From the course: AutoCAD: Tips & Tricks

358 OUTPUT - Creating effective page setups - AutoCAD Tutorial

From the course: AutoCAD: Tips & Tricks

Start my 1-month free trial Buy for my team

358 OUTPUT - Creating effective page setups

“

- [Instructor] In this particular "AutoCAD Tip and Trick" we're going to take a little look at page setups and how we can make them work and work for us when we're trying to output our drawings. We've got a very simple drawing for you to use, it's called 358 OUTPUT-Page Setups.dwg. And you should know the drill by now. Download it from the library and follow along with this particular "Tips and Tricks" video. So what we're going to do is work with some simple shapes in a simple drawing with a simple title block. I'm then going to create a new sized title block and put it into a new Layout tab and create a new page setup for it. So at the moment, when you open up the 358 OUTPUT page setups drawing, in the Model tab you can see we've got three basic shapes, rectangle, circle, hexagon. Now, I've done that purely so that we've got some geometry in the Model tab. If I now go to the Layout tab, the ISO A3-Landscape Layout tab, that is an ISO A3-Landscape orientation sheet. Now, what we're going to do is we're going to copy the objects that create that title block from the Layout tab back to the Model tab. We're then going to generate a new title block and put it into a new Layout tab, okay? So, first thing we're going to do is create a new Layout tab. We'll click on the + here, like so, and we've got a new Layout1. Can you see it, there? So right click on it, we're going to rename it, and it's going to be an ISO A4-Portrait. So we're going to create a portrait orientation this time. So there's our ISO A4-Portrait. It is a blank one, as you can see. There's nothing in there, just a default view port which, as you can, see I've selected. I'm just going to hit the Del key on the keyboard and delete that so it's literally a blank sheet right now. Okay, let's go back to our ISO A3-Landscape Layout tab. And what we're going to do, we're going to select everything apart from this view port, here. So the trick will be just literally click here, drag your selection window over so that you select everything. Click again, like so, and then select the view port by when you hold down Shift. See the little -? I'm holding down Shift, there. Click on it and that'll deselect it. We're then going to do a right click, and go to Clipboard on the shortcut menu. And I'm going to do a Copy with Base Point. Going to go over to this corner. Just hover over that blue grip, you will see an endpoint snap there. Can you see it green? Just click, and that's copied that to the clipboard. Hit Esc a couple of times, Jump back into the Model tab. Zoom out a little, like so. I'm going to come over here to the left. I'm going to right click, Clipboard, Paste, and just drop it there like that. So there is our title block. Now, at the moment that's an A3. And the reason I've selected an A4-Portrait is it's really easy to change this to an A4-Portrait title block. I'm going to delete the LinkedIn Learning text. So I'll hit the Del key on the keyboard. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to draw a line from the midpoint here, down to the midpoint here, like that. Press Enter to finish. If you fold a landscape A3 sheet along that white vertical line it will form an A4 sheet. So you can see, there, we've now got two A4 sheets, in essence. What I need to do is trim and tidy first of all. But before I do that, what I'm going to do is move the page setups, text, and some lines and things. There's an easy way to do this and there's a difficult way to do this, trust me. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to select this line here, this text here. But you'll notice we've still got a rectangle, a poly line there. So let's just hit Esc a couple of times. Let's go to Explode, and I'll select the outline like that. Just check that that is one line, it is. So we've only got the one poly line to explode. Press Enter to confirm. And here's the clever bit. What I can do now is I can select quite a few bits and pieces, here. The text, this line here, this line here. And what I'll do now is I'll do a right click and a move, and I'll pop that corner there to the end of that white line there. There's my A4 in Portrait. What I need to do now is remove the white line. So let's right click and erase that and we'll do a little bit of trimming. So we'll zoom in a bit, trim there. And we need to trim there, trim there. And then we'll just trim these bits back as well, like so. So what we've got now is an A4-Portrait title block. Now, it's very basic, it just says Page Setups, I'm not going to worry about anything else on there. But obviously now that's an A4 title block, ready to go into our ISO A4-Portrait Layout tab. So I'm going to select it. So let's just go click, release the mouse button, drag and click, and it's a right click. And I'm going to do Clipboard and Cut with Base Point. That one there. That's a newer feature in newer versions of AutoCAD by the way, the Cut with Base Point. So I'm going to use that corner there. Get the endpoint snap, left click. That's disappeared, it's on the clipboard. I go to the ISO A4-Portrait Layout tab I created earlier. And I'm going to right click now, Clipboard, and Paste. And the insertion point will be 0,0. Enter, like so. So when I zoom out, now, can you see, it's in the completely wrong orientation for this sheet? That sheet there is A4 but it's all completely wrong, so we need this new page set up organized. Now, the nice thing is I can use some of the settings from the ISO A3-Landscape page set up. So I'm on the ISO A4-Portrait tab right click, Page Setup Manager. I'm going to create a new page setup and I'm going to call it I-S-O A4. Let's get that right so it looks good. There we go, A4, like that, -Portrait - PDF, like that. So as you can see, we've got an ISO A4-Portrait PDF. We've also got an ISO A3-Landscape PDF. So I'm going to use the settings from that for the new ISO A4-Portrait. I'll okay that now. And you can see, it's adopted all the settings, like the monochrome.ctb, and so on. It's got the high-quality PDF but it's got the wrong sheet size. So we're going to go for a full bleed A4, 210 x 297 millimeters. As you can see, it's now in the appropriate orientation. I need to set Portrait, there, like so. And now it fits nicely. Can you see that, no red lines indicating that we've got any issues, there. Extents and Center the plot we're on. It should be 1:1 because the title block is A4, the sheet size is A4. If I preview that, quickly, you'll see there it fits nicely on the sheet. Right click, Exit Preview. Click on OK, and what I can do now is just double click on that particular page setup. And can you see there on the screen, it's applied that to the current layout, the ISO A4-Portrait layout. So when I close that, now, I've now got a whole new page setup for my ISO A4-Portrait Layout tab. As you can see, the ISO A3-Landscape is a different size, different orientation. ISO A4-Portrait is the new page setup. So that's how quick and easy it is to set up a very simple title block with a new page setup. And that's something you'll need to do quite often. Now, something you might want to do there is include these Layout tabs and the page setups in something like your AutoCAD drawing templates, your DWT files as well. Then you've got them over and over again, ready to use as you create more and more drawings from the DWT files, from the templates.

Contents