Description
Key Learnings
- Learn how to convert AutoCAD blocks into custom mechanical parts, insert Bills of Materials, and number the parts.
- Learn how to annotate drawings using mechanical symbols using Weld, Feature control frame, Taper, and Slope.
- Lean how to insert standard-based title blocks with different scale factors.
- Learn how to define foreground and background objects with automatic hide situations following layer standards.
Speaker
- Sridhar SubramaniSridhar Subramani has more than 25 years of CAD experience, is a Senior Principal Product Owner for AutoCAD Toolsets at Autodesk, Inc. He is a frequent presenter at Autodesk University for last 10 years. He engages with customers and users to understand the product pain points and needs. Prioritizes the wish list items through qualitative & quantitative research and builds the roadmap for future releases of AutoCAD Toolsets. He has also been actively involved in newsgroups of AutoCAD Mechanical software and AutoCAD Architecture software and resolved over 1500 issues reported by customers. He conducts in-house training in AutoCAD and AutoCAD Mechanical software. He has written several technical solutions that are published on the Autodesk support website.
SRIDHAR SUBRAMANI: Hi, everyone. Good morning, good afternoon. Thank you for joining the class Save Countless Hours with Techniques to Create Design Using AutoCAD Mechanical. My name is Sridhar Subramani. I have more than 20 years of CAD experience. I'm working as a senior principal product owner for AutoCAD toolsets at Autodesk. I'm a frequent presenter at Autodesk University for the last nine years.
In my primary role, mostly, I engage with customers to understand their pain points and needs, prioritize these wishlist items using both qualitative and quantitative research, and build the roadmap for future releases. I've also been actively involved in the newsgroups, in answering the questions. And I also conduct a lot of in-house trainings in both mechanical and architecture. And I've also published several technical solutions that you can refer on the product support website.
So without further ado, let's get started. So before we get into the class presentation, just a safe harbor statement. So basically, you don't need-- you shouldn't be making purchasing decisions based on the presentation that we see today. I'll give a few seconds here.
OK, so we all know our class summary about AutoCAD-- creating AutoCAD mechanical drawings, which are intelligent and easy to manage. So the key learning objectives-- at the end of this class, you'll be able to convert AutoCAD drawings into custom mechanical parts, Insert intelligent bill of materials, and also number all the parts that you have created in the drawing. And you'll also learn how to annotate the drawing using various mechanical symbols like Weld symbol, Surface Texture symbol, feature control frame, Taper and Slope, et cetera.
And we'll also learn how to Insert standard-based title blocks with different scale factors. And then we'll learn how to define foreground and background objects with automatic height situations, which will follow layer standards as well. In addition to that, we will also be covering how to create detailed views that is blowing up a portion of the drawing, and creating a detailed view of that particular area of the drawing. And, then we'll also be looking at various power dimension techniques to create multiple dimensions at a time as well as some tips and tricks to manage the power dimensions.
OK, so let's get to our first topic-- converting blocks in AutoCAD Mechanical. So that-- we'll be starting with part references. Most common workflow is to create AutoCAD tables to represent the parts in the drawing. The table needs to be manually maintained and updated as the design progresses. This is time-consuming, cumbersome, and error-prone. Other users opening the drawing are not sure if the table is updated or if the quantity and other things are right in the model. This accounts to a lot of lost engineering hours during our design creation.
In AutoCAD Mechanical we can create intelligent BOM. So using the BOM, first, we need to define the part references. Part references are special blocks in AutoCAD Mechanical whose attributes contain the data that is used to populate the bill of materials. You can create part references on any objects in the drawing using your existing blocks, or directly on the drawing objects itself.
Let's see a quick demo on how to define new parts using objects and blocks. So I shift to AutoCAD Mechanical. So in here, you have an AutoCAD drawing. So this doesn't contain any mechanical objects. This doesn't have any intelligence in the drawing as well. So quickly, we will see how to define some part references in the drawing.
So I'll shift to the Annotate tab. From the BOM panel, you have something called part reference here. So let's click on the dropdown here, and I'll create a part reference from scratch. I'll pick the Part Reference option, zoom to the bottom left-hand corner of this drawing, and then pick the object in the drawing. And here, you see a part reference dialog box. Now you can define various properties that you want to have in your bill of materials or table. For example, I'll call this component as baseplate.
