that property to the space, and it automatically inherits that color fill for that specific type.

      And you can go a little bit further, creating a space inventory that reports the name and the area of the spaces. And AutoCAD Architecture is very interesting, because it reports from the space tags. When you delete a tag, it doesn't schedule that space.

      So this example here, you can create this example of a space inventory schedule from this completed space adding exercise. I select all the spaces and then specify an area of my drawing where I want to place my space inventory. And what you see here is I see that there's a tag that has not been added to a space. Now because of that, AutoCAD Architecture will not report from it. So I have to add a room tag.

      So once I add on it, my space schedule up there on the top right needs to be updated. So I just do a quick little update, and then I can now go ahead and edit some of this information that I might not need. From the Space Schedule, Schedule Table Style Properties dialog box-- as you can see, this is a multi-tab kind of dialogue box that allows me to edit any of this content.

      So I can go about by first adding the information that I want, in this case like a space name. So from the column properties here, I could just go ahead and just select a name. So I'll select that name, and then go ahead and hit OK. And then now I can reorder by selecting that space, that column, and then just move it left or right.

      I can also additionally go ahead and start deleting some of these unused columns that I might not really need, either pressing the Delete key on my keyboard or pressing the Delete button on the dialog box. And what that results is a Space Inventory schedule.

      And you can also use the display themes that help you to incorporate, like, graphical data. In this example, it would be like applying a specific display theme for residential name spaces. So from this here, you can see an advantage of AutoCAD Architecture that really helps you to automate some of these very important features.

      We can also go into the Work Planning, and the actual drawing management. Where do you start? And depending on how you want to go about it, it really doesn't matter which approach you want to go for. It is purely your decision as a BIM manager or as a CAD manager, whether it's the nature of the project, the project size, or the team size. Different projects have different requirements, and so this is something that you need to maybe consider.

      So because AutoCAD Architecture toolset or AutoCAD Architecture software is a project-based kind of a software, when you launch AutoCAD Architecture, you'll see on the top left hand side, the Project Browser and the Project Navigator that allows you to set up your project and specify the location of your projects, whether it's in your local desktop or in a shared network space.

      So the tip here is to first specify the folder location and then the creation where you want that project to reside in. Once you create the project, the next thing is to define project building levels, or the stories. Of course, if it's a building that has multiple levels, multiple stories, you have to first specify those levels.

      In this session, my demo will be purely on the metric standard of measurement, more specifically, millimeters, that's why you actually see the difference here.

      This is just a demo of how this actually works. On the levels, you can now go ahead and start adding new level heights. It's specifying the elevation, giving its names, and also perhaps, maybe go ahead and add that description to that level. And this is just purely your decision to make.

      You can also go ahead and add levels above or levels below. This is just something that you can do once you have your project already set up in AutoCAD Architecture.

      Then next, we will talk about massing. Now the default tool palettes in the Design Tool Palette, you have massing tools that give you access to many different shapes and tools that you can use to go ahead and get started to do the design your mass, quickly selecting a shape from the design tool palette, specifying a point on the drawing, and a second diagonal corner and basically specifying the height.

      These shapes have grips that you can use to edit the geometry. So for starters, I can now select that shape, select two points specifying the height, and then as you're doing that in AutoCAD Architecture, you have to make sure that you monitor the command line down below. In that, you just got to make sure that you monitor what the command line is actually telling you.

      And the good thing about this is the fact that now with the AutoCAD Architecture Massing Tools, you have these multi-functional grips that allow you to edit the shapes, the size of the shape however you want it to go.

      You can also go ahead and create a custom AutoCAD Architecture maps using the usual AutoCAD Native 3D Solid Modeling Commands. You can also use third party software solutions, and export these files onto AutoCAD, but you have to make sure that as you're exporting these CAD files, DWG files into AutoCAD Architecture, you've got to make sure that they are not exporting as meshes, because this is exactly how it actually looks into AutoCAD Architecture and really brings up some problems when you're trying to dice up these solid mass.

      As I was doing this, I also was trying to figure out how to play around with a custom Dynamo graph. And this can also be like an optional workflow. And I'll give you this graph. Download this graph as part of my class handouts in the data sets of a Dynamo graph that was supplied to me by my friend Isaac.

      And so with this graph, you definitely need to have Dynamo for AutoCAD, and currently, with the AutoCAD for Civil 3D, you can actually see how you can play around with this graph to actually generate an AutoCAD mass solid.

      From there, we can use this mass to actually slice it into floor plates. And slices can be thought of as a representative of a theoretical flow model. And they provide a very concise way of translating this 3D geometry of a math group into something that can be used to generate the individual flows.

