Tag: autocad tips

AutoCAD Scaling Tips & Best Practices!

Posted on by faz_business


Arguably one of the more confusing topics in AutoCAD to newer designers and those that learned prior to paper space/annotative text is scaling within AutoCAD.

I can’t remember how many times I’ve been asked about setting up scales, fixing viewports, annotative text, what size to draw things in model space, and so much more…

Today I wanted to share a few best practice tips when it comes to scale and designing in AutoCAD.

While there are always exceptions to every rule, if you can follow these tips, your drawings are going to be off to a great start!

 

This one is pretty straightforward but not always followed. It’s best practice to do all of your drawing and design work within model space in AutoCAD. (Learn about the difference between Model/Layout Spaces)

Layout tabs or paper space are there to create our drawings and model space is for our model and design.

Whether you’re doing floor plans, simple details, detailed design drawings, or schematics, there’s no reason or benefit to not use model space when drawing.

 

 

  • Only draw/ design at 1:1 scale aka real size.

Similar to the last tip, there’s no benefit or reason not to draw everything in AutoCAD at one-to-one or full scale.
You’re not going to run out of room and you can always adjust and change up the scale by using your viewports later on.

Doing all of your design work at one to one. Can eliminate issues later on, especially if someone else starts working on your drawings and doesn’t realize you’ve scaled things.
It can also eliminate issues and errors by accidentally scaling incorrectly, as well as make things easier when getting quantities, areas, etc.

 

 

To show different scales and areas of your design, use multiple viewports in your layouts to convey the different details required for your drawing.
Viewports allow you to easily show different areas or scales at any point and can be created quickly without the need to scale or redraw anything in your model space or design.

 

 

  • Use annotative text and dimensions when labeling your design.

These pieces of text and dimensions when set up properly will automatically adjust their size to be consistent across all of your drawings and viewports regardless of the scale of your viewport.
Annotative elements in AutoCAD are dynamic and will save you time and headache if you’re drawing size or scale ever needs to change down the road.

 

 

  • Add your Notes & Tables in Layouts


Depending on the drawing type and situation, tables (Dynamic Excel Table in AutoCAD), drawing lists (Make Dynamic Drawing Lists in AutoCAD) and general notes can be added directly to your layout tabs, this can help keep your model space from getting cluttered with a lot of notes. It can also make copying general note sheets and title sheets from another project easier since the text is already on them and not in model space.

 

 

That’s all for today’s post, I hope you all were able to take something away from it, and if you have any questions be sure to leave a comment or reach out on Twitter @cadintentions.

As always, thank you so much for reading, I am excited to be back and posting regularly on the blog and hope you all will follow along.

Cheers and happy Drafting!

PS. If you are looking to learn more about AutoCAD and jump start your learning, be sure to check out my AutoCAD Fundamentals & Workflows Course (Available for Instant Download NOW): https://gum.co/learnautocad
I’ve packed over 15 years of tips, tricks, and experience into easy to follow videos that I’m sure you will enjoy!

 


Also published on Medium.

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Brandon is a Civil Designer, Aspiring Blogger/Creator, Husband, Father to two Amazing Kids and Tech Aficionado from a small town in Canada. He has been obsessed with design and technology since he can remember and working as a Civil Designer for nearly as long. Brandon’s blog and Youtube channel, CADIntentions.com has been his outlet and excuse for keeping up with new tech and trends in the CAD design world for the last 10 years growing to more than 60,000 subscribers and over 15,000,000 views, while also being the source of many great friendships and unique opportunities.

If you would like to Sponsor CAD Intentions or Work together in some way, Please visit my About Page and send me an email: http://cadintentions.com/about-me/



8 Must-know AutoCAD Viewport Tips & Tricks – How to Create, Scale, and Master Viewports! Examples

Posted on by faz_business


Hey Everybody!

I hope your week is going well so far and you’ve been able to enjoy some of the nice weather lately!

Around here it’s been hot and luckily not too smoky from forest fires, and we have some rain in the forecast which is much needed.

A few weeks ago my family and I went out on a bit of an exploring mission to find a lake we had never been to and I happened to bring along my drone to get a few pictures.

 
After getting home and taking a look at them, I’m always amazed at how easy technology can make it to
get more information and data than we’ve ever had available for our designs or hobbies. In my case, I use a DJI Mini but there are so many different options that make getting images easy!

This brings me to the sponsor of today’s video as well as the topic of the video (viewports in AutoCAD) which we will touch on next.

