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CAD Standards – Details

Detail Creation methods

How do you create and store details? This has provided a good opening to a healthy conversation over the years. There are so many ways to do this and none of them are really wrong.

Do you create them as Blocks? Do you create them as Xrefs? Do you display them through Viewports? How you create them and show them has been done in many ways and I have seen effective methods at many firms.

Some create them as blocks an insert them into sheets. Some create them as files and XREF them.  SOme create them in MS and cut viewports to show them in a Layout.  Whatever you do – be consistent.

One concept that I have always pushed is to set color or penweight by Layer and not by commodity. In other words, do not create layers for every item based on what it is. Just use layers to differentiate pen weights. Breakout Notes, Annotations and Dimensions on differing layers also.

Here are a few items that I have seen that are common approaches done by many:

No entities should be created BYBLOCK. To modify an entity pen weight you must change the layer it is on.

All lines shall be drawn BYLAYER. When a linetype does not display due to the shortness of a line then the line may use a “Forced” linetype scale. (or just put in a gap)

Details shall be drawn using the standard AutoCAD line types. Scale of line type, or LTSCALE, shall be set to “1”.