So if you know the material, you can define the material as well. For example, it is like steel. And for example, I would enter the vendor as Autodesk. Likewise, you can define various properties. In addition to these properties, if you would like to have more properties, click on the Settings. In the BOM Settings dialog box, you have many other properties, so you can always add additional properties to your part reference dialog box.
For instance, you would like to Insert Standard. Click on the Standard. Drag and drop it. So if you need more properties, you can select here, or there are additional properties under the more properties dropdown here. You can choose the properties that you would like. For example, you would choose total mass if you want to see that, and click OK. Once you have defined the component properties, click OK.
So now that we have defined a part reference, let's define more part references in the drawing file. So I have various blocks created in this drawing file. So let me open the Insert Dialog box. And if you notice here, there are many different blocks. So we can convert all these blocks into part references, like I said.
If you have defined attributes, all those attributes will be converted into component properties as well. So for that, I'm going to do Select, Part Reference as a block from the annotate panel, select the Block option. I'm going to pick the blocks. As you pick the block, the component properties will automatically extract the name of the block. If we have other attributes which are matching the component properties, they will also be extracted. In this case, I'm going to click OK.
So I'm going to repeat the same step and pick additional components. For example I selected another block. It's a swivel arm. Click OK. So I'll go to Repeat again. Pick another object. If you notice here-- so the name has been automatically extracted. There was a material attribute assigned, which is also extracted here. Likewise, I'm going to select the last part in the drawing. And now this is a support here, so it has selected 6 by 6 [INAUDIBLE] here.
Now that we have defined the part reference in the drawing, let's see how to define the bill of materials. The BOM-- so the BOM data is so stored in the drawing with the drawings. If you are working on a drawing that has multiple title blocks and borders, you could have individual bill of materials attached to those blocks and borders. If you have multiple bill of materials, they will be shown to the left of the BOM list, which we will be seeing in the demo.
So we learned how to define part references using blocks. If a block has attributes, these attributes are also converted into BOM properties like name, description, and material, like I mentioned. So let's review the BOM dialog box and various settings and options available within the BOM dialog box. Let me switch to AutoCAD Mechanical.
So we have defined the part references. Let's see how to define the bill of materials. Now, click BOM Option from the Annotate tab, and press the Enter key. As soon as you press the Enter key, you can see Main BOM Automatically Created. And all the part references that I created in the drawing are automatically updating the BOM database.
And if you also notice, there are two numbers of ACIS 3 by 3 component here, as well as-- there are two instances of 6 by 3 cassette. By default, these are the BOM properties that you will see in the drawing file. If you need additional columns here, you can always add additional columns.
For example, I'll select-- for instance, Settings here. If you need-- vendor is already there. Maybe material, too. You can drag and drop it to the BOM, as well as-- for instance, you want total mass, you can drag and drop it as well. So once you have selected all the properties-- and you can see here-- so those properties will also be automatically listed. So at any point of time, if you want you can drag and drop the columns as well.
Notice here, there is a total mass here, so we don't have a mass column. You can click on Settings again, come back here, drag and drop the Mass column header. So for instance, you want to enter, maybe, 100 units here. Maybe for another component, I'm going to enter 200 units. As soon as I enter 200 units, if you see here-- the total mass is automatically calculated for you. That's because you have two instances of a 6-by-6 cassette. So it has multiplied 2 times the mass, which is 400. So this is how you can create a bill of materials. So when we define a title block, then I can show you how to create a border BOM as well.
So now that we have defined part references, we know how to define a bill of materials. Let's see how to Insert a parts list. Let's shift to the presentation. So parts list-- once we define the BOM, now we can Insert a part list, which are intelligent tables. The part list is very specific in that it shows some or all the information from the bill of materials. So it can be filtered to show fewer columns or fewer items, but it can also show more than what is currently displayed in the bill of material as well.
So let me shift to AutoCAD Mechanical now. So again, from the Annotate panel, select the part list, and click the Enter key to create a main part list. So now the Part List dialog box is seen. Only, we have fewer columns here. So at any point of time, you can include additional columns. So for instance, there are five columns here, and select Settings here. So here, you can change the color of the part list dialog. So for example, the color of the text is in cyan blue color, so you can change, for example, to green color if needed.
