














Learn how to create arrays, use advanced options of fillet, and other tools to simplify your workflow.
Tutorial resources
These downloadable resources will be used to complete this tutorial:
Transcript
00:04
In this lesson, I'm going to insert a PDF file and make some changes to it using tools inside of AutoCAD.
00:11
PDFs are attached as an underlay.
00:14
You can use your object snaps when working with an underlay if you have your settings correct and the underlay file was created correctly.
00:21
I'm going to use some of the more advanced options for the chamfer and fillet tools.
00:26
I'll copy some drawing objects from one drawing to another.
00:30
And I'll finish with the Overkill Command: One of my favorite tools inside of AutoCAD.
00:36
Overkill eliminates overlapping lines to help you clean up your drawings.
00:40
This is especially helpful if you have inserted external references in your drawing, which is one way overlapping lines can occur.
00:49
To insert the PDF file, I select the Insert tab.
00:54
I select the Attach tool.
00:56
I set my files of type to PDF.
00:60
I select the PDF file I want to use, I click "Open".
01:05
I accept the defaults to insert the PDF at the origin with the rotation of 0, and scale of 1.
01:12
I click "OK".
01:14
The PDF is inserted.
01:16
I select the PDF.
01:18
I toggle Enable Snap for PDF "On" on the ribbon.
01:24
I want to modify this schematic.
01:27
I select the Line tool from the Draw panel on the Home tab.
01:31
I place a couple of lines.
01:34
Notice that I can use the endpoint snap to select the endpoints of existing lines in the PDF underlay.
01:41
I can create a corner using the fillet tool by holding down the "Shift" key on the keyboard.
01:48
By holding down the "Shift" key, I override the radius value.
01:52
So, I don't need to set the radius value on my fillet to "0".
01:57
I select the fillet tool from the Modify panel on the Home tab.
02:01
I Right Click and select Radius.
02:05
I set my radius to "0.5".
02:08
I select one line, I hold down the "Shift" key and select a second line that is perpendicular to the first line.
02:16
And I created a corner without having to change my radius to "0".
02:22
I'm going to switch to another drawing and attach an Xref.
02:26
I type "Xref" to open the Xref Manager.
02:30
I select Attach Drawing.
02:33
I locate the AutoCAD drawing I want to attach.
02:37
I accept the defaults to insert the PDF at the origin with the rotation angle of "0" and scale of "1".
02:45
I click "OK".
02:47
Once again, I can snap to the endpoints inside of the Xref to place some additional wire lines.
02:56
I select the Rectangle tool and draw a rectangle.
03:00
I draw two more lines using the midpoint of the top of the rectangle and the midpoint of the bottom of the rectangle.
03:08
I want to chamfer for the rectangle using the polyline option and with No Trim enabled.
03:15
The chamfer tool is located in the fly out under the fillet tool.
03:20
I select the Chamfer tool from the Modify panel on the ribbon.
03:24
I Right Click and select "Trim".
03:27
I select the No Trim option.
03:30
I Right Click and select "Polyline" to select the polyline option.
03:36
I Right Click and set the start distance to "0.1", and I set the second distance to "0.1".
03:44
I select the "Rectangle".
03:47
The chamfers are placed.
03:49
Notice that the corners are not trimmed.
03:52
I Right Click and select Repeat Chamfer.
03:57
I Right Click and select Trim.
03:60
I select the Trim option.
04:02
I Right Click and select the Multiple option.
04:06
This allows me to continue placing chamfers until I press "Enter" to exit the command.
04:13
I select some lines to be chamfered.
04:15
I place to chamfers using the trim method.
04:20
I press "Enter" to exit the Chamfer command.
04:24
I'm going to place a few more lines.
04:27
I want to demonstrate how to use fillet on parallel lines.
04:31
I place two parallel lines.
04:33
I can use the fillet to close or cap the ends.
04:37
I select the fillet tool from the Modify panel on the Home tab.
04:42
I Right Click and select Multiple.
04:46
I select the two parallel lines.
04:49
An arc is added to cap the lines.
04:52
I can place an arc at either end of the two parallel lines.