      This example here, you can see that this is indeed my solid mass. The first step that I need to do is converting into a mass element. So for me to work on it on AutoCAD Architecture is to convert it into an AutoCAD Architecture mass object. And so that results to a solid that has grips which I can use to edit a little bit left and right.

      I can also, in this example here, go ahead and once that mass is created, now start dicing it into slices. From this one here, I can now go ahead using the Slice tool on the Tool Palette specify the number of slices here, which is four, which would be like my four different floor levels, and then specify the position of that slice marker.

      I can now place it across that shape, but it's not really a must that you have to do it across. This is just exactly how I prefer to do it. I can also specify the distances between the slices, which would be my building height, which is 3,600, and that results into slice markers that cut across my different building heights. So as you can see, this just represents the different floor levels that we've just earlier created.

      Now the next one up is to now dice this mass floor according to these slice markers. This here, I can now easily do that by selecting the slice markers, and then on the Ribbon, attach objects. In this case, I'll just select my mass, press Enter, and then it creates the slice floors.

      But then, these are not really something that I might want to use at the moment, so what I'll need to do is make sure that I convert those theoretical floor lines into polylines, that which I can use to further develop my 3D mass floor. And you can see the result here is a polyline, that which later on, we can use to create different floor plates.

      So we can now go ahead into the Design Development. So as we inch closer to developing our design, we need to know the difference between constructs and elements. So constructs are the main building blocks of a building model. For me, a construct, we believe a construct should represent a unique portion of a building, like, for example, a floor level.

      And in AutoCAD Architecture, this is a unique DWG file that has an additional XML file with the same name that is automatically created in the AutoCAD Architecture project. And the XML contains information to connect the construct to the project. You cannot duplicate the same construct, because they are unique. You cannot duplicate the information on a construct.

      But elements, unlike constructs, can be repeatable objects that you can use across your building project. An example that I can give you of an element is the generic building block for multiple use. This is just an example of a repeating detail or a repeating 3D model of a desk chair combination. And this is something that you can use if you know that this is an object that you will use repeatedly across the project. Once you edit an instance of an element, it updates across all the different instances in the project.

      This example here is now where we can now go ahead and start developing constructs for our mass. In this specific example, we are going to create constructs of the building levels. So notice as I am creating new drawings or creating new constructs, I'm not calling them ground floor plan. I'm calling them ground floor level just for my own understanding. And I think this is also very important for you as you're creating this is that levels and plans can be named differently, but this just exactly how I choose to go about it.

      So once all these constructs have been created, I can now go ahead and start using these polylines and adding them to my new construct drawings. These are the elements that I want to use to further develop my building elements as part of this construct.

      So what I'm going to do is, in this demo, you can now drag and drop the new polyline and assigning it and dropping to the specific new construct that you've just created. This example here is dragging all these polylines to the specific floor levels. Drag and drop to that new construct that we've just created earlier on.

      We can also convert these polylines to actual AEC objects in AutoCAD Architecture. Here, once we've just done that, you'll see that, as I open up my new project, which was the multilevel hall, go opening up the ground floor level as an example, you'll see this polyline that we've just dragged and dropped into that new construct.

      For this to happen, you can see that once I go to my Design Tools, I can go from the Tool Palette here, select the Slab Element Apply to Line Work and Walls. So very quickly, I can now select that slab element, right click, and monitor the command line.

      I don't want to erase the layer geometry yet, so I'm going to say no. And then specify the slab justification, which, in this case, I'm going to select top, and then select the handling point of my slab elements. I'm going to select that top left corner there. And you can see a resulting 3D slab element in AutoCAD Architecture is created.

      If I want to make maybe perhaps change the element, I can now go to the Element Properties. So from the Properties Palette, I can change the thickness and many of those parameters there. I can also take advantage of the Styles Browser which is like my library of my content for my slab. And in this case, I may want to just change it to a concrete slab on grid type. So I'll select that, and then right click Apply Styles Selection and you can see automatically changes the style of the slab element. And you can see the graphics also changes as well.

      There's also many ways of basically using this same simple line to even develop other AutoCAD Architecture objects such as walls. In this example, I will use the same line work to develop my walls in AutoCAD Architecture. So I'll select the line work as well.

      And then I don't want to delete the layout geometry. So what this results into, it's also automatically using that method. I can now use this method to quickly develop my AutoCAD Architecture walls. Just like what we did last time, I can now change the justification as an example.

      And with AutoCAD Architecture, you can see how you can using these multi-functional grips to change some of these different properties. Again, a huge productivity gain over using AutoCAD Architecture toolset.

