AutoCAD® 2009 & AutoCAD LT® 2009 All-in-One Desk Reference for Dummies®

Chapter 4. Organizing Your Drawings

AutoCAD enables you to create content once and then reuse it in other drawings. Being able to create reusable content is one thing, but being able to organize and manage all that reusable content is another. AutoCAD offers many ways to manage and organize usable content. You can use the Windows Clipboard to transfer content between two open drawings or to another Windows-based application. It's not always efficient to open a drawing just to access its content, so AutoCAD comes with two interfaces to help you access content from drawings that might be saved locally on your computer or on a network drive. These two interfaces are called DesignCenter and tool palettes.

Why Bother to Organize Drawings?

It takes time to develop accurate drawings, but you can make the process go faster and faster over time. By creating good CAD standards and high-quality reusable content, you can improve your efficiency. I talk about CAD standards in detail in Book VIII, but for now, I address the importance of properly naming and managing reusable content.

Tip

Many things in AutoCAD that can be reused, such as a text style, a layer, or even a layout, are given a name. It's a good idea to keep these names meaningful so that you or anyone else looking at the name can decipher its intended purpose. At times this can cause problems; obviously, if you're sharing drawings with other clients, you'll most likely both have a title block in your drawings. It's a good idea to prefix ...