Rod Cleasby - Q&A
Welcome to Practical AutoCAD. You’ve come to the right place. This is where people who don’t know much about CAD come together … to find out more. Maybe CAD is giving you headaches, and sleepless nights and all you really want is answers. Well - here’s the good news - you’re here now, and that’s a win. This is Practical AutoCAD plus my years of experience.
Rule No 1: Use the correct template
Lets talk AutoCAD:
CAD is designed to save you time.
It is certainly accurate, shareable and informative, but the super-power that makes CAD better than the drawing board, is the time savings that it can deliver.
Now, most people using CAD today, will never have used a drawing board, so there is little to compare one with the other, but lets look at the basics. If you draw anything, with pen and paper, you draw each and every object. You have six doors on your plan? You draw each one. You may have twenty bathrooms in a hotel, you must draw every bathroom. But with CAD, you draw one, and then copy the rest. This is what CAD is good at, and my over-riding guideline for CAD is Rule 36: “Never make the same thing twice”.
However, once you actually get into CAD – you will discover that there are many other things that are there, hiding behind the software interface, intended to assist you as you draw. These settings are individual to you and the project, and may need setting up in order to make the most of your project and – of course - your time.
Ironically, these settings take time to develop, and that eats away at the overall benefits of CAD. But here is the point of our discussion today: AutoCAD allows you to make your own Template.
This could turn out to be the best thing you ever do in CAD.
Lets take an example: Inside a NEW drawing there is nothing but the default settings. Basically fresh air and lots of optimism. Its then down to you to decide HOW you’re going to operate AutoCAD, and what features you are going to personalise. Lets make a list: Layers, Colours, Linetypes, Text Styles, Dimension Styles, Blocks, Paper Space, Layouts, etc and for a novice, each one could take between 30 mins and one hour to develop or set up. So the maths is easy: 9 x 30mins is 4.5hrs.
This is a problem that needs an answer:
Here is the right way to handle it: Make a Template.
One that has ALL your favourite stuff in it, ready to rock and roll. Consider the time savings over one year. If you were to draw, say 50 drawings in the year, that’s 50 x 4.5hrs. That’s 225hrs saved, just because you made a template. That’s mad! You’ve just saved yourself a huge amount of time, and you’re now reaping the rewards of CAD - and, if you share, your whole team has got that super-power too.
Check out my Short-cut Guide (Its FREE) and my informative AutoCAD Highway Code.
This could change your life.