04:57
I press "Enter" to exit the Fillet command.
05:02
I want to copy and paste from one drawing to another.
05:06
I window around the chamfered rectangle I just created.
05:10
I Right Click and select Clipboard, Copy with Basepoint.
05:15
I select the midpoint at the bottom of the rectangle as my base point.
05:21
I switch to my target drawing.
05:23
This is the drawing with the PDF underlay.
05:26
I Right Click and select Clipboard, Paste.
05:30
I select a location to place the geometry.
05:34
One of my favorite tools in AutoCAD is Overkill.
05:38
Overkill deletes overlapping lines.
05:41
I switch over to my overkill drawing.
05:45
I type "Overkill".
05:47
I type "All" to select everything in the drawing to be inspected.
05:52
I press "Enter".
05:54
A dialog opens.
05:56
I have enabled combined collinear objects, which means that if two lines overlap but extend out away from each other,
06:04
they will be combined into a single line; similar to the Join command.
06:09
I click "OK".
06:11
Look by the command prompt to see how many overlapping lines were deleted.
06:16
If you missed that message, just press "F2" to expand the Command Prompt window.
06:22
In this lesson, I demonstrated the ability to use object snaps in external references and underlays.
06:30
I reviewed some of the more advanced options in chamfer and fillet, like multiple and polyline.
06:37
I showed you how to use the "Shift" key to create a corner using fillet.
06:41
The "Shift" method allows you to retain whatever radius value you are using in fillet.
06:46
Copy with Basepoint allows you to copy objects from one drawing to another.
06:52
Finally, I showed you how to use the overkill tool to eliminate overlapping lines in your drawing.
00:04
In this lesson, I'm going to insert a PDF file and make some changes to it using tools inside of AutoCAD.
00:11
PDFs are attached as an underlay.
00:14
You can use your object snaps when working with an underlay if you have your settings correct and the underlay file was created correctly.
00:21
I'm going to use some of the more advanced options for the chamfer and fillet tools.
00:26
I'll copy some drawing objects from one drawing to another.
00:30
And I'll finish with the Overkill Command: One of my favorite tools inside of AutoCAD.
00:36
Overkill eliminates overlapping lines to help you clean up your drawings.
00:40
This is especially helpful if you have inserted external references in your drawing, which is one way overlapping lines can occur.
00:49
To insert the PDF file, I select the Insert tab.
00:54
I select the Attach tool.
00:56
I set my files of type to PDF.
00:60
I select the PDF file I want to use, I click "Open".
01:05
I accept the defaults to insert the PDF at the origin with the rotation of 0, and scale of 1.
01:12
I click "OK".
01:14
The PDF is inserted.
01:16
I select the PDF.
01:18
I toggle Enable Snap for PDF "On" on the ribbon.
01:24
I want to modify this schematic.
01:27
I select the Line tool from the Draw panel on the Home tab.
01:31
I place a couple of lines.
01:34
Notice that I can use the endpoint snap to select the endpoints of existing lines in the PDF underlay.
01:41
I can create a corner using the fillet tool by holding down the "Shift" key on the keyboard.
01:48
By holding down the "Shift" key, I override the radius value.
01:52
So, I don't need to set the radius value on my fillet to "0".
01:57
I select the fillet tool from the Modify panel on the Home tab.
02:01
I Right Click and select Radius.
02:05
I set my radius to "0.5".
02:08
I select one line, I hold down the "Shift" key and select a second line that is perpendicular to the first line.
02:16
And I created a corner without having to change my radius to "0".
02:22
I'm going to switch to another drawing and attach an Xref.
02:26
I type "Xref" to open the Xref Manager.
02:30
I select Attach Drawing.
02:33
I locate the AutoCAD drawing I want to attach.
02:37
I accept the defaults to insert the PDF at the origin with the rotation angle of "0" and scale of "1".
02:45
I click "OK".
02:47
Once again, I can snap to the endpoints inside of the Xref to place some additional wire lines.
02:56
I select the Rectangle tool and draw a rectangle.
03:00
I draw two more lines using the midpoint of the top of the rectangle and the midpoint of the bottom of the rectangle.
