Autodesk 057A1-09A111-1001 - AutoCAD LT 2009, User Manual

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Working with Templates
In AutoCAD Mechanical, you can use templates (*.dwt files) to create drawings.
Predefined templates, which contain settings for various drawings, such as
am_iso.dwt or am_ansi.dwt, are supplied with AutoCAD Mechanical. You can
create your own templates, or use any drawing as a template. When you use
a drawing as a template, the settings in that drawing are used in the new
drawing.
Although you can save any drawing as a template, prepare templates to include
settings and drawing elements that are consistent with your company or
project standards, such as the following items:
■ unit type and precision
■
drawing limits
■ snap, grid, and ortho settings
■ layer organization
■ title blocks, borders, and logos
■
dimension and text styles
■ linetypes and lineweights
If you start a drawing from scratch, AutoCAD Mechanical reads the system
defaults from the registry. The system defaults have a predefined standard.
If you create a new drawing based on an existing template and make changes
to the drawing, those changes do not affect the template.
To begin working with templates immediately, you can use the predefined
template files.
However, for this tutorial you create your own template.
Setting Mechanical Options
In the Options dialog box, you can specify general settings for AutoCAD
Mechanical, Autodesk
®
Mechanical Desktop
®
, and AutoCAD
®
. Tabs that affect
settings for either Mechanical Desktop or AutoCAD Mechanical, or both, have
an AM prefix. Use the arrows at the right end of the tab bar to move left and
right through all of the available tabs.
44 | Chapter 3 Working with Templates