Subtitles of the Movie

I want to show you the files that will be externally referenced through out the tutorial starting with the border. I will externally reference this drawing file multiple times into the architectural sheets of the project, in other words into another drawing file. The border contains the name of the architectural firm and the name of the project. I will use black attributes in each of the architectural sheets in order to uniquely name and number the sheets. Let me go to the other files and show you how they are relatively clean, in other words they do not contain much information outside of the actual 2D lines and arcs. Now let me show you what an architectural sheet looks like with the externally referenced files. This is the A1 architectural sheet, it is appropriately saved as the A1.DWG file. The border has been externally referenced and I am using an attribute block for the sheet name and number. I'll switch to model space and unload the X plan. Now you can see all of the notes and dimensions that are placed in the architectural sheet. The reason I place the notes and dimensions here is because I need to externally reference the floor plan to another architectural sheet which should not contain all of this information. Let me show you the A2 architectural sheet, this is the reflected ceiling plan. Going to model space you can see I have externally referenced the same floor plan, I have turned off some layers and placed different notes on this sheet to achieve the final results. Imagine if the externally referenced floor plan contained all of the notes and dimensions from the A1 sheet and it also contained the ceiling grids and light fixtures as well as the notes from the A2 sheet. It would only add layers to the floor plan and it would force one person to work on one drawing file from start to finish instead of distributing the drawing responsibilities to others. This is why I believe external references are the key to composing a very good set of construction drawings. Since I have several drawing files open, I'd like to leave you with a tip, as you can see from the window pull down menu, I can click on the file I want to work with by selecting it or I can continue to use the keyboard control tab keys to cycle through the drawing files. If I want to cycle to a previous drawing file I can use the control, shift, tab keys. Whenever possible and appropriate I will try to provide as many tips to help you be more efficient with AutoCAD and also to make you aware of my common shortcuts.