03:08
I want to chamfer for the rectangle using the polyline option and with No Trim enabled.
03:15
The chamfer tool is located in the fly out under the fillet tool.
03:20
I select the Chamfer tool from the Modify panel on the ribbon.
03:24
I Right Click and select "Trim".
03:27
I select the No Trim option.
03:30
I Right Click and select "Polyline" to select the polyline option.
03:36
I Right Click and set the start distance to "0.1", and I set the second distance to "0.1".
03:44
I select the "Rectangle".
03:47
The chamfers are placed.
03:49
Notice that the corners are not trimmed.
03:52
I Right Click and select Repeat Chamfer.
03:57
I Right Click and select Trim.
03:60
I select the Trim option.
04:02
I Right Click and select the Multiple option.
04:06
This allows me to continue placing chamfers until I press "Enter" to exit the command.
04:13
I select some lines to be chamfered.
04:15
I place to chamfers using the trim method.
04:20
I press "Enter" to exit the Chamfer command.
04:24
I'm going to place a few more lines.
04:27
I want to demonstrate how to use fillet on parallel lines.
04:31
I place two parallel lines.
04:33
I can use the fillet to close or cap the ends.
04:37
I select the fillet tool from the Modify panel on the Home tab.
04:42
I Right Click and select Multiple.
04:46
I select the two parallel lines.
04:49
An arc is added to cap the lines.
04:52
I can place an arc at either end of the two parallel lines.
04:57
I press "Enter" to exit the Fillet command.
05:02
I want to copy and paste from one drawing to another.
05:06
I window around the chamfered rectangle I just created.
05:10
I Right Click and select Clipboard, Copy with Basepoint.
05:15
I select the midpoint at the bottom of the rectangle as my base point.
05:21
I switch to my target drawing.
05:23
This is the drawing with the PDF underlay.
05:26
I Right Click and select Clipboard, Paste.
05:30
I select a location to place the geometry.
05:34
One of my favorite tools in AutoCAD is Overkill.
05:38
Overkill deletes overlapping lines.
05:41
I switch over to my overkill drawing.
05:45
I type "Overkill".
05:47
I type "All" to select everything in the drawing to be inspected.
05:52
I press "Enter".
05:54
A dialog opens.
05:56
I have enabled combined collinear objects, which means that if two lines overlap but extend out away from each other,
06:04
they will be combined into a single line; similar to the Join command.
06:09
I click "OK".
06:11
Look by the command prompt to see how many overlapping lines were deleted.
06:16
If you missed that message, just press "F2" to expand the Command Prompt window.
06:22
In this lesson, I demonstrated the ability to use object snaps in external references and underlays.
06:30
I reviewed some of the more advanced options in chamfer and fillet, like multiple and polyline.
06:37
I showed you how to use the "Shift" key to create a corner using fillet.
06:41
The "Shift" method allows you to retain whatever radius value you are using in fillet.
06:46
Copy with Basepoint allows you to copy objects from one drawing to another.
06:52
Finally, I showed you how to use the overkill tool to eliminate overlapping lines in your drawing.
Step-by-step guide
Transcript
00:04
In this video, we're going to take a look at how we can maintain our files using the drawing utilities in AutoCAD.
00:14
We'll be looking at how the drawing recovery tools work in AutoCAD, especially when a file has been closed down unexpectedly.
00:22
For example, you might have a power outage and your auto cad shuts down without you shutting it down following the relevant process.
00:31
Based on that will also perform a drawing audit so that you can audit your recovered drawing.
00:38
And then what we're going to do as well is look at how we can purge your drawing to remove any non necessary drawing objects.
00:46
You'll notice in this particular drawing when we're in AutoCAD that we've got the drawing recovery manager open.
00:55
Now the reason that the drawing recovery manager has opened when we've opened this drawing is the AutoCAD may have closed down unexpectedly.
01:03
You might have had a power outage, you might have switched off your machine without actually closing AutoCAD properly,
01:10
of following the proper closing process when you shut down auto camp.
01:15
Now when you do that, the drawing recovery manager notes that you haven't closed down a drawing properly,
01:20
so you can see here that it's telling us that the file maintenance start drawing wasn't shut down properly
01:27
and it's opened it up in the recovery manager.