Likewise, for the data as well-- you can change the color. And you have various other properties, like what should be the margin of a header, as well as data. Click OK. So let me highlight a column here. Click the Insert button here. I want to Insert additional columns to the right. So for example, I want to Insert mass, as well as I want to Insert the total mass in the bill of materials or parts list. You can always resize the columns to see the exact details.
So now that we know how to define the columns-- and you have some other settings here. For example, for this part list-- whether you want to Insert a header and a header with a title as part list, or you can always change this as a custom, for example. And while inserting the parts list, how do you want to insert it-- whether you want to Insert to the bottom-- using the bottom right-hand corner of the parts list or to the top left. So for instance, I'm going to select bottom left-hand corner. So when I click OK in the dialog box-- and you can see the insertion point is at the bottom left-hand corner.
So now that we have a part list-- so let me go ahead and click the parts list here. Let me zoom in to the parts list. So at any point of time, if you Insert another component-- so the part list will automatically get updated. So for example, I'm going to Insert another cassette here. So just go to the Insert dialog box. You can select one of the components here. So for example, I'm going to select 6-by-6 cassette. So you have a component here, which is not scaled. Click OK. As soon as you Insert the component, you can see 6-by-6 cassette is updated.
So let's go ahead and delete the component that I inserted and zoom into the area. The quantity is automatically updated. So you can also double-click on the parts list and go back here, and also change the properties one more time so that they are very clear in the drawing file. So you can zoom in to the drawing and click here. I'll move the parts list here to this location.
So now that we know how to Insert a parts list, let's see how to label the parts. So for example, balloons-- so balloons are used to call out which parts are shown in the drawing using graphical, as compared to what is being shown in the bill of materials. Users have option to Insert balloons one at a time, or you can also Insert balloons in groups. So you can also arrange the balloons either vertically or horizontally. Let's see a quick demo of how to Insert balloons in the drawing file.
So we have created the bill of materials. We have inserted a parts list. Let's see how to insert the clouds or balloons. From the Annotate tab, click the Balloon option. And now you have various options at the command line. So you can Insert all the balloons at a time, or you can Insert one balloon at a time, or you can collect and group many balloons together.
So let's-- for instance, I'm going to select all the balloons at a time. As soon as you select all the balloons at a time, zoom in here. So you can see the red part references highlighted automatically here. So as I highlight, you can see them getting highlighted. So what I'll do here is-- I'll just drag a window and pick all the balloons in the drawing. [INAUDIBLE]
So when I pick all the part references, I have the option how I want to place the balloons here-- whether I want to place it horizontally, or I can place it vertically, or all around. You can pick a boundary to see how you want to place the balloons, and pick OK. As soon as you Insert the balloons, you can see them. All of them are automatically arranged here.
So let me double-click one of the balloons. If you notice here, there are various options. So how do you want to see the balloon-- whether it should be in circular, or if you have other options like open, linear, circular to text, example. In addition to that, you can click on Settings and to make the changes. So what should be the size of the balloon? What should be the horizontal spacing?
For example, there are all the balloons like arranged here horizontally. If you want to maintain a specific distance between each of the [? clouds ?] or balloon, you can change the balloon spacing horizontally or vertically. If you want to change the pattern of the balloon, you can always change the pattern how the balloons are seen in the drawing file. You see here? So all the balloons are changed to a different pattern. So you can always select a balloon and change at least one of them as needed. You can change the pattern for all the balloons, or you can change the pattern for one of the balloons.
So now we know how to create the balloons in the drawing. Let's see how to export the content. So now that-- we saw-- we created a bill of materials parts list. Let's see how I can export the parts list data on balloon BOM data into an Excel file. So users can export or import data, both using the bill of materials as well as the parts list dialog box. So the Import and Export choices can be useful to make large-scale edits. So let's see how to export the bill of materials.
So click on BOM Database here. Press the Enter key. Once you are in the BOM database, click on the dropdown, report generator, and you have the options to export the bill of materials or import the bill of materials. So for instance, you have an Excel file with all the properties here-- you can always import the bill of materials and then attach those objects to the parts in the drawing. Or now that we have created the parts, let's see how to export the bill of materials.
So now, when you click on the Export option you have a few options here. You can export based on text file or CSV file or a HTML file. For instance, I'm going to select a CSV file, call this as Demo, and put the CSV file on the desktop. So once we have exported, click OK. So you can change-- you can check the exported CSV file.