Today’s video is sponsored by Plex Earth. Plex Earth allows you to instantly import recent and historical imagery, terrain data, and contours directly into our AutoCAD drawings. They even have the option to order and schedule a drone flight for your project area within the app if you need even more up-to-date imagery!

If you haven’t given Plex Earth a try yet, I highly recommend them. If you use the link down below, you can get a free trial of Plex earth pro for cad intentions viewers.
Try Plex Earth Now: http://cadintentions.com/plex_ci

Now let’s jump in, this week I wanted to dive deep into some of my favorite tips and tricks for Creating Viewports and working with them quickly!

As I’m sure you’re probably aware, viewports and layouts tend to be the most confusing and asked-about topics when it comes to AutoCAD or Civil 3d.

I completely understand the frustration and can sympathize with those that tend to just ignore or avoid using them entirely.

But after being a major part of AutoCAD/Civil 3D and the drawing creation process for years, I wanted to help and share today’s video where we walk through the process of creating a Site/Key plan drawing using multiple viewports and using a handful of must-know Viewport tips & tricks in the process!

By following these steps and using the commands and tips in the video, you’ll be able to easily create multiple viewports, understand the locking and unlocking of views, how to cycle between them, what to do if you get stuck in a viewport, and much more!

Don’t miss today’s video: 8 Must-know AutoCAD Viewport Tips & Tricks

That’s all for today, I hope you were able to take something away from the tutorial, and if you have any questions be sure to leave a comment or reach out on Twitter @cadintentions.

As always, thank you so much for reading, I am excited to be back and posting regularly on the blog and hope you all will follow along.

Cheers, and happy Drafting!

PS. If you liked today’s video or any of my videos/tutorials and you want to learn over 15 years of AutoCAD Tips & Tricks in a hurry, you can use this link to get my AutoCAD Fundamentals Course and join 100’s of members of the course, get started right now!


Also published on Medium.

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Brandon is a Civil Designer, Aspiring Blogger/Creator, Husband, Father to two Amazing Kids and Tech Aficionado from a small town in Canada. He has been obsessed with design and technology since he can remember and working as a Civil Designer for nearly as long. Brandon’s blog and Youtube channel, CADIntentions.com has been his outlet and excuse for keeping up with new tech and trends in the CAD design world for the last 10 years growing to more than 60,000 subscribers and over 15,000,000 views, while also being the source of many great friendships and unique opportunities.

If you would like to Sponsor CAD Intentions or Work together in some way, Please visit my About Page and send me an email: http://cadintentions.com/about-me/



AutoCAD How To Insert Drawings – 3 Simple Tricks To Import, Add & Reference DWGs

Posted on by faz_business


I hope you’ve had a great week so far, and were able to enjoy some time off to recharge over the weekend.

For us, last weekend the weather cooperated and made for a perfect time to relax and spend time with friends/family, including a day trip to the lake and some time on a secluded beach to hang out, swim, and skip rocks!

It’s been a busy month or two here with lots going on at work, with the family, and on the blog/channel, I want to thank everyone who joined and has been participating in the CAD Support Community/Forum!

It’s been awesome and I’m excited to grow it even more in the coming weeks/months. The first group of spots filled up in just 3 days, which is so great! We’ve been getting to know each other and answering questions already, and today’s video is even based on one of the early requests!

If you missed out on joining the Community or want to learn more, you can check out this link here (http://cadintentions.com/cadsupport) to take part in the 2nd Enrollment open now!

With that, let’s jump into this weeks video below:

In this week’s video, I’m answering and expanding on a question from our CAD Support Discord.

In it, we’re going over 3 simple methods and tricks for inserting or importing DWGs into our drawings!

Depending on your situation and the type of drawing you’re creating, each of these different methods of bringing drawing data into our drawing can be super helpful. Whether you just want bits and pieces of a drawing inserted, a live linked reference of say a floor plan, or you just want to insert everything to make changes, today’s video has you covered with all the options!

These are all really must-know commands and tricks for creating drawings and building out a detailed and accurate design that every designer should know.

Check it out now: AutoCAD How to Insert Drawings – 3 Simple Tricks to Import, Add & Reference DWGs

That’s all for today, I hope you were able to take something away from the tutorial, and if you have any questions be sure to leave a comment or reach out on Twitter @cadintentions.

As always, thank you so much for reading, I am excited to be back and posting regularly on the blog and hope you all will follow along.

Cheers, and happy Drafting!

PS. If you liked today’s video or any of my videos/tutorials and you want to learn over 15 years of AutoCAD Tips & Tricks in a hurry, you can use this link to get my AutoCAD Fundamentals Course and join 100’s of members of the course, get started right now!