01:29
So you can see we've got the DWP file and also what they call the BAK file, the backup file available.
01:36
So what it means is potentially we can open up this file and obviously check that it is okay now I know it's okay,
01:45
but what happens is we can open that file there as you can see far maintenance start dot D W G.
01:51
We can then save that particular drawing like so and that's now saved and you'll notice that things have changed here.
01:58
It kind of goes up into the recovery manager when you perform a save,
02:03
and what you've done there is you've saved whatever is in that drawing that AutoCAD has recovered for you.
02:09
Once you've done that you can then close the drawing recovery manager like so.
02:15
Now one of the things that you might need to do after you've recovered a drawing is you might need to perform a drawing audit.
02:23
Now these are very quick and easy to perform but you need to know where to find the audit command.
02:29
Quickest way is in the application menu up here, click on the fly out next to the red A.
02:35
And you want to come down to drawing utilities and there's the audit commander there.
02:40
Now you can just type audit as well that will do the same thing.
02:44
But if I select audit like so it will now prompt me to fix any errors that might be detected.
02:50
So I can say yes to that or no to that.
02:53
Now ideally if you just recovered your drawing there could be corruption and errors in the DWG file,
02:60
so you want to type why For yes there and just press enter like so,
03:06
now as soon as you do that it doesn't audit and you can see at the bottom there on the command line, total errors found at zero.
03:12
I can just expand the command line here for a moment.
03:15
Let's just do that. There we go.
03:17
And it's going through the header, the tables the auditing entities pass one passed two,
03:23
and you can see there's two blocks that have been audited and there's no errors found.
03:27
Therefore it hasn't erased any objects that might be corrupted.
03:32
So the good thing is there are drawing is okay even though it opened up in the drawing recovery manager.
03:39
So that's two ways where you can maintain your AutoCad drawing files.
03:45
I'd like to show you one more really really clever function in AutoCad.
03:50
And that is the purge command.
03:53
Now the purge command lets you remove non necessary objects and entities from your AutoCad drawings.
04:00
So you'll notice in this particular drawing we have some relays in the Schematic drawing starting at R001 here,
04:08
going across to R006 here and you'll notice that they are a block reference and we don't want those blocks in our particular drawing.
04:18
So what I can do here is I can actually delete the blocks.
04:21
No problem at all.
04:22
If I select one of those right click and go to erase that erases the block now, that's great.
04:28
I've erased the block.
04:30
But the problem I have there is that block definition is still in the DWG file,
04:35
so what I'm going to do is select the rest of them like, so, and then right click and erase the blocks like so.
04:42
Now you'll notice that that I've now got the spaces left in my drawing for those relays,
04:47
and I might create a different block to go in those gaps in the schematic drawing.
04:52
I'm not going to worry about that right now though.
04:54
What I want to do is get rid of that particular block in my D W G file.
04:59
I don't want to keep it in the D W G file.
05:02
Now I can go up to the application menu and going to drawing utilities again, and your latest purges available there in the application menu,
05:11
or instead of doing that, you can literally just type purge P U R G E like so and press enter and that will also bring up the purge dialog box.
05:21
Now the purge dialog box has gone through some changes over the years, but as you can see you now have purged items and non perjury items.
05:31
So anything that is non purge a bill you can't remove from your drawing because it's in use somewhere, but purge a ble items can be removed.
05:41
So if I expand out my blocks here by clicking on the little plus sign, you can see that we do have a relay.
05:47
R 700 block and that's the relay that we've just erased here in the drawing.
05:54
So that block is still in the drawing, we don't want it in the drawing anymore.
05:58
So we need to purge that.
06:00
Now, we've got some options here, we can confirm each item to be purged.
06:04
You can purge any nested items.
06:06
You might have blocks within blocks, nested blocks.
06:08
And also more importantly, you might have other blocks in this list that you might need to get rid of as well.
06:14
So you can just go down and tick whichever blocks you want to get rid of.
06:18
I'm going to just click the blocks category there because there's only one block.
