Explore how to utilize and enhance the dimensions of your floor plan using the A201 sheet file. Learn about the importance of managing layers, creating sheet files, and the use of title blocks and title block text files in a professional drafting project.
Key Insights
- The A201 sheet file can be used to place and manage different annotation elements on a floor plan. As you update the floor plan, you will see these elements appear and can decide which elements to hide or highlight.
- When creating a sheet file, it's crucial to use the correct template, in this case, the VDCI CD template. This ensures the file is set up correctly and can be easily attached and referenced.
- Title block (TTLB) and title block text (TBTX) files are used to input and manage information unique to each sheet. The TTLB file contains common project information, while the TBTX file holds the drawing number, drawing name, and other sheet-specific information.
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We have now finished the dimensions on our floor plan, but before we add any other annotation elements, I'd like to build the A201 sheet file and place the floor plan on it. And then as we continue to update the floor plan, we will see the annotation elements appear, and then we'll have a great opportunity to talk about how to hide certain annotation elements and why we're drawing some of the other elements.
So I'm gonna control S to save my current drawing, and then I'm going to go change the layers. I'll open the layer properties dialog box, and I wanna prepare this drawing for how it will look on the A201 sheet file. Now, we can always update these layers in that sheet file itself, but it is good practice to turn on the layers we want and turn off the layers we want as well.
For now, I'm gonna make sure a pattern is turned on and a wall masonry, and I'm going to grab all of the roof layers holding shift, and I'll turn those off. Okay, all the other layers are still on, and I bet we're gonna have to do some layer cleanup towards the end of the course, but for now, this looks great. I'll close my layer properties, control S to save one more time, and I'll go file, new, file new.
Make sure you use the VDCI CD template. I'll hit open. And when we make a sheet file, if you remember from our previous courses, the first thing we want to do is go to the insert tab and reference attach our XRef.
So I'll go to the insert tab, reference attach, and I'm going to browse to my C drive, CAD301 file downloads, and I'm going to find CAD301 plan model. I'll hit open, and let's make sure that this looks correct. Relative path is good, and we do want this as an attachment, and we can specify on screen or just use 00.
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Let's use 00, and the scale factor is one. Everything looks great. Let's hit okay, and zoom extents, control S to save.
We want to save this file into our sheets folder. Our sheets folder is going to have all of our sheets for this project, PDF and DWG. This one's going to be named CAD301-A201, CAD301-A201.dwg. I'll hit save, and now we want to go to our paper space, the VDCI 22 × 34, and we can begin to bring in our title block and put our viewport in place so we can see model space.
Now we're working with a slightly different title block structure in this course, and that we have a TBTX and TTLB file. These are two separate files, and we're going to bring them in separately. The reason why we do this is one will be brought in as an XRef, and one will be brought in as a block.
The XRef is brought in for the title block, and this is because all sheets in a project will reference the same master file. The master file will contain things like project information, including the owner, architect, project address, the date of the submitted set, and so on. This information should be the same on all sheets, and because of that, if something changes like the date of a submitted set or possible revisions, we want that to be updated in all sheets.
However, the TBTX, which is the title block text file, is unique to every single sheet. This includes the drawing number, the drawing name, and so on. This information should be brought in as a block, as we can bring it in with attributes like our door or window symbols, and we can use those attributes to fill out the sheet-specific information.
That's why we brought in a TBTX and TTLB into this course. Please check out our CAD311 course to learn more about these two types of files. Okay, now that I'm on the 22x34 paper space, I'm going to reference attach.
I'm going to go into my blocks and title blocks, and I'm going to find the TTLB22x34. I'll hit open, and remember, this is a reference attachment, so I'm going to use paper space scaling for a paper space object. Scale factor of one.
We'll place it at 0,0, 0, because this is a full bleed sheet style, so we can place it right at 0,0, and I'll hit OK. There we go. We can see our sheet perfectly aligned to the paper space.
Now I'll hit I-Enter to open my blocks dialog panel. I'm going to pan over and zoom into this area because this is where my TBTX information is going to come in, and we can see here that drawn by, checked by, scale, and sheet number are missing text information. This is what is going to come in in the TBTX file.
The insertion point we can place on screen, but we want to make sure we're using that uniform scale of one. No angle, no rotation, no repeat placement. It's simply a scale factor of one, and we'll eventually place it at 0,0, 0. I'll browse, and here I'll find my TBTX.
You'll see the text preview in the preview window. I'll hit Open, and I'll type 0,0, 0 to place it at 0,0. This sheet number is going to be named A2.1, drawn by, and this should be your initials, my initials are DSS, you can use your initials, and checked by. This could be the initials of your instructor or manager at work.
Again, I'll use my initials, and it's okay for this course to use your initials for both. The scale in this case is going to be previewed as noted, and that's okay on a big sheet like this because our drawing title will have a separate spot for scale. If the drawing is not to scale, you could type NTS in this box, or you can type as noted, like the default text, if the scale is labeled on each drawing.
In this case, as noted is what we want. I'll hit OK, and now we can see this text appearing in the exact right location. Notice when I select it, it is a different item than this, but as soon as this is printed as a PDF, it won't make a difference.
Now let's go to the Layout tab and create our viewport. I'm gonna go rectangular, and I'm going to click here to here, and it will draw a viewport on my whole note plot. I'm going to click into my viewport, zoom out a little bit, Z, Enter, W, Enter for zoom window, Shift, right-click, Endpoint, to the Shift, right-click, Endpoint.
Check your scale and make sure it matches. If it didn't line up properly, you might not have grabbed this bottom rectangle. I'll talk more about that in one minute, but just make sure you get all of the pink geometry from the far bottom corner to the far top corner.
