AutoCAD - Part 1 - Adding an Existing Drawing into a New drawing Contain a Drawing Border & Part 2 - Display and Scale the Inserted Drawing in “Paper Space”.

By Martin Phelps

Part 1 - Adding an Existing Drawing into a New drawing Contain a Drawing Border

This was a question raised by a delegate in a recent course. Start a “New” drawing with a template file that contains a drawing border and title block, as shown in Figure 1.

The “Drawing” will be added to “Model Space”, so check the “Model” tab at the bottom left of the screen is active, as shown in Figure 2.

Since the drawing will be added into “Model Space”, it will be “Inserted” as a “Block”.

From the “Block” panel of the “Home” tab, select “Insert”, since there are currently no “Blocks” in the drawing the “Block Gallery” is empty, as shown in Figure 3.

From the list of options below the “Block Gallery”, select “Recent Blocks”. This will display the “Recent” tab of the “Blocks” dialogue box, as shown in Figure 4.

At the top of this tab to the right of the “Filter” field, there is a small icon which will allow navigation and file selection from the required folder as shown in Figure 5.

On selecting this icon, the “Select File to Insert” dialogue will be displayed as shown in Figure 6.

Allowing the user to navigate to any location on the available drives or server, using the “Look in” field at the top of the dialogue as shown in Figure 7.

Once the folder containing the drawing has been located, select the required drawing file, this will appear in the “File Name” field at the bottom of the dialogue, with a preview of the selected file displayed in the top right.

To confirm the file selection, select “Open”, either pick an insertion point on screen in “Model Space” or type 0,0 to place the drawing.

The “Blocks” dialogue can either be closed so it’s no longer displayed or set to “Auto-Hide” so it may be used later.

The selected file has now added into the drawing as a “Block”.

Best practice may be to “Explode” the block so that its geometry becomes part of the drawing and may be modified if required, as shown in Figure 8.

Part 2 - Display and Scale the Inserted Drawing in “Paper Space”

To display and scale the drawing in “Paper Space “.

Open the “Layer Properties Manager” dialogue box and create a “New” layer giving it a suitable name, for example “VP” or “Viewports”. Set this “Layer” current.

To stop the “Viewport Layer” from printing, set the layer to “Non-Plot” as shown in Figure 9.

Switch to “Paper Space” by selecting the word “Model” from the “Status Bar”.

From the context sensitive “Layout” tab on the Ribbon, select “Rectangular” to define the “Viewport”, as shown in Figure 10.

The first corner of the “Viewport” is the top left of the drawing border, the second point is the bottom left of the title block, as shown in Figure 11.

While still in “Paper Space” select “Paper” in the “Status Bar”, making the “Viewport” active, as shown in Figure 12.

To increase clarity, turn off the “Grid” by either picking the “Grid” icon in the “Status Bar” or pressing “F7”.

Scale the drawing in relation to the size of the viewport in accordance to the paper size, using a standard discipline related scale.