06:22
But if I wanted to get rid of four or five non used blocks in my drawing and they were in this list,
06:27
I've just got to tick blocks and it will take all the blocks that I want to purge out.
06:32
Now I've got the option here, purge checked items, purge all that allows me to purge all unused items.
06:39
Be aware that that is kind of a cover all that does everything.
06:43
So be aware of that one.
06:44
I'm just going to purge my checked items and I'm going to get a confirmation because I've got confirmed each item to be purged selected.
06:52
So when I purge the checked items it says do I want to purge the block relay R 700.
06:59
Yes I do want to purchase this item so that's now gone and there's no more blocks to be purged out of the drawing itself.
07:06
So if I click on close now what you'll find is if I go up to the insert tab,
07:11
and then go to insert here you'll notice there's no blocks available in the drawing because I've purged those blocks out.
07:18
I can however go to the blocks palette and go here and you'll see I've got recent blocks so one of my recent blocks is the relay R. 700.
07:26
I can bring that back in like so if I want to because I've used it an auto cad, remembers it based on the blocks palette.
07:35
Now, that's great.
07:36
And also it might be in other drawings that I've used.
07:39
So potentially I can utilize things like Design center tool palettes and the blocks palette to bring a different block in to replace the block.
07:48
I've already purged.
07:50
That was a quick run through about how you can perform file maintenance with the drawing utilities in AutoCad.
07:58
What we looked at there was how we can recover a drawing file, how we can audit a drawing file and more importantly,
08:06
how we can also utilize purge in our drawing files to remove any non necessary content that we don't need.
00:04
In this video, we're going to take a look at how we can maintain our files using the drawing utilities in AutoCAD.
00:14
We'll be looking at how the drawing recovery tools work in AutoCAD, especially when a file has been closed down unexpectedly.
00:22
For example, you might have a power outage and your auto cad shuts down without you shutting it down following the relevant process.
00:31
Based on that will also perform a drawing audit so that you can audit your recovered drawing.
00:38
And then what we're going to do as well is look at how we can purge your drawing to remove any non necessary drawing objects.
00:46
You'll notice in this particular drawing when we're in AutoCAD that we've got the drawing recovery manager open.
00:55
Now the reason that the drawing recovery manager has opened when we've opened this drawing is the AutoCAD may have closed down unexpectedly.
01:03
You might have had a power outage, you might have switched off your machine without actually closing AutoCAD properly,
01:10
of following the proper closing process when you shut down auto camp.
01:15
Now when you do that, the drawing recovery manager notes that you haven't closed down a drawing properly,
01:20
so you can see here that it's telling us that the file maintenance start drawing wasn't shut down properly
01:27
and it's opened it up in the recovery manager.
01:29
So you can see we've got the DWP file and also what they call the BAK file, the backup file available.
01:36
So what it means is potentially we can open up this file and obviously check that it is okay now I know it's okay,
01:45
but what happens is we can open that file there as you can see far maintenance start dot D W G.
01:51
We can then save that particular drawing like so and that's now saved and you'll notice that things have changed here.
01:58
It kind of goes up into the recovery manager when you perform a save,
02:03
and what you've done there is you've saved whatever is in that drawing that AutoCAD has recovered for you.
02:09
Once you've done that you can then close the drawing recovery manager like so.
02:15
Now one of the things that you might need to do after you've recovered a drawing is you might need to perform a drawing audit.
02:23
Now these are very quick and easy to perform but you need to know where to find the audit command.
02:29
Quickest way is in the application menu up here, click on the fly out next to the red A.
02:35
And you want to come down to drawing utilities and there's the audit commander there.
02:40
Now you can just type audit as well that will do the same thing.
02:44
But if I select audit like so it will now prompt me to fix any errors that might be detected.
02:50
So I can say yes to that or no to that.
02:53
Now ideally if you just recovered your drawing there could be corruption and errors in the DWG file,
02:60
so you want to type why For yes there and just press enter like so,
03:06
now as soon as you do that it doesn't audit and you can see at the bottom there on the command line, total errors found at zero.
03:12
I can just expand the command line here for a moment.
03:15
Let's just do that. There we go.