For instance, let me open the Explorer. So we have created a Demo.csv file. But now, here, you can see the CSV file has been exported. So at any point of time, you want to include additional properties-- you can include them. So for instance, as a demo here-- call this this as CAD. Maybe I'll add another property here called Test.
So now that I have modified the Excel file-- so I'll just save the Excel file and close it. Make sure you don't delete the BOM Units column here. This is very important. We need to maintain this one, as well as the BOM Key column. These two columns shouldn't be updated or tampered. So now that we have updated, I'll just make the changes and save.
To replace it-- so I'll go to the BOM dialog box, press the Enter key pick the dropdown here and click Import, select the demo. Click and overwrite all the BOM properties. As soon as I import all the BOM properties, you can see all the updates are shown here. So the names are updated as well as the total mass. And all the vendor details that I created have also been updated here as Demo and Test. So this is how you export a bill of materials or you can import a bill of materials.
The same thing can be achieved using parts list as well. Double-click the parts list. From the dropdown here, you have an option to export. And the options available are, again, same. Call this as Demo One, and just hit the Save key. So you can make the changes one more time, and also import the Excel file. So if you notice here, even the parts list is updated, because the BOM database is updated. Likewise, if you zoom in to the parts list here-- so the vendor column is also updated. So this is how you can keep your drawing always updated with the latest BOM parts list in the drawing file. Let me go back to the presentation.
These are how to create the balloons. And now let's see how to annotate the drawings using AutoCAD Mechanical. In AutoCAD Mechanical, you can create various [INAUDIBLE] symbols, which are loaded in AutoCAD mechanical. So they can be placed on demand without having to recreate the symbols every time when you need.
So they follow the industry standards, like ISO, ASME, [? Din, ?] JS. There are eight different standards in AutoCAD mechanical. So you can create the GD&T symbols like Weld symbol, Feature Control Frame, Taper and Slope, Surface Texture using all these standards. In this demo, we will create few GD&T symbols like the Surface Texture symbols, which are used to document material removed or material required in your design, and the Weld symbols, which are used to indicate different parts of the metal joining process, or the Feature Control Frame symbol, which is used to identify the type of tolerance, the amount of tolerance or reference that can be defined on the designs.
So let's change to AutoCAD Mechanical here. So I will use the same design. So now that we have a design here, let's see how to define some of the GD&T symbols. Let's start with the Surface Texture symbol. From the Annotate tab, I'm going to select Surface Texture symbol. So once you select the Surface Texture symbol, you can zoom in to the area of a drawing and pick a object.
So now that I've picked the object, pick a point in the screen. And pick another point for the leader, and press the Enter key. And as soon as you press the Enter key, you have various options here. So whether you want to create a Surface Texture symbol using a basic symbol or you want to define material removed or material removal required or material removed prohibited.
So now I'm going to select Material Removal Required. So you can enter the process. Maybe I'll call this as Ra10. So in addition to that, you can define other parameters. You can enable the fold style if needed. As you enter the details here, you can see the drawing is automatically getting updated. At any point of time, you can click on the Settings.
In the Settings dialog box, you have various options-- whether you want to define the Arrowhead by ANSI standard or a different Arrowheads type, what should be the size of the annotation, and what should be the color. So for instance, I'm going to select a red color here. And I want some other color for the other areas of the drawing. For instance, I'm going to select cyan color here.
Once you select, click on the OK button, and click OK here. So as soon as you click OK-- so the text automatically gets updated to red color, as well as the arrow changes to the cyan color. So if you want to modify the symbol, double-click on the symbol. So you can make the changes or add additional parameters. Maybe I'll call this sampling length as five units here.
Right. So now we have defined some of the properties. If you want to reuse the same symbol in the drawing one more time, add that symbol to the library, and you can specify a symbol name and press OK. And click OK. In the dialog box. So at any point of time, click on the dropdown here. You can reuse the symbol one more time, at any place in the drawing file. And select an object here. Pick a point. Press Enter. Click OK. Since we have selected a predefined symbol, it will automatically create the symbol. You need not enter all the parameters one more time.
