Edit The Project Drawing List (7:16 min)

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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OK.

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We are now going to create our first drawing in AutoCAD

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Electrical in our new project.

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So on my new project here, I am going to right click on

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it and say New Drawing.

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Now, you notice, if you're an avid AutoCAD user,

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that I did not go up to File, New or the New button

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in the Quick Access toolbar.

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There's a reason.

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You can do it that way.

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But if you do, you will then have

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to make an extra step of attaching this

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to this project file.

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A lot faster and easier if you just

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do it right out of the gate from the project manager itself.

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And in here, it gives us a different dialog box

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than we typically see when we create new drawings in AutoCAD

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because it's allowing us to fill out even more

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information about this drawing.

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And this drawing is then going to be

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able to be tied to our title blocks.

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And all of this information will be

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able to be auto-filled in to our title blocks.

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More to come on that and another module.

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So in here, I'm going to say, this is my new project 1.

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Very unique naming conventions.

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Now, the template I'm going to use

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is going to be my AutoCAD Electrical DWT.

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Now, this particular template inside

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of our standard templates folder is actually one

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that I'm not a big proponent of because it has

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the title block in model space.

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It's what ships with the software

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though and it's fine to use.

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So I want you all to be able to utilize this template easily.

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But in future lessons, we're going

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to talk about the importance of model space and paper space.

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And I actually want to see you keep that title

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block in paper space.

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The location of it is by default right into the same folder

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as the project file I just created.

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And now, I can start giving it descriptions.

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Perhaps, I'm going to call this one motor wiring

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because this is my motor page.

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Now, if you use IEC style designators,

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we have the setup for that where it will do it

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across the whole page and these things can tie into your title

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block information.

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I'm not going to fill that out for now.

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I am going to say that it is sheet 1.

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I am going to call it drawing number 2161.

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So you can use whatever drawing numbers or standards

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you have as a company on that.

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And sections and subsections are ways

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to filter your drawings by certain things.

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It used to be the only way that we could put filters

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on our individual drawings so that we could group them

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together within a project.

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A bit like a mini project inside of the big project.

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However, we have other tools for that now.

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So you're welcome to use them.

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But you're also welcome to utilize them

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as just another field that could be tied to attributes

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in your title block.

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So if you need more real estate for your title block

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that is specific to a drawing, utilize those fields for that.

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Lots of flexibility in Electrical

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to turn these into whatever you need to customize it for you.

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I will show you what the other flexibility

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is inside of the projects to be able to filter on them

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when we get done building this drawing.

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So once I'm done, I'm going to click OK.

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That drawing will open up.

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And it's going to automatically populate itself

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into my new project.

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So here's my new project and my first drawing in that project.

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Very simple.

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Now, the drawings themselves, though-- and I'm

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going to switch to a different project

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that has a lot more drawings, I'm going to activate this.

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The drawings themselves offer us a lot of different options.

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So you can see I have folders.

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This is the filtering I was talking about.

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So in My Folders in this project BASIX project,

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I can actually organize my drawings

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by everything that's a schematic and everything that's a panel.

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So now, I could actually run a "project-wide"

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and I say that in quotes because it doesn't have to be the whole

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project.

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Project-wide in anything in Electrical

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just means more than one drawing.

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So I can say, I want to run everything

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on just everything sitting in that schematics folder.

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It's a really unique way to be able to group our drawings

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together, like I said earlier, in those mini project forms

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and be able to still have them all organized

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by a, quote, "super project" or the bigger project at the top.

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So lots of great ways, lots of good things

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that you can do with organizing that,

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especially if you have a lot of drawings in your projects.

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Say, the 30, 50, 75, to 100 drawings in a project, not

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the 10 that you see out of mine.

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OK.

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Now, a couple other things that we

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can do when we are looking at our project list,

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I want to show you the right click menu of our drawings.

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You can right click to open.

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You could also right click to close.

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You can also double click to open these.

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Very easy to navigate.

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You can drag and drop them to reorder them.

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The order they are in is the order

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in which a lot of different tools within Electrical

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will run through the project.

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So the order of them in your list is very important.

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You can also remove a drawing.

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A drawing that is removed is not deleted.

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It just means that it is no longer a part of that project.

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You can also replace drawings, swap them.

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You can also do a rename.

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Lots of different opportunities here.

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But the most important part is the properties, again.

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So if I were to go back to my drawing properties

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and look at what we fill out-- now,

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I know this is a different drawing than the brand

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new one I just created, but you can see the same kind of setup

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for filling it out.

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Description lines, these can all be mapped to title blocks--

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the sheet number, the drawing numbers.

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And then you see the same tabs that we

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saw in project properties, but with just less settings

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because there's less that you can change

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at an individual drawing level than you can

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add a full project-wide level.

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Now, what that should be meaning is

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you're thinking about this for setting up

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your Electrical project is that the drawing settings win

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over all other settings.

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But there's less of them because they can only

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be controlled at that level.

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Now, you can always, though, if you've edited those

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and want them to go back to the main project settings,

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you can right click on a drawing and say Apply Project Defaults.

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You can also copy and paste settings from one drawing

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to another.

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So there's lots of different opportunities

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to make sure that you're having those standards set

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across those.

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As we go deeper into AutoCAD Electrical,

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you will see how the project properties, the drawing

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properties, and the environment settings all

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come together to create the intelligent drawings that we

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have.

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Please take a moment to go out and do the exercise on editing

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the project drawing list.