03:17
And it's going through the header, the tables the auditing entities pass one passed two,
03:23
and you can see there's two blocks that have been audited and there's no errors found.
03:27
Therefore it hasn't erased any objects that might be corrupted.
03:32
So the good thing is there are drawing is okay even though it opened up in the drawing recovery manager.
03:39
So that's two ways where you can maintain your AutoCad drawing files.
03:45
I'd like to show you one more really really clever function in AutoCad.
03:50
And that is the purge command.
03:53
Now the purge command lets you remove non necessary objects and entities from your AutoCad drawings.
04:00
So you'll notice in this particular drawing we have some relays in the Schematic drawing starting at R001 here,
04:08
going across to R006 here and you'll notice that they are a block reference and we don't want those blocks in our particular drawing.
04:18
So what I can do here is I can actually delete the blocks.
04:21
No problem at all.
04:22
If I select one of those right click and go to erase that erases the block now, that's great.
04:28
I've erased the block.
04:30
But the problem I have there is that block definition is still in the DWG file,
04:35
so what I'm going to do is select the rest of them like, so, and then right click and erase the blocks like so.
04:42
Now you'll notice that that I've now got the spaces left in my drawing for those relays,
04:47
and I might create a different block to go in those gaps in the schematic drawing.
04:52
I'm not going to worry about that right now though.
04:54
What I want to do is get rid of that particular block in my D W G file.
04:59
I don't want to keep it in the D W G file.
05:02
Now I can go up to the application menu and going to drawing utilities again, and your latest purges available there in the application menu,
05:11
or instead of doing that, you can literally just type purge P U R G E like so and press enter and that will also bring up the purge dialog box.
05:21
Now the purge dialog box has gone through some changes over the years, but as you can see you now have purged items and non perjury items.
05:31
So anything that is non purge a bill you can't remove from your drawing because it's in use somewhere, but purge a ble items can be removed.
05:41
So if I expand out my blocks here by clicking on the little plus sign, you can see that we do have a relay.
05:47
R 700 block and that's the relay that we've just erased here in the drawing.
05:54
So that block is still in the drawing, we don't want it in the drawing anymore.
05:58
So we need to purge that.
06:00
Now, we've got some options here, we can confirm each item to be purged.
06:04
You can purge any nested items.
06:06
You might have blocks within blocks, nested blocks.
06:08
And also more importantly, you might have other blocks in this list that you might need to get rid of as well.
06:14
So you can just go down and tick whichever blocks you want to get rid of.
06:18
I'm going to just click the blocks category there because there's only one block.
06:22
But if I wanted to get rid of four or five non used blocks in my drawing and they were in this list,
06:27
I've just got to tick blocks and it will take all the blocks that I want to purge out.
06:32
Now I've got the option here, purge checked items, purge all that allows me to purge all unused items.
06:39
Be aware that that is kind of a cover all that does everything.
06:43
So be aware of that one.
06:44
I'm just going to purge my checked items and I'm going to get a confirmation because I've got confirmed each item to be purged selected.
06:52
So when I purge the checked items it says do I want to purge the block relay R 700.
06:59
Yes I do want to purchase this item so that's now gone and there's no more blocks to be purged out of the drawing itself.
07:06
So if I click on close now what you'll find is if I go up to the insert tab,
07:11
and then go to insert here you'll notice there's no blocks available in the drawing because I've purged those blocks out.
07:18
I can however go to the blocks palette and go here and you'll see I've got recent blocks so one of my recent blocks is the relay R. 700.
07:26
I can bring that back in like so if I want to because I've used it an auto cad, remembers it based on the blocks palette.
07:35
Now, that's great.
07:36
And also it might be in other drawings that I've used.
07:39
So potentially I can utilize things like Design center tool palettes and the blocks palette to bring a different block in to replace the block.
07:48
I've already purged.
07:50
That was a quick run through about how you can perform file maintenance with the drawing utilities in AutoCad.
07:58
What we looked at there was how we can recover a drawing file, how we can audit a drawing file and more importantly,
08:06
how we can also utilize purge in our drawing files to remove any non necessary content that we don't need.
Step-by-step guide
Challenge