      So we'll go next into the Automated XREF Management. And you know, the truth is that how you divide your project, how you plan your project really determines how organized that project is, because you need to really split up your AutoCAD Architecture project into sizable pieces.

      In this demo specifically, we developed a mass, split it into different constructs, in this case, the different floor levels. And sometimes we can also go ahead and start developing constructs within the project that might be showing an interior partition. Or if you're developing an apartment, it could be like a typical one bedroom apartment as a construct. And you can also reference other constructs using the semi-automated XREF functionality in AutoCAD Architecture.

      This is just an example. As we go ahead and start adding these elements and the constructs, I can create a construct that just maybe shows the office furniture and a fitting plan for the ground floor level. So in this example, what you're going to see here is I will create a construct that is just specifically for the interior furnishing of the ground floor plan.

      And by so doing, I can now use the Automated XREF Management in AutoCAD Architecture to basically use this ground floor as my reference. And the nice thing about this is the fact that, as you reference them and as you reference this AutoCAD Architecture object, they really, really work well together. So using this as a reference for my new construct, which would be working on the interior furnishings of my open ground floor space. Again, for you it can also be like an apartment plan for a specific space on the ground floor plan.

      We can also use, in this case, I'm using elements. And like I mentioned before, using the AutoCAD Architecture space elements, this would be the repeatable elements that are used across the project. An example here that I can use is it could be maybe like a typical executive office furniture floorplan. Adding that one element and using the 3D objects from the Design Tool Catalog from the Autodesk Content Browser, I can now select an office chair and just add it onto my project, as you can see here.

      So this now exists as an element in the project. So what this means is, once I make a change to these elements, having referenced this element across my project, if I make a change on that element, it's now results to like a global change of all the instances of that element in a project.

      So for this, to me as a CAD user, I don't really have to use the usual Copy and Paste or just like how we'd use the Block Edit command. The elements in AutoCAD Architecture actually work the same. You can use different blocks on that drawing, and once you make a change to that block, it really results to all the changes in that instance of that project.

      You can also ideally copy levels with assigned elements, but I would recommend this if you want to maybe reduce design time, but there's a drawback to this. Because AutoCAD Architecture is an element as a project-based command, you have these XML files that you really don't want to mess around with, and all that initial project setup. But you can use this to duplicate and rename constructs.

      So as an example, if you know that you have a typical floor plan and you know a level from level 1 to level 3 is just similar with all the layouts, the elements are similar, the levels are similar, you can use this to copy levels above, copy elements below.

      But there's a drawback to that, because it really messes up the initial project setup, you have to really go ahead and maybe start reconstructing or re-building some of these constructs, because it really results into some constructs being renamed. And it's a very tedious process, but it doesn't really think that you cannot copy elements above or below levels. It just really messes up the constructs.

      So you can see for what I'm actually trying to do here is I want to copy the elements from ground floor to first floor. So what this does is, when I, for example, just go ahead and copy levels and elements, if I use the Copy Level the Elements and I can select the first floor and then paste the level above or below, what this means is that it now creates a new level, which I have to rename it as an example here, and then I get an instant warning.

      Now what this really brings into my overall project setup is that the constructs now become a little bit confusing. And you really need to be very careful to rename some of these to know which kind of constructs is actually renamed.

      But what this really means is that you can still use this method to copy levels above, levels below, but you have to make sure that as you rename them, you have to go through the process of rebuilding these constructs again and deleting some of the unwanted constructs, but it's a very tedious process.

      But let's go ahead and start talking about the Views Creation. From the constructs and the elements, we can now extract views, which we can now use them to develop sheets. And this starts as a first step in documenting our building projects. You can generate elevations and sections, isometric views, and other things such as the detailed views.

      And because of the XREF management in AutoCAD Architecture, there's the maintenance of the link between the model and the documentation. So when a construct changes, the views change as well as the sheets that are associated with the construct automatically updates. And you're going to see how that works.

      So once you've done all your building plans, you've done all your designs, we can now go ahead and start creating views. In this case, I'm going to select. You can see very quickly, creating a view of a first floor plan. I can proceed and select maybe optionally just decide to put that description if I need to. And then I'll click Next to specify which construct that I want to associate with that view and the level.

      Once that is completed, I can remove the constructs that I don't need. So I can uncheck that, and also once that is done, I can go ahead and click Finish. So once that is completed, you can see that it automatically creates a DWG plan of my view, which is really like an XREF view of my construct. So think about it as a photograph that has been taken from that construct.

      So you can see that I can adjust the scale and, because of the in-built annotating feature in AutoCAD Architecture, this really manages the text visibility for you as well. Again, a really nice to have feature. We can also go ahead within AutoCAD Architecture to generate, for example, elevation views. In this case, I'm going to select, say, the Elevation Views.