The following two tabs change content below.

Brandon is a Civil Designer, Aspiring Blogger/Creator, Husband, Father to two Amazing Kids and Tech Aficionado from a small town in Canada. He has been obsessed with design and technology since he can remember and working as a Civil Designer for nearly as long. Brandon’s blog and Youtube channel, CADIntentions.com has been his outlet and excuse for keeping up with new tech and trends in the CAD design world for the last 10 years growing to more than 60,000 subscribers and over 15,000,000 views, while also being the source of many great friendships and unique opportunities.

If you would like to Sponsor CAD Intentions or Work together in some way, Please visit my About Page and send me an email: http://cadintentions.com/about-me/



Must-Know AutoCAD Site Plan Tips! – Secret Viewport Tools: North Arrows, Scalebars & Text Automation

Posted on by faz_business


Hope you’re having a great day and week so far, it’s been a busy one here but I’m excited to share a new video and build on a previous video where we created a Site Plan/Location plan drawing using multiple viewports. If you haven’t seen the Viewport Tips video you can check it out here.

I’ve really enjoyed sharing and creating videos about land-based drawings like site maps, property layouts, and civil design drawings in general and they’re something I work on almost every day and get asked about often.

Especially as more of you have taken my Civil 3D Crash course over time, it’s apparent many of us are in similar industries and have a need for tutorials about these types of drawings.

It also blends and fit’s in well with our regular sponsor, Plex Earth.


Plex Earth allows you to instantly import recent and historical imagery, terrain data, and contours directly into our AutoCAD drawings. They even have the option to order and schedule a drone flight for your project area within the app if you need even more up-to-date imagery!

If you haven’t given Plex Earth a try yet, I highly recommend them. If you use the link down below, you can get a free trial to Plex earth pro for cad intentions viewers.
Try Plex Earth Now: http://cadintentions.com/plex_ci

Now let’s jump right into today’s video:

In this week’s video, I wanted to build on the viewport/site plan drawing we made a few weeks ago and share some awesome, somewhat hidden/secret tools in AutoCAD to make your Site Plans better and easier to create!

By following these steps and using the commands and tips in the video, we will take advantage of the AutoCAD free Map Toolset and utilize some “hidden” tools that will allow us to easily add dynamic north arrows, scalebars, and text in a matter of seconds!

Almost every drawing you create as a Civil designer or drafter will need a North Arrow and Scalebar. I just recently helped my Dad with some site plans for the City where we live in order for him to apply to subdivide a property and the submission requires a Scaled Plan which is made much easier when you understand viewports and scales in AutoCAD. 

Don’t miss today’s video, click the link and learn how we can quickly make a drawing more accurate and dynamic in just a few minutes! 

Must-Know AutoCAD Site Plan Tips! – Secret Viewport Tools: North Arrows, Scalebars & Text Automation

That’s all for today, I hope you were able to take something away from the tutorial, and if you have any questions be sure to leave a comment below or reach out on Twitter @cadintentions.

As always, thank you so much for reading, I am excited to be back and posting regularly on the blog and hope you all will follow along.

Cheers, and happy Drafting!

PS. If you liked today’s video or any of my videos/tutorials and you want to learn over 15 years of AutoCAD Tips & Tricks in a hurry, you can use this link to get my AutoCAD Fundamentals Course and join 100’s of fellow drafters/designers and get started right now!


Also published on Medium.

The following two tabs change content below.

Brandon is a Civil Designer, Aspiring Blogger/Creator, Husband, Father to two Amazing Kids and Tech Aficionado from a small town in Canada. He has been obsessed with design and technology since he can remember and working as a Civil Designer for nearly as long. Brandon’s blog and Youtube channel, CADIntentions.com has been his outlet and excuse for keeping up with new tech and trends in the CAD design world for the last 10 years growing to more than 60,000 subscribers and over 15,000,000 views, while also being the source of many great friendships and unique opportunities.

If you would like to Sponsor CAD Intentions or Work together in some way, Please visit my About Page and send me an email: http://cadintentions.com/about-me/



Must Try Apps for Designers, Drafters & Engineers! Plus my favorite Organization Tips

Posted on by faz_business


Morning All!

I hope you’re having a great week and things aren’t too busy for you as we enter the fall season.

Fall can typically be a bit of a crazy time of year in the AEC industry, lots of projects are in a rush to wrap up construction before winter, deadlines are typically looming for large design projects and year-end is just a few months away.

All of this can be tough to keep up with and stay organized, especially when you add in Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas in the span of just a few months.

