The 10 Comandments of CAD

I work at a small company and do 75 % of the cad work on top of my other duties. Other people in the office do some as well. No one has any formal CAD training, (except me, I took Architectural drawing in High School back in the 70's)

We usually don't have enough work for a full time cad person, though we have hired people in the past for that task, they never seem to stick around long, (some of the commandments below were generated because of some bad habits from some of them.)

I've been trying to teach a few of our new entry level people the basics of autocad and have come up with a "10 commandments" list. This is my list, what would yours look like?

1. Draw blocks on layer “0.” Set properties to “By Block.”
   
2. Do not explode blocks when inserting. If you have to modify the block, go into block editor, make your changes, then “Save as” with a new name.
   
3. Always draw objects with properties set to “by Layer.” If you need to change a property, create a new layer
   
4. Whenever possible, North is up.
   
5. Make everything full size in model space, with inches as the base unit. If you are using a scan, or a pdf as a background, scale it to the proper size. (hint, for low quality scans, set exterior door frames at 36” use “Scale Relative” to do this. Ask if you don’t know how)
   
6. Title Blocks can either be an external reference, or an internal block. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. As a rule, if you are only doing one or two sheets, an internal block is easier. We have templates for both
   
7. Use Arial text style. TITLES should be all caps. Notes should be standard upper and lower case. (Sorry traditionalists, but the drafting board is long gone).
   
8. Layers, layers, layers. Use different layers for different items.
   
9. Try to follow standard layer naming conventions, but at the very least, put down enough information so that others will know what that layer is.
   
10. The advent of modern technology means that no one should have to look at a black and white copy of one of our drawings ever. We print our drawings using color to highlight our work. Background items should be black or dark grey. Use red, blue or green (not yellow) to identify specific work areas / materials, etc. Freeze layers in layout viewports as needed.
    

Never ever explode or use overides on dimensions EVER.

You lost me at #1. There are so many uses for blocks that this cannot be adhered to. In fact, I have never made a block that followed that.

#3 is a common misconception. You broke it in #1.

Never ever explode or use overides on dimensions EVER.

Dimensions can be quite useful to convey other types of information than the dimension value.

#7. The font is up to you but always use true type fonts (ttf), stay away from shape file (shx) fonts.

#10. LOL, I have a guy at work that CONSTANTLY keeps changing the viewres setting on our site plan to 100. WTF! You have a quad-core i7 with a GTX video card. I learned on a 386 as well but I embrace new technology He also turns layers off instead of frozen.

One more

11 always LOCK DOWN viewports

You lost me at #1. There are so many uses for blocks that this cannot be adhered to. In fact, I have never made a block that followed that.

 

#3 is a common misconception. You broke it in #1.

I try to keep things simple.

And yes, some of my blocks do violate this, especially the title block border.

but as a rule, I have found it is much easier to keep thing as simple as possible.

AutoCAD is a wonderful tool when it comes to bloating out a DWG file.

#3 Read our suggested layer names and when to use them. TEXT, DIMS, PIPES etc

Put LeeMacs LAYER DIRECTOR lisp in the startup folder on all of the computers, after you have been through personalizing your commands and layer designations.

In this recent thread you can see an example of how I set my layers up http://www.cadtutor.net/forum/showthread.php?99684-Dim-Layer-lisp

It will save everybody time, and greatly increase consistency between coworkers.

Checking the drawings also becomes a lot easier.

Create some personalized .dwt files for typical applications, might be for different vendors or clients, and make them available to the whole team.

I agree with Arial font for three reasons. First, it's a standard Windows OS font, which means it's 100% compatible with all Windows based computers therefore formatting and incompatibility are non issues. Second, TTF's are searchable in PDF outputs. Third, lineweights are ignored so one less worry for standards.

Dimensions can be quite useful to convey other types of information than the dimension value.

Agree 100%

Quite often we may put, Check dimension on site, or some other similar note.

Am 100% agree. You just remind me of my previous co-worker, he loves to explode dims even in the beginning of the proj. Its very frustating editing his work.

In my neck of the industry, it is very common to see dimensions overridden, but only to add additional information, never to change or hide the distance measured.

example for the length of the wall behind a counter top or a run of wall cabinets.

the 10'-0" is what the architectural drawings show for the wall length as designed, and the VIF is short for Verify in Field because the walls are NEVER what the architecturals show.

I should maybe clarify, I didn't mean prefix's or suffix's, the dimension can convey way more than just the size of an object, I was talking about the people who change the actual number information as a method to not have to draw the geometry correctly, if a dimension needs changing then change the object it refers to and don't overide the actual dimension text. And of course changing a physical dimension to a note, such as "check on site" is not what I meant.

always draw 1:1 in model space and scale in the paper space accordingly with preset scale units both metric and imperial

have preset scaled annotations etc etc ready to use

I should maybe clarify, of course changing a physical dimension to a note, such as "check on site" is not what I meant.

That is why I hate broad brush generalities. I don't use a lot of dimensions, but when I do, a good percentage of them do not include actual dimensional information.

I can't find a reason where a dimension should ever be overridden to show another distance. You can override a dim all day long if it's text, such as "verify in field" or something. But if a dim comes out to 10'-0", and it's been overridden to show 9'-10", that's an absolute zero tolerance policy in my book.

The only time it would be acceptable is in schematics, where for instance you have to show a p-trap minimum distance from the source, or something similar.

I try to keep things simple.

 

 

And yes, some of my blocks do violate this, especially the title block border.

 

 

but as a rule, I have found it is much easier to keep thing as simple as possible.

 

 

AutoCAD is a wonderful tool when it comes to bloating out a DWG file.

Yes. I would go so far so say transparency should be "byblock".. Less definitions in the Dwg means less trouble in Revit too..