So now we have created a Surface Texture symbol. Let's see how to define a Weld symbol. Click on the Welding option here. Pick a point on the screen. Press Enter. So now that we are in the Weld symbol dialog box, you can select various weld types in the dialog box here. For instance, you have Fillet Weld or Flange Weld or a Square Groove Weld. So in this case, I'm going to select Fillet Weld. So while you're selecting the Fillet Weld, you have various properties here. You can also select All Around. And what should be the small leg length-- maybe we'll call this as one unit. And what should be the size of the weld-- it is two units. Likewise other parameters-- like, I'll call this as length should be three units here.
So now I've defined a few parameters here. You can always select other options as well, like, from the other side, what should be the fillet type. So you can, again, define more properties here. So I'll randomly enter few values here. So as you enter the values, you can see the drawing getting updated.
You have options to flip the symbols. Like, if you see here-- now flip the symbol between other side and opposite side. And you can flip the orientation of the symbol, whether you want the symbol to be in a staggered fashion-- you can select. As we finish entering all the properties, you can always include this as a predefined list and click OK.
So now that we have defined a Weld symbol-- so let's see how to create a feature control frame. From the ribbon panel, I'm going to select Feature Control Frame. Now, here, I'm going to pick an object. So the feature control frames are created in horizontal or vertical fashion. So I'll pick two points, pick a point on the screen, press the Enter key.
So now we are on the Feature Control Frame, so you have various options here. You can select the All Around. And I want this feature control frame to be either symmetric or, for example, total runout or a flatness symbol. Then what should be the tolerance? For example, I'll enter the first tolerance to be 0.1 and the second tolerance to be 0.2. Any point, you can come back and make the changes.
So I'm going to Insert another symbol here-- for example, maximum material condition. Once you Insert the symbols-- again, similar to Surface Texture Symbol and Weld symbol, you have option to include them as a library file and specify a name to the library, and click OK. In the drawing file. So now the symbol is created. So at any point, you can use the grips to adjust the orientation of the symbol. You can always pick and place, and you can also use the Arrowhead symbols. For example, the insertion point of the symbol is here. You can always pick and choose a different insertion point. For example, I'll pick the corner here so that it will place-- it will place the symbol in a horizontal fashion.
So now we know how to create various annotation or GD&T symbols in the drawing. Let's go back to our presentation. So now our next topic is how to Insert the intelligent title blocks and borders. So these are necessary for our presentation in the design. So Mechanical's Title Border tool can be used to place a title block or a border in the model space, or you can place a title block in the paper space as well. So the title block and the border are inserted in two different blocks. So title block is one block, and the border is another block.
The title blocks are also following the industry standards, and they are also defined based on the industry size. So you have different options, like a border size or format of the title block. So you can Insert the title block using the command line, AMTITLE, or you can click on the Ribbon Annotate tab and select the title block.
Let's see a quick demo on how to Insert a title block in the drawing file. So now that we have defined-- we have the design here, let's see how to pick and Insert a title border. For example, from the Annotate tab, I'm going to pick the title border here. In the title, border and title, you have various options. What should be the paper format, for example-- whether it's an A size or a B size or C size. Depending upon the design that you have created and the scale factor you have used, you can choose the pattern.
For instance, I'm going to select a D-sized title block. So D-sized paper format and a different type of title block. There are, again, various sizes here. I'll use the default one. And you can have a different scale factor-- whether you have created the design in one-to-one scale or 1 foot by 1 foot, or you have other scale factor options as well.
Apart from that, you have some more options here. So whether you want to set the base scale factor for all the objects used in the drawing and whether the scale that you choose should be applied to drawing defaults like grid size and things like that. So when you're inserting a title block, whether you want to automatically move all the objects to the center of the title block-- and you can select the automatic placement as well.
In your design, you might have frozen some of the layers. Whether you want to thaw all the layers so that all the objects are seen in the drawing, while placing the type lock and positioning the title block-- and then once you Insert the type block, it will thaw or freeze all the layers back. If you are creating a component drawing file, you may want to even extract the part ref information into the type block. You can select this checkbox. If you have defined assembly properties in the bill of materials, it'll automatically extract the assembly properties into the title block.
Since that-- we have an assembly drawing here, and just click OK in the dialog box. As soon as I click OK-- so I'm going to pick a corner point here. And you have options to Insert additional properties in the title block. So for example, I'll call this as revision 1, and maybe sheet size as-- sheet number as 101. If you want to Insert additional properties like Check Date or Issue Date or Issued By, you can enter the details. So for example, Issued By, I enter my name or Sridhar here. So once you are done, you can click OK and press the Enter key.
