AutoCAD Platform Customization. Ambrosius Lee

Click Application button ➢ Options.

      • On the Ribbon, click Manage tab ➢ Customization ➢ User Interface.

      • On the menu bar, click Tools ➢ Customize ➢ Interface.

      • In the drawing window, right-click and click Options.

      • Keyboard input is shown in bold (for example, type cui and press Enter).

      • Prompts that are displayed at the AutoCAD Command prompt are displayed as monospace font (for example, Specify a start point:).

      • AutoCAD command, system variable, and AutoLISP function names are displayed in all lowercase letters with a monospace font (for example, line or clayer).

      • VBA function and AutoCAD Object library member names are displayed in mixed case letters with a monospace font (for example, Length or SendCommand).

      • Example code and code statements that appear within a paragraph are displayed in monospace font. Code samples might look like one of the following:

      • (command "._circle" PAUSE 3)

      • MsgBox "ObjectName: " & oFirstEnt.ObjectName

      • The MsgBox method can be used to display a text message to the user

      • ' Gets the first object in model space

      Contacting the Author

      I hope that you enjoy AutoCAD Platform Customization: User Interface, AutoLISP, VBA, and Beyond, and that it changes the way you think about completing your day-to-day work. If you have any feedback about or ideas that could improve this book, you can contact me using the following address:

      Lee Ambrosius: [email protected]

      On my blog and website, you'll find additional articles on customization and samples that I have written over the years. You'll find these resources here:

      Beyond the UI: http://hyperpics.blogs.com

      HyperPics: www.hyperpics.com

      If you encounter any problems with this publication, please report them to the publisher. Visit the book's website, www.sybex.com/go/autocadcustomization, and click the Errata link to open a form and submit the problem you found.

Part I

      AutoCAD Customization: Increasing Productivity through Personalization

Chapter 1

      Establishing the Foundation for Drawing Standards

      Drawing standards, also known as CAD standards, are guidelines that help you name the files that are created inside or outside of the Autodesk^® AutoCAD^® software for a project, the named objects that are used within a drawing file, and the file formats that you might accept. Much like the marketing or management teams use the same logos and memo templates, all drafters or professionals using AutoCAD software in your company should follow a set of company standards.

      Without having a well-defined set of standards, you will find it harder to share and output files within a company, and in turn this can lead to delays and make it nearly impossible to achieve a consistent look to all the drawings that your client receives. In addition, it is difficult to customize AutoCAD to help enforce your company's standards if there really are no standards.

      Can you imagine what a client might think when a company sends them a set of drawings that contain different fonts or title blocks, or the inconsistent use of lineweights?

      Well-established drawing standards ensure that your drawings all look the same when they are presented to the client, and they can make it easier to

      • Train new drafters and other professionals on your company's standards that use AutoCAD

      • Identify which drawing and externally referenced files are associated with a project

      • Determine the purpose of a named object in a drawing

      • Share project files with clients and contractors because your standards are well defined

      Naming Standards for Projects and Files

      As you might have gathered, it is not in your company's best interest to let everyone define their own drafting standards; this same approach applies to naming standards for projects or the files associated with a project, and how files should be stored. At the end of the day, the files created are owned by the company, and there is a pretty good chance that more than one individual will be working on a project over its entire lifetime. There is nothing more frustrating than when changes to a project are requested and the files can't be located because they are missing or no one understands how the files were saved.

      The first step your company should consider if you have no current file-naming standard, or if you are considering a change to your existing system, is a way to log and name a project. Project logging can be as simple as posting a spreadsheet on the network drive or using a project-collaboration site on Microsoft SharePoint to ensure everyone is logging projects using the same system. Once the logging system is determined, you can determine how projects and files should be named. As with the project-logging system, all files should be stored in a central location on a networked drive or a system that allows you to check files in and out, such as Autodesk Vault.

      You can take two approaches to the way you name projects and files: you can establish a system yourself using the guidelines that I offer in the next few sections, or you can use the standards set by a consortium or other professional governing body. Based on your industry or the country you work in, you might consider the guidelines established by the American Institute of Architects (www.aia.org), National Institute of Building Sciences (www.nibs.org), Royal Institute of British Architects (www.architecture.com), or American National Standards Institute (www.ansi.org).

      Project Names

      The project-naming structure you choose to use should be short and sequential. For example, you might consider just a basic numeric value such as 000001, 000002, and so on. I do not recommend that you use the year as part of the numbering system since projects can span multiple years.

      Project names commonly include an alphabetic prefix with one or more letters to make it easy to start a secondary naming system if you decide to organize your projects by business type or some other classification. For example, say your company works on residential, commercial, and government projects. In this case, you might consider prefixing the project's number with R, C, or G, so they would be R00001, C00002, or G00003.

      Other information you might want to represent as part of a project name could be

      Phase Often a numeric value of one alphabetic letter or number (for example, – A or -1 to represent the first phase of a project).

      Location Optional; often a combination of alphabetic letters and numbers to help identify multiple locations on a single and very large job site (for example, – A1 to represent the first location and – B1 to represent a second location). Using a Building attribute in a filename might be a better choice for you since all work is being done under a single project instead of multiple projects for a single job.

If a project has only a single phase, it is up to you to determine whether you want to indicate that as part of a project name. A project always has a first phase, but it might never have a second phase, based on the size of the project. Information such as floor, discipline, file type, and sheet type should be reserved for use by files within a project and not included as part of a project's name. Figure 1.1 shows what a structure for a project number might look like.