Discover how to effectively manage and navigate CAD files and folders using a true filing system following the national CAD standards. This guide delves into the process of extracting CAD lessons, reading and understanding file names, as well as relinking xrefs to new names and locations.
Key Insights
- Extraction of a zip file from an online learning management system adds new folders to your system such as 'VDCI' and 'Corporate Blocks' which contain various CAD files and data.
- The article includes an exploration of the 'xrefs' folder where file names are found to conform to the national CAD standards, indicating the type of files (architectural or civil) and relevant plans included in them.
- A shift from a flat organization of all CAD files and xrefs in one folder to a true filing system is introduced where files will be located in different folders as per their names and types. This requires remapping the xrefs to adapt to the new names and locations.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
Let's start getting to work. You can see that I'm on my C drive in my CAD 304 folder, and I've gone to the learning management system online and I have already copied the CAD 304 Lesson 4 ZIP file onto the machine. So what I want to do is I'm clicking with the left button and then right button, Extract All, and I'm going to extract all—but you can see what it wants to do is it wants to put the extraction of the ZIP file on the C drive in CAD 304 in another folder called L04.
So I'm going to back that out. So I'm backing out this CAD 304\L04, and I'm also going to back out the backslash, and I'm going to extract. So what the extraction of the ZIP file has done is it's added two folders onto my system: a folder called VDCI and a folder called Corporate Blocks.
If I double-click on VDCI, you can see that I have a similar file structure to what we went over in the previous videos. We have a folder for our XREFs, we have a folder for our CDs, our blocks, and our details. Now I'm going to go into the XREFs folder first.
When I'm in the XREFs folder, you can see that the file names are VDCI-A4Architecture-Elevation01.dwg. These file names are conforming with the National CAD Standards. When I look at the file names themselves, I can see that a number of these are the architectural files, and a number of them are civil files. You can see that I have my key plans for building section, elevation, floor plan, roof plan, and wall section.
I have civil information, the key plans, and my metes-and-bounds drawings. So these are the new names that have been given to files that we've already worked with. Now again, what we're going to be doing in this lesson is we're going to be recreating—not drawing everything—but recreating the sheet files that we did in CAD 301 and CAD 302.
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So I'm going to go up a level right here, and I will go into my CDs folder. So you can see that I have A201, A202, A301, A302, A303, my architectural site plan, and my title sheet. Remember what we did when we built all of these drawings in CAD 301 and CAD 302.
We had a flat organization. Everything was in the same folder. So all of the XREFs and the sheet files were all in the same folder.
Now we're using a true filing system. When we go to open up these drawings in a few minutes, the drawing is going to be blown up. And the reason the drawings will be blown up is that they are going to be looking for files in their same folder, and they're also going to be looking for files that had the old names.
Now there's a PDF that I gave you that shows original file name, the National CAD Standards file name, and then the folder in which these files are located. So what's going to happen in a few minutes is that we, for example, will go into our A201 drawing. We'll open it up.
A lot of data is going to be gone. The XREFs and their links are still there, but we're going to see that the XREFs aren't visible. We're going to be remapping the XREFs to the new names and the new locations.
So this is my CDs folder. I have my blocks folder. This is the roof vents, the windows.
These again are blocks that are unique for this project. We also have our details. So these are the detail drawings that we had on our A303 sheet that included the wall sections and the architectural details.
So again, remember that before everything was in the first folder? Now we're going to see that our details will be in the folder VDCI-Details. If I go up another level to my Corporate Blocks, these are the blocks that the office would use throughout all of the projects that the office puts out. Because the thing is, why should I have a copy of the title block everywhere? You know, why not have it in one location? My reference files, the drawing titles, the no-plot views.
Again, information that would be used corporate-wide would be in the Corporate Blocks folder. If you would please unzip your CAD 304 L04 ZIP file. Spend a couple of minutes looking at it.
And also, I'd recommend printing out the PDF that shows original file names and National CAD Standards names, because when we go to remap the drawings, we're going to need to use that information. So I will be talking with you in a few more minutes.
