My Method of Creating ISO 3rd Angle Drawing Templates

chrisjh777

After considerable effort, I have managed to create ISO 3rd Angle Drawing Templates for use in Australian Standard Drafting.

The process I used is documented in the attached word and pdf documents.

There are 4 templates as follows:

a.      A4 Landscape Template_CJH.dwt

b.      A4 Portrait Template_CJH.dwt

c.      A4 Blank Template_CJH.dwt

d.      A3 Template_CJH.dwt

A copy of the 4 templates I use can be found below:  Feel free to copy and amend them for your own use.

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/b6a7a25fff2d4b55ae801952/w/d179b010a1bc4f55a1aa1dea/e/03f54393a0b642b68e90af12

Things I observed:

1.      The custom A3 Template creates “zones” outside the border, despite choosing the default value of Zero.  A4 custom Templates do not create “zones” if the requested numbers are Zero.  I guess this is a bug. I manually amended my A3 Template by:

 a.      In Onshape, creating a drawing of the template. (Do this by RMB on the Tab and choosing “Create Drawing of”)

b.      Manually selecting and deleting the zone letters, numbers and lines.

c.      Exporting the edited drawing as a “.dwg” to my desktop.

d.      Opening the exported file with Draftsight.

e.      From Draftsight I saved the file as a “.dwt”

f.       Open the templates document in Onshape.

g.      Use the “+” menu to reinsert the edited “.dwt” file.

h.      Delete the original template and drawing.

i.       Rename the Tab to “A3 Template_XXX”

 2.      The current format does not support things functions like &[Date] and &[Time] used in Excel and Solidworks.  I use these functions to keep track of when I amended or printed a drawing.  This is on my wish list.

 3.      Because I am not familiar with AutoCAD, I could not manage to save a copy of my templates with an embedded Logo image.  I followed the help instructions from within Draftsight (AutoCAD clone), and could successfully insert a “.png” image, however the moment I clicked away from the image, it would disappear.  I think this is because the only option is to insert a “referenced” image and I need a permanent image. I would be grateful if an AutoCAD expert could demonstrate how to make the image stick.

Happy Drawings and have a great 2016

Chris Humphris

stevehess

@chrisjh777 Great write-up, thanks.  I have had some success with the XREF BIND command to force any XREFS (your logo) to be explicitly copied into the DWT which should (in theory) be available in your Onshape DWT.  I can also say, that I have seen AutoCad emulators (like Draftsite) complain about the XREF command.  Remember, that XREF BIND must be run from the Draftsite command line (if it exists).  My 2 cents.