Since we have selected option to automatically select all the objects and center them-- so all the objects are placed within the title block here. So let me zoom in to the corner of this title block here, and you'll notice, here, all the properties are automatically seen here. So for instance-- let me change the display background of the paper here, change the colors here to white color.
So now you see here all the properties that I've entered are listed here-- who issued by, when was it drawn, what is the file name, as well as other properties like what is the size of the title that I have selected, what is the scale factor, the drawing number if you have entered, as well as the sheet number 101 that I've entered here.
So now that we have inserted a title block, at any point of time, you can double-click the title block and change the scale factor as needed. For instance, you want to have a 1 is 2 scale, and click OK. So as you select, you can select the objects also to scale. For instance, I'm going to select all these objects and press the Enter key. So it will automatically center all the objects here. So undo the changes here and zoom back to the drawing file. So this is how you can Insert a title block. At any point, you can edit the title block as well.
So for instance, you're going to select the part list here. If you want to Insert the part list one more time-- so you can say, using the bottom left hand-- you can change the orientation here, move the parts list, the location that you want to Insert here. So since there are additional columns, you can always remove the columns or adjust the orientation or placement of the parts list in the drawing file. Let me shift the to the presentation.
But now we saw how to Insert a title block. Let's see our next topic, creating the hide situations. In AutoCAD Mechanical, we can create hide situations that allow geometry to obscure other geometry in your drawing. Users can control if the display of hidden lines has dashed lines or completely hide the hidden lines.
Another advantage of using the Hide command is that if any of the objects are moved, the system will automatically update the display. Simple hide situations can be edited to show which parts of your drawing design are in the front and which are at the back. To demonstrate, let's see how to create a hide situation in AutoCAD Mechanical.
Go back to AutoCAD mechanical here, shift to another drawing called Creating Hide Situations. Click on the Home tab. Under the Detail panel, you have Hide Situation. So before we define the hide-- so we have two plates here. I'm going to move this plate here, onto the other plate, to show that two plates are overlapped.
So now that we have created a kind of two overlapping plates, let's see how to define a hide situation. I'll pick the hide-- [INAUDIBLE] Hide command, and pick my foreground objects-- which plate should be on the top so that the bottom plate will show the hidden lines. I'll pick the top plate here and press the Enter key.
As soon as I press the Enter key-- so you can see various options here. So for example, let me click on OK here. I will change the display back to black color. OK. I think white looks better because of the resolution here. Click OK.
So you can see the height situation here in purple-- or magenta color. All the dashed lines are seen in magenta color. For instance-- for example, I'm going to edit the hide situation, select the objects. In the Hide Situation dialog box, you have various options-- whether you want to display the cyan or magenta hidden line, whether you want to hide all other objects, like, for example, the center lines, or you can enable the display of hidden lines here.
So once I select the first layer objects, you can see them automatically getting highlighted here. I select the second level so the other level objects are automatically updated. So let me zoom in again, go back to the Hide Situation, edit, pick the objects here. You can select the first one or the second level. You can always move the levels.
For example, you want the other plate to be as a bottom plate- you can always bring it forward or move the level up so that the hidden lines are computed in a different fashion. That means the plate which I selected first becomes the background object, and the hidden lines are automatically updated here, accordingly.
So now that we have created a hide situation, let's see how the hide situation gets updated. I'll select the base plate, press the Enter key, move towards my left. And if you see here, the hidden lines are automatically computed. So you have different options. For example, you want to suppress the Hide Situation or temporarily pick the Hide Situation and press the Enter key. So temporarily, you have suppress the Hide Situation to see the objects. You can always go back and unsuppress the Hide Situation.
So now that you have created a hide situation, you always have an option to delete the hide situation. So you have deleted the hide situation, so you can create another hide situation. For instance, I will define another object here. And I'm going to select the hide situation and select this as a foreground object, press the Enter key, and click OK. See now?
So this circle is within-- behind this block here. So that's the reason you can see the magenta line. Let's see if I can move this circle here onto this line. I'll turn off the object properties. So this line is not touching the background object, and hence, we are not able to see the hide situation on the drawing file.
