Discover how to effectively navigate and modify a previously created detail in AutoCAD to meet new formatting requirements. Gain insight on how to adjust layer structures, bring in a detail title block, determine scale factors, and convert single line text into Mtext, among other useful editing techniques.
Key Insights
- The tutorial explains the process of working with a pre-existing detail in AutoCAD. The user opens the original file, makes a copy, and then begins the process of modifying it to fit their specific format.
- Various editing techniques are demonstrated, from working with layer structures and inserting a detail title block, to selecting the correct scale factor and moving text. This helps ensure the detail adheres to the required standards and formatting.
- One of the key editing steps discussed is converting single line text into Mtext using the Convert to Mtext feature under Express Tools. The tutorial also covers how to adjust color settings and align geometry to ensure the detail is visually correct.
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.
Well, let's begin to start working on some details. So let's go up to File, Open, and if you would please slide down and choose vdci-detail01-original.dwg. And let's now change the name File, Save As, and let's save it as vdci-detail01 and get rid of the original. So what we have is a detail that someone else has already created, and we need to get this detail into our format.
So there's a whole bunch of things that we just don't know yet. If I type LA for layers, I see a layer structure that makes a lot of sense. This conforms to our standards, and so I'm not going to concern myself with the need to re-label things.
But one thing I need to do first is I need to go on and bring in my detail title block. I see that I'm on layer 0, which is great. I'm going to go Insert, Insert, More Options.
I'm going to go to Browse. I'm going to slide down and choose my detail border, one horizontal by one vertical. Then the question starts to be, what's my scale factor going to be? We know that there's 1 to 1. We know that there's a scale factor of 2 for 6 inches equals a foot.
There's a scale factor of 4 for 3 inches equals a foot. There's a scale factor of 8 for an inch and a half equals a foot. So I'm going to guess.
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I'm going to say that I'm going to use a scale factor of 4. And again, I'm going to choose Uniform Scale. I'm going to say pop it in at 0,0 and go OK. Who knows what's going to happen? It's asking me for my attributes.
So my scale factor will be 3 inches equals a foot, and the detail name I see down here. So I'm going to have caps lock on Sliding Door Threshold Typical Section and go OK. Zoom extents.
Holy cow, can you see what's going on? Let's see what the base point of this detail is. The base point is 0,0. If I draw a line from 0,0, it's coming up there. So what I can tell already is that I've chosen the right scale.
I was lucky that way. But the drawing was not even positioned in a logical place relative to 0,0. We're going to fix that one. I'm now going to go Move Window.
I'm going to move the geometry down to about here. I'm going to select this, erase that out. Zoom extents.
Save the drawing. I'm going to go to File, Drawing Utilities, Purge. I'm going to check my dimension styles.
TickTick48, I'm going to keep that in there for right now. Layers, OK, that can probably go away. So I'm going to purge the title block layer, the multiliter 48s.
I'm going to keep that in there right now. And I will purge that one item out of there. And I will save the file.
Now I can see, Erase Window, that these are the dots that came in with the previous drawings. So Erase Window, and I've erased those dots. The next thing I would like to do is to move my geometry.
So I'm going to go Move Window from the end of one of these lines. And I'm going to say perpendicular to this vertical. So I've just gotten the graphic to line up with the edge of the image.
The next thing I want to start working on is the text. And when I select the text, I can see that it's dynamic text, which means single line text. If I go into Express Tools, there's a section under text called Convert to Mtext.
So I'm going to select these. And they've converted them to Mtext. Convert to Mtext.
And just for fun, I'll do the same thing here. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice that this is white. And I'm like going, why is that white? It should be color 120.
So I'm going to go to the Home tab, go to Layer Properties, and Title Block, I will make our color of 120. Now that is the proper color and save the file. Now I need to start moving the text.
I'm going to say move the text from the insertion base point of the text to the node that we have right here. Move this text from the insertion base point of the text to the node of here. I'm going to say move this text from the insertion base point of the text to the node of here.
Control+S to save. I'm going to back off a bit. It feels to me that this geometry could be shortened a bit.
So I'm going to draw a line from here, ortho on straight down, trim crossing. I'm going to explode this hatch, erase window, and erase my guideline. Back off.
Control+S to save. What I'd also like to do is to take my text layer and to make it color 120, Layer Properties, A Text, and I will make it color 120. Control+S to save.
One of the next things we need to do is to look at our leaders because you can see that the leaders don't have the arrows on the end. So I'm going to once again list the title block, and I see it's a scale factor of 4. I'm going to go up to annotate. I see my multi-leaders are here.
I'm going to slide down and choose multi-leader 48. But what I want to do now is to modify it. I'm going to do a right button, rename, and I will make it 04.
So again, just like we had the 48-scale factor for our floor plans, I now have an m-leader style called m-leader 04, and I want to modify it. You can see that I can choose where I want to have a spline. I'm going to say a straight leader.
Some people like splines. Some like straight. Again, it's a function of the office protocols.
The size looks fine. Leader structure looks fine. Here's the scale factor.
I'm going to type 04 period. Again, what I tend to do is I tend to select more than I need, and then 04 period, okay. I'm going to go back in just to make sure one more time.
The leader structure is 04. The content is using the proper text size. This text height is saying 330 seconds of an inch.
That is if I were to use the text associated with an m-leader, but we already have our text there, so I'm not going to worry about it at all. So I'm going to go, okay, set current, close, Control+S to save the file. I just realized that we've been covering a lot of material really fast.
So what I'd appreciate your doing is getting caught up to this point, and in the next video, we'll wrap up all the work on this detail. Like I told you, working with details is a whole lot of fun, and I'll see you in a few minutes.