      So from the Document tab, I am going to go ahead from the same first floor plan, selecting the view, and you can see the floor, the call outs on the tool palette here, specify the position of my call outs, and again, now optionally decide to change the way you want to see your space names, your elevation views. You can name them up, down, left, and right, the way you want.

      But in this case, specifically for this drawing, I want to create a specific drawing that will be showing the elevation views. So what I'm going to do is I am going to select a new drawing that will actually put all these elevations to the new drawing. So I'll select the building elevations, and you can see giving them a name, for example, the building elevations, and then go ahead and press OK and then click Next. I want to associate the levels and the construct as you can see there. And then go ahead and press Finish.

      It might not really occur that something has happened. So what I want to do is I want to specify the exact placement of my elevation views, and you can place them anywhere on that drawing. So what that results is that AutoCAD Architecture creates another drawing that shows the new elevations. From the Project Navigator, I'll click on the Building Elevation and you can see it automatically creates all these new building elevations.

      So think about if you had been using this over usual AutoCAD, how much time you really spend doing this kind of a task. In addition to that, you will see that the files are really dependent and they are really feeding onto each other. So all these call outs will have the view, the view reference that take you to that specific area of your drawing. And this is something that you will see also later on as we start putting this information onto sheets.

      We can also go ahead and annotate some of these tools in AutoCAD Architecture. And the nice thing to have with AutoCAD Architecture is the Automatic Dimensioning. I mentioned earlier about the annotation scaling in AutoCAD Architecture, which comes in itself like a default nice to have setting in AutoCAD Architecture, and really saves you, as an architect, as a draft, as a technician, time when you want to document some of these views, because using conventional AutoCAD, you now perhaps have to really format, come up with dimension styles.

      And at the same time, these tools, if you're using just AutoCAD, the automation might not be just as good as in AutoCAD Architecture, but you can see from the Annotate tab, clicking on the exterior dimensions, selecting that wall on that view automatically places dimensions onto that wall. Again, a significant improvement when you're using AutoCAD Architecture.

      And you can and you can see how much more you can actually do with this, because it reads off from the information from the XREF kind of a setup in AutoCAD Architecture, and you have specific tools that help you to edit the dimension styles and the annotation placement of that specific dimension as well.

      We can also add things such as the tags, door tags. Again, something that can be a very tedious task when you're using AutoCAD Architecture. In AutoCAD, you have to do it manually. In AutoCAD Architecture, as long as the door element is placed in the project, you can place different types of door tags. It can actually be a generic door tag, or it can be like a project-based door tag, which is a different kind of a tag that reports the tag information from the space of that specific element.

      So you can see as an example, this is just a project-based door tag, how it really behaves in a different kind of way. And again, this is information that you can always edit from the Settings and if you want to have that tag having to report different spatial properties or the door types, these are things that you can do within AutoCAD Architecture. So again, a massive improvement over using conventional AutoCAD for your annotation and tagging.

      We go into the documenting of your AutoCAD Architecture project, and this is where the automation of specific time-consuming tasks such as maybe drawing these elevations, designing a sheet, and having to using the Viewport command to zoom in and zoom out, making sure that you set up the scale that you need, but AutoCAD Architecture has all these taken care of for you, because from the Views, you also do have the Sheets tab. And all of this comes with an inbuilt Sheet Set Manager functionality that allows you to automate some of this very tedious process.

      So from a view, we can now create sheets. You can use the sheets from AutoCAD Architecture, or you can also use your company's custom-made AutoCAD templates that have these sheets already set in place and you can add these views to a sheet, and helps you to really automate some of these tasks.

      In addition, you also have the XREF management. Again, I said that once a view has been developed, once it changes, the sheets automatically you get a notification. And couple that one with the fact that with the AutoCAD Architecture, you have the extra compare feature, allows you to see the latest changes with this specific reference drawing on the sheet.

      And with Sheet Creation is very, very simple. Because I mentioned before the in-built Sheet Set Manager functionality. You can create a sheet number, give it a title, specify the path of that specific sheet, and on the dialog, the new sheet dialog box, you can see the sheet template. Again, I mentioned before that this can be your own or can just take advantage of the ones that come with the AutoCAD Architecture software.

      So once that is done, go ahead and hit OK. And on the Sheet tab on the Project Navigator, this now creates a sheet. And now, the good thing about this is the placement of the views to the sheet. So for what I'm going to do is I'm going to select a view, and just add it to a sheet.