So now we saw how to create hide situations. Let's see how to create detailed views. So the Create Detail view command helps you document detailed views of the parts, either in model space or in the layout. Users can scale an area of the drawing with different scale factors to view the drawing view in a larger scale. This helps to enlarge areas of the geometry that are not clearly displayed or dimensioned in the drawing view. So we can use the command AMDETAIL.
I'll shift back to AutoCAD Mechanical, go back to the previous drawing that I was working on. So now that we have some details here, let's assume you want to create a detail of this area of the drawing. So for instance, I'm going to erase this annotation. From the Home tab, detail panel, you have Detail View creation option here. Click on AMDETAIL.
So you have various options-- whether you want to create a detailed view using a rectangular boundary or using an object or a circular boundary. So I'm going to pick a circular boundary and draw a circular boundary within the drawing. So as I pick, I will see a Detail View dialog box. So now, when you're defining a detail view, whether you want the scale to be 2 is to 1 or other scale factors-- so let's assume I'm going to create an enlarged view of the area that I selected, twice of the original size.
So while you're creating a detail view, you have various options, like I said. You can create the detail view in the current drawing, or you can define this in a layout. For instance, I want to select in the current space. So before I click OK, you have options to select various settings. While you're creating a detail view, whether you want a smooth bordered circle around the detailed view as well, as well as whether you want to connect both the detail view and the detail boundary.
And you have other options, like you can define the scale factors here and the colors. So for instance, I want a red color here and different line type, as well as a line weight. And there is a View Label tab here. You can choose what should be the color of the detail text. You have options to select a green color, for instance, or maybe a blue color.
So once you have selected, click OK, and click OK. In the Detail View dialog box. And you have an option where exactly you want to place the detail view in the drawing. So you can pick a point in the screen. So automatically, a detail view is created with a scale factor of 2. So at any point you modify the drawing, the detail view will also get updated.
If you want to change any settings double-click the Detail View, go to the Settings. Detail View-- whether you want to connect them with the line. Click OK. Click OK in the dialog box. And you can see both objects are connected here. And if you don't want to see the detail circle boundary, you can always turn off the Detail View option as well.
So for instance, I'm going to erase one of the component here. So erase the component. Double-click the detail view. Click OK. And pick a point. As I update the detail view, the component that I had inserted in the drawing-- erased in the drawing-- has already been automatically removed from the detail view. So in order for the detail view to get updated, you need to double click the detail view and click OK. In the dialog box so that it will recalculate all the objects in the Detail View boundary and then place them one more time.
So now that we know how to Insert a detail view, let's go on to our next topic-- power dimension. So there are some productivity tools around dimensioning in AutoCAD Mechanical. So you can quickly create different type of dimensions like parallel dimension or ordinate or symmetric dimensions. To save some time while placing the dimensions, you have various other options. Like, if you are placing dimension over another dimension you have options, whether you want to replace the existing dimension or break the existing dimension into multiple pieces, or move away the original dimensions.
You have other options like-- for example, you have two dimensions. You want to combine them into a single dimension using a Join command. Or a single dimension can be broken into two different dimensions. And finally, if you have placed various dimensions in the drawing and you want to align them with respect to a specific dimension, you have an option to do that as well.
So let's see a quick demo on how to create multiple dimensions, as well as a few tips and tricks with respect to dimensions. Let me switch to AutoCAD Mechanical . I'm going to select one drawing file here. I'll select-- to create the dimensions. From the Annotate tab, select Multiple Dimension option. So in the Multiple Dimension option, you have various options, like creating parallel dimensions, ordinate dimensions, or symmetric. For this demo, I'm going to select Parallel Dimensions, and I'm going to select a baseline option.
So in this instance, I'm going to select or Insert dimensions only in one axis. Click OK. So all you have to do is pick a window around the objects. Press the Enter key. And select Enter. Pick a corner from where, exactly, you want to define the dimensions. I will enable the object properties here, [INAUDIBLE]. Pick a point. So now you have an option-- whether you want to create all the vertical dimensions or whether you want to define all the horizontal dimensions.
And if you notice here, there is a visual cue. So the dimensions are shown in the green color or a rubber band effect so that you can place wherever you need the dimensions to have. Or for whatever baseline the distance that you have defined in the drawing, it will automatically show that in red color. So you can pick a point and press the Enter key.
