AutoCAD: Tips & Tricks

- [Instructor] Welcome to another one of my AutoCAD tips and tricks in my tips and tricks series. We're gonna have a look now at utilizing the AutoCAD drawing standards file type, a DWS file. Now the whole idea of a DWS file is it gives you a benchmark to basically check your standards of any given drawing against. So for example, we've got a drawing here for you that you can download from the library.

It's called OfficePlan.dwg. What we're going to do, we're going to create a DWS file for this particular OfficePlan drawing. We're then going to change some of the stuff in the drawing and check it against the DWS file. So you're gonna have a DWG file and a DWS file. So make sure you've downloaded the OfficePlan drawing, save it to a known location, and then open it up in AutoCAD like so. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to jump across now to save this file first of all.

So all I've gotta do is go to the quick access toolbar and click on save as and there it is there. Now the folder that I'm saving it to just ignore the name of it, standards using a DWS file effectively. That's purely my filing system for the drawings that I'm using that you're gonna download from the library. So there's my OfficePlan.dwg. I'm gonna do here and click on files of type and I'm gonna change it to a drawing standards file. So it's now a DWS. Now I don't really want it to have the same name as the OfficePlan file.

So you might want to put something like _STDS, standards or something like that, or possibly even, if you want to, something like _DWS. But bear in mind you're then gonna have _DWS.dws. Kinda looks a bit silly so let's go back with that standard one, STDS, standards. Soon as I save it you'll notice at the top of the screen there that it's OfficePlan_STDS.dws. So if I just click on save there just to lose the C:\ file path.

You can see OfficePlan_STDS.dws. Now we haven't got our office plan drawing open anymore. So we just jump up to open and we want our office plan drawing, our dwg, file open as well. Som I'm gonna click on open and you'll see that we've now got the two files open. There's the OfficePlan file tab and the OfficePlan_STDS.dws file tab as well. And you'll notice whenever you've got a file that is not a regular dwg AutoCAD now displays the suffix.

So I know that's a DWS file because it's displaying it in the file tab. Now what I'm going to do is make some changes to the OfficePlan drawing. And they're gonna be very, very simple. Just some layer changes and I'm gonna remove some bits and pieces from the drawing as well. Now a lot of the time when you remove things from the drawing that's not gonna make any sort of change to the DWS check that we're gonna do because I'm just removing perhaps blocks or lines or arcs or circles.

The sort of changes that you're looking for are things like lines that might not be on the correct layer. Dimensions that might not be on the correct layer. Layers that done have the right color, the same color, as the DWS file. So I'm gonna jump into my layer drop down here first of all. And I'm gonna go all the way down towards the bottom and we've got my grids here. So I'm gonna change those to a different color. Let's go pink. So there's a nice pink color there. Click on OK. They change color. See they got that purpley pink color going on.

So what I'm also going to do now is change my dimensions so I'm gonna go A-ANNO-DIMS which is up at the top. There we go, there's the dimensions. Change those to yellow. There's a yellow color there like so. And you can see it's all beginning to look a bit colorful and bright now. Now what I'm going to do is I'm just going to save those changes. So I'm just going to do a save like so, do a quick save like that. But what I'm also going to do now is go into this office area. And what I'm going to do is some of these lines here are on the IWALL layer.

So I'm gonna select them but I'm gonna give them their own individual color. So I'm gonna go up here and instead of by layer I'm gonna change those to say a blue color. And then just hit escape to deselect. Double click on the wheel to zoom extents. And then save the drawing with those changes. So now what I can do is I can run a standard against this drawing. So what I do is I go to the manage tab on the ribbon and I click on check here on the CAD Standards panel. So I click on check and it tells me there is no standards file associated with this drawing.

So I click on OK. And I then click on plus here. So there's my DWS file. So I'm associating that particular DWS file with my OfficePlan.dwg file. I click on open, and as you can see now OfficePlan_STDS is associated with this OfficePLan.dwg file. So all I've got to do now is check the standards. But before I do that let's jump into the settings. So notification settings are display standards status bar icon.

So that will basically show me that down on the status bar. I can also automatically fix any nonstandard properties. And you'll see that there's my preferred standards file to use for replacements here. So if I want to use any replacements I wanna pick the file. Now I'm gonna say none there at the moment. I'm just gonna show any ignored problems or any nonstandard problems. So I'm gonna click on OK and then I'm gonna click on OK again. Now if I run the check this time you'll notice now that it comes up with a check standards dialog box because I've got an associated DWS file.

So it's now telling me that layer S-GRID is nonstandard. And it is, it's that purpley pink color. So what I can do there is I can see it there in the list. At the moment it's color 210 when it should be red in the standards file. So I'm gonna fix that problem. Click on fix and you'll notice it goes red. Now the next one is the A-ANNO-DIMS layer. It's on the wrong color again, color 50 and it should be color 10. Now what I can do is I can mark this problem as ignored if I want it to stay that color, or I can fix it.

Notice I've got settings there. If I click on settings it's those same settings that I had before. I'll fix that one as well, so that's now fixed. Standards check is now complete. What you'll find there is when I click on close two of those problems have been found and fixed manually. But you'll notice that these ones haven't. Can you see that? So if I go back to settings now all it needs for me to do is have a standards file to use for the replacements which is that one there.

So if I okay that now and then run that again, choose next to check this drawing, there are no lines coming up. So when I click on close there and close that out, those ones there aren't coming up, because all I've done there is change a layer setting. I haven't physically changed an element that I would check in the DWS file. Just be aware of that. It's very important. So if I go back to that check again, like so, and click on close and go to settings there, there's my display standards status bar icon, which is down here, it's that little funny symbol there.

And what I've also got there is display alert upon standards violation. So an alert can come up or I can just disable the notifications if I want to. Now what you'll find is that sometimes things do come up with that DWS file and sometimes they don't. So just be aware of that. With those lines there they're a manual check that you would need to check. So I'd click on close. I zoom out a bit and these would have to be checked by way of properties if I go to the home tab, here you can see they're not using the appropriate color.

However, you can obviously check that because you can see that those lines there are a different color. So what I might do there for example is just hit escape, use match properties, there's the source object, and just click on these lines here, and what I can do there is I can obviously change those quite happily, just working my way around making sure that the lines are now on the correct layer. Press enter. They're on the correct layer. They've got the right color association, the by layer color association, instead of their own individual color. But when you use those DWS files just be careful because it does check for certain things but not everything.