      So notice that I use the drag and drop. And you can see that the view initially of my first floor plan and my ground floor plan, you can see from this demo, I'm actually placing it. And think about how long it actually takes for you to develop these sheets. So taking note of these sheet references is that you will see later on that it really reports from the specific view of the specific sheet where that view has been placed.

      So by so doing, I'm going to create a new sheet name, call it the building elevation, and then specify a template and go ahead and perhaps maybe if I just want to just rename it, just to retain some consistency. And then what I'm going to do next is opening up that view, and then navigate to where my building elevations have been placed. And remember, being a drawing that had multiple elevation views, I can now drag and drop to specify the locations of the different building elevations.

      Again, a massive improvement using AutoCAD Architecture over conventional AutoCAD when you want to actually use the XREF Management and the Sheet Set Manager functionality.

      So one of the last parts about this is talking about the collaboration aspect. It's possible that in your organization, you have the check in. You have multiple drawings that are being worked on by multiple different project team members, different designers, different drafters, and there is a possibility that you probably might be having specific constructs or specific constructs being worked on by specific people.

      One of the things about AutoCAD Architecture is the fact that you can check in or check out designs, drawing files. With Check Out, this means that you're checking it out to yourself that you want to start working on it. All right, and if you want to check in a design, a drawing, you have to check it in so that others can be able to use it.

      But without checking out or checking in, what this means is that even though this project has been placed in a shared office folder location, this just limits the other user because now they will only just be able to use it read only. But with the checkout feature and coupled that one with the fact that you have on the project navigator the Check-in history, this allows you to have a register of four of the drawing file information, giving you who actually worked on it last, what are the comments, and a little preview when you hover your mouse over that specific entry on the project Navigator, seeing the latest changes of that drawing first.

      But the good thing about this is that the check in feature you can maintain drawing backups. So in a case where you probably want to revert to a previous version of that specific drawing the check in check out feature has that feature that has the rollback to this function to this version function that allows you to revert perhaps to probably just revert to a previous version of a drawing because it's when you're just using AutoCAD and you save and when you save some might not be able to go back to the previous version.

      But there's a lot more functionality working with the Drawing Management feature in AutoCAD Architecture, because the checking in, checking out historically allows you to do this kind of [INAUDIBLE] setup. And this is just an example of what we can do in this demo. First of all, as a project set up I will go ahead and set up my maximum backups of my file. I just want to keep it very clean, so I'm going to just select two.

      So going to this drawing where it's the ground floor level, what I'm going to do deliberately is I'm going to check out this design for myself so that I can start working on it. And once I open it. And if I check in that file at check out, you will see that it automatically starts developing creating the different versions of that drawing.

      So I will go ahead and check out that design, and then open it myself. And so what I'm going to do, I'm going to deliberately make a change to this door at the exit by changing it in the other direction, save it, and then close it.

      It's also possible that there would be someone in my team that is really monitoring this kind of a change, and sees that I've actually made a mistake. So what they're going to do is, using these features within the Check In, Check Out kind of a feature, you can see that they will see that I've actually made an error there.

      So without having to do anything, User number 2 can do a visual comparison of maybe what would be the changes with this new drawing? And you know, some of these features are really, really nice to have in AutoCAD Architecture.

      So what he's going to do is, without doing anything, just going to go ahead and maybe roll back to this version. So by doing that, is that once it's reverted to the original version, which I had made, you can see that this is another fantastic to have feature in AutoCAD Architecture, specifically to drawing management.

      And really, it really helps you to have a lot more visibility of what's happening in your project. And some of these in-built features in AutoCAD Architecture make it a very nice to have software, especially working in a controlled, shared project environment.

      So in conclusion, AutoCAD is fun and it's getting better. . We have gone through these three things. You have seen that you can maximize your one AutoCAD investment by taking advantage of not just the architecture toolset, but you have many different toolsets specific for different tasks.

      So for you, it can be that if you want to move to 2D to 3D CAD do that at your own pace. And with AutoCAD and the Industry Specialized Toolset, you have a lot of automation built into sum into all those tools. And most specifically, for architectural design, you can use you've that you can implement a concept design to documentation kind of a workflow.

      You can work with many different people in your organization, and you have dedicated tools for architectural design. You have access to different components in AutoCAD Architecture, really saving you a lot of time to come up with your architectural drawing. And take advantage of the automation features, specifically in AutoCAD Architecture, to do different things such as management of the views and the sheets.

      You have in-built out-of-the-box tools that with the plot styles the layout keys are fantastic tool for anybody who wants to move from 2D to 3D CAD at their own pace. If you like this class, please click on the recommend, and also add a comment on my class page. Thank you, and enjoy the rest of AU.