Template Tricks

I was recently asked by a IT manager if I have any creative tricks for stream ling the template creation process. In this blog, I will go over two such techniques I use.   The first technique I will go over is getting the object layers assigned in the template.  Typically, I chose to make all of the objects layer with a C3D- prefix, unless the client has some predefined ones.  So an example of this would be C3D-Alignment.  Now, rather than type each one, we can open a drawing/template with all those objects layers all ready assigned, like the one shown below.

Now with the blank template as the current drawing, I only need to edit the drawing settings of the other template/drawing that has the object layers assigned.  I then select the object layers tab and simply hit OK.

As you can see from the screen capture below, the object layers have been transferred to the blank template.  

The second trick I like to use is to have three predefined pipe networks all ready created within the template, which you can see in the following screen capture.

It is important to note that these networks are networks in name only, and they don't currently contain pipes or structures.  Now what they do contain are object layers, like you can see in the capture below.

By having the networks predefined, the user doesn't have to set these layers when they start the pipe network creation process.  All the user needs to do is edit the appropriate network, and start laying out pipe.