AUGIWorld Magazine - May/June 2008 - (Page 18)

AUTOCAD Managing Customization and Profiles In my experience working with companies, one thing has been consistent—no one fully understands all of his or her company’s established CAD standards. This might be different for your company, and if it is, hats off to you—your company is ahead of the game. For CAD managers, it can be difficult to record every standard in a CAD manual. At what point are you telling the drafter how to draft? As we all know, most drafters are focused on their project work and usually draft the way they were taught a long time ago due to not having the time to learn new features. That is where customization and programming comes in. With a little bit of customization, there are ways to make sure that your drafters are using your CAD standards. In this article I will explain how to organize files through the use of networked locations and use profiles to manage these locations. port files that AutoCAD uses. AutoCAD looks in these paths for blocks that your company inserts, specific company fonts, drawing templates, AutoLISP routines, linetype and hatch pattern files, among others. Make sure when you add or change files in these paths that you are diligent about naming and placing files in these folders. When AutoCAD looks for a file, it starts looking in the first folder under the Support File Search Path node and works its way down until it finds the correct file. For example, if you have a block with the same name in multiple folders that are Using the Network to Manage Customization I recommend that you have all of your standards files, palettes, and AutoLISP® routines (among other support files) on a network drive that is designated read-only for everyone except your CAD manager and senior drafters. By using a networked location, it makes it is easier to keep track of all your standards files and paths to them in AutoCAD®. In this section, I am only going to explain which files should be on a network drive and therefore designated as read-only. Let’s start with the Support File Search Path node under the Files tab of the Options dialog box (see Figure 1). Under this node you will find all the paths for the sup18 Figure 1: Search paths, and names, and locations w w w. A U G I . c o m http://www.augi.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of AUGIWorld Magazine - May/June 2008

AUGIWorld Magazine - May/June 2008 Table of Contents The CAD Manager From Drawing to Display: The Value of Autodesk Impression Designing for Auto-Dimensioning The Proof Is in the Footing Managing Customization and Profiles Getting to Know the Display Manager What's Cooking at Autodesk Labs? On the Back Page

AUGIWorld Magazine - May/June 2008

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