So the dimension text is not very clear. So what we can do is we can go to the Options, select [INAUDIBLE] Standards dimension, and you have various dimension settings as well. So if you want, you can edit the baseline dimensions, modify, and change the text color. For instance, I'm going to change this to a red color. And click OK-- OK in the dialog box, and click OK. In the drawing file. So now you can see all the dimensions are automatically inserted.
So now we have inserted three dimensions here. For instance, I'm going to erase one of the dimensions here. So notice, here, I'll select this dimension, second dimension. Press the Enter key. As soon as I erase one of the dimensions, the dimensions are automatically arranged. So this is the intelligence built into AutoCAD Mechanical.
So let's repeat the same command, Multiple Dimensions. In this case, I'm going to Insert multiple dimensions in both the axes. Pick OK. Pick the objects in the screen. Press the Enter key. And pick a corner point to Insert your dimensions. So I'm going to select and Insert the horizontal dimensions. So once I've inserted the horizontal dimensions, press the Enter key. You can Insert the vertical dimensions as well, in the drawing file.
So now whatever I modified was with respect to these dimensions. You can always modify the dimension style. Click on Modify here. Change this to [INAUDIBLE]. Click Close. I'll go back to the Standard settings dimension option, Edit, Modify, and change the color so that all the dimensions are getting updated in the Join file.
So now that we have inserted a few dimension style-- a few dimensions here, let's see some more options. For example, I'm going to select two points to Insert another dimension. So I will just hover over on this dimension here and pick a point. So it'll automatically Insert here with visual cue.
I'm going to repeat the step one more time. So I'm going to select the first dimension here, pick the point exactly on the dimension, and you get an option here-- whether you want to replace with the old dimension or you want to move away the existing dimensions. So I'm going to select Move Away and click OK here. As soon as you see here-- so the original dimensions is moved away from a new placement of the dimension. So you can choose-- you can try other options like Replace or deleting the existing dimension as well.
So now that we have seen how to Insert multiple dimensions, modify them as well, let's see some more productivity tools. I'll change to another dimension here. Let's change the color of the display here to black. So I'll zoom into this area of the drawing here. So I have placed three dimensions here. And all these three dimensions are not aligned horizontally.
So what we can do is from the Annotate tab, Dimension Panel, you have various options like whether you want to join the dimension or you want to Insert additional dimensions or you want to align the dimensions. So in this case, I'm going to select Align Dimensions. So for aligning the dimensions, I'll want the first dimension here as a base dimension. And I'm going to pick the rest of the dimensions in the drawing and click OK. So automatically, all the three dimensions are aligned horizontally.
These dimensions were created using power dimension. The same thing works with normal AutoCAD dimensions as well-- for example, the linear dimensions. Pick the Align option. So with respect to this dimension, I want to align the rest of the dimensions. Pick all the other three dimensions, and see, you can align all three AutoCAD dimensions, as well, in a horizontal fashion.
So now that we have seen how to align the dimensions, let's see some more tricks like how to Insert dimensions. For instance, I'm going to select [? AMDIMINSERT ?] here I'm going to select the baseline dimensions. I'm going to pick another point in the drawing. So automatically, the existing dimension is broken into two different dimensions with the point that I chose.
I'll undo the option. I'll repeat the step one more time. Click on [? AMINSERTDIM. ?] So I'm going to select the best dimension that I want to split. And I'm going to pick a point in the drawing so that the dimensions can be placed. So as I select a point-- so two dimensions are automatically inserted here.
So now that we saw option how to break the dimensions, likewise, we can do the inverse of that, how to join the dimensions back into single dimension. For instance, I'm going to select Join Dimension-- these two dimensions here. Press the Enter key. Now you can join both the dimensions as single dimension.
Go back to the presentation. So we saw how to create dimensions. So, so far, we have covered like bill of materials, like how to Insert parts list in a drawing file, how to define the callouts, and also Insert various GD&T tables as well, as how to define hide situations, as well as edit the hide situations, and how to define industry standard title blocks in the drawing file. And finally, some tips and tricks-- inserting multiple dimensions, as well as modifying the dimensions. So that's the end of our presentation. Thank you all for watching the video. Let's have a live AU class at Las Vegas or later this year. Thank you very much.