Overview

1. Traditionally one of the first things that a draughtsperson does when starting a new drawing is to get the correct size sheet of drawing paper. This sheet will probably have borders, a company logo and other details already printed on it. The drawing is then completed to 'fit into' the pre-printed layout material.

2. A CAD drawing is no different from this, with the exception that the user does not 'get a sheet of paper'. Companies who use AutoCAD will want their drawings to conform to their standards in terms of the title box, text size, linetypes being used, the style of the dimensions, etc.

3. Parameters which govern these factors can be set every time a drawing is started, but this is tedious and against CAD philosophy. It is desirable to have all standard requirements set automatically, and this is achieved by making a drawing called a standard sheet, prototype drawing or template.

4. Standard sheets can be 'customised' to suit all sizes of paper e.g. A0, A1, etc. as well as any other size required by the customer. These standard sheets will contain the companies settings, and the individual draughtsman can add their own personal settings as required. It is this standard sheet which is the CAD operators 'sheet of paper'.

5. We will create an A3 standard sheet and save it as a template file for all future drawing work. At this stage, the standard sheet will not have many 'settings', but we will continue to refine it and add...