I’ve written in the past about some of my favorite ways to keep from getting overwhelmed and stay on track with deadlines, tasks, and deliverables.

I highly recommend checking out the Post I wrote about staying organized here:
4 Tips to Staying Organized & Focused when Deadlines & Projects Pile Up

And if you’d prefer to read my posts in email format you can check this one out substack (here) and/or signup here: CAD Intentions Newsletter.

One of the tricks I use and talk about in the post above to help keep things organized and get the often many thoughts/distractions out of my head, is to make lists and notes in a notebook so I can check things off and not forget them!

I really am always keeping lists, whether it’s a simple work-to-do list, writing down questions & outlining potential video & post ideas, or just doodling in my notebook, I’ve always got one nearby and ready.

A few days ago I used it to track all the apps/software I used in a day, with the exception of #AutoCAD and #Civil3D which I use every day regardless.

I had recently been asked what apps I recommend and or needed to do my job as a Civil Designer and thought it would be a good idea to occasionally write down the ones I find the most helpful.

This was my list for the day:

  • Plex Earth: I’ve mentioned Plex Earth a bunch over the last few years and they’ve even sponsored some videos on the channel! But that doesn’t mean I don’t actually use their software, I have used it for years and still consistently use and recommend it for designers, especially anyone in Civil, Mining, or Environmental type work where up-to-date Imagery is a must. It makes it easy and fast to import ortho images, contours, and terrain data directly into AutoCAD or Civil 3d.
  • Global Mapper: Global Mapper is another must-have app/software that I find myself using more and more in recent months/years. Global mapper tends to be a jack of all trades when it comes to mapping data. Whether I need to work with Lidar (.las), Shapefiles (.shp), Raster images, Geotiffs, etc… you name it Global Mapper can likely open it. I typically use it to simply process overly large lidar surface data and huge image files. It makes it easy and simple to crop them down, merge them, and re-sample them to make my data work better and smoother in Civil 3d or Recap.
  • Discord: I feel like many of you will already know about Discord but if not, it’s a community chat/forum software with a ton of features! It’s kind of similar to Microsoft Teams but I like the ability to use it as a forum as well as for chat. My CAD Support forum is on Discord and it provides a great alternative for the water cooler type chat and questions that many of us who work remotely don’t have access to anymore. Keeping in touch with either friends or fellow colleagues is important for all of us, having someone to ask a quick question or even just see how their weekend was can greatly brighten our days and keep us from missing those connections from the office.
  • Autodesk Recap: This one doesn’t need much of an explainer, if you work with surfaces or reality capture scans in AutoCAD or any Autodesk software, then you’ll likely need/use recap at some point. It’s not perfect but it does help keep large data sets/scans moving smoothly, allowing us to clean them up and link them into our designs easily. Plus it’s fund and looks pretty cool to pan around a 3d Scan of a project site or building!
  • Audible & Spotify: I try to learn something new as often as possible. Whether it’s through reading, courses, videos or podcasts, it’s easy now to stay curious and engaged. Any tasks that are somewhat trivial or repetitive, as long as you can still complete the work while listening, I highly recommend listening to audiobooks (Audible is my go to, you can get a free trial now using my link here: https://amzn.to/3PCpN08) , podcasts or music. Not only does it help time go by quicker but I can also tend to get into a focused/flow-state and breeze through projects while also listening to my current Fiction Book or learning something new.

These are just some of my go-to daily apps, What are some of yours?

Let me know on Twitter (twitter.com/cadintentions)!

That’s all for today, I hope you enjoyed this week’s post and I would love to hear what you think! 

PS. To stay up-to-date and get Tips, Tricks, Tutorials and News delivered weekly to your inbox sign up for the CAD Intentions Newsletter here for free: cadintentions.com/signup

As always, thank you so much for reading and watching, I am super excited for the rest of the year, growing the content, tutorials, and blog with you all. 

Cheers and happy Drafting!

Brandon

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Brandon is a Civil Designer, Aspiring Blogger/Creator, Husband, Father to two Amazing Kids and Tech Aficionado from a small town in Canada. He has been obsessed with design and technology since he can remember and working as a Civil Designer for nearly as long. Brandon’s blog and Youtube channel, CADIntentions.com has been his outlet and excuse for keeping up with new tech and trends in the CAD design world for the last 10 years growing to more than 60,000 subscribers and over 15,000,000 views, while also being the source of many great friendships and unique opportunities.

If you would like to Sponsor CAD Intentions or Work together in some way, Please visit my About Page and send me an email: http://cadintentions.com/about-me/