Content: Creating DWG Compare tables

- [Instructor] Welcome to another AutoCAD tip and trick. Now, what we're going to look at today is another feature of the new AutoCAD, drawing compare command. Now, just be aware that drawing compare is an AutoCAD 2019 command. It's not in any previous versions of AutoCAD. And you'll notice that we've got a couple of drawings open in our AutoCAD session, DWGCompare001 and DWGCompare002, because we're going to compare those two drawings against each other.

Now, make sure that you download both files from the library to follow along with the video, and make sure that you've got both of them open in AutoCAD, as you can see on the screen. Now, the drawing compare command is on the View tab on the ribbon like so. And I'm going to jump over to the end of the ribbon and there's drawing compare sittin' at the end there. I click on it, and it prompts me to select the drawings that I want to compare. Change the colors if you wish. So, I'm going to change the colors here. Let's go for say a purple for drawing one, and we'll go for a nice, bright green there for drawing two like so.

You need to setup the drawings to compare. So, I click on the button there, find the first drawing, which is DWGCompare001, click on the button there, second drawing will be the DWGCompare002. I hit the Compare button and if you've seen my previous tips and tricks about the drawing compare command, you'll know that AutoCAD then creates a new drawing, showing you the comparison between the two drawings. So, you'll notice that the green highlights there with the little revision clouds around them are on drawing two, which is the DWGCompare002 drawing, and you can see that there's some furniture in the offices in the top right hand corner of the floor plan.

You'll also notice in the Comparison panel on the Compare tab on the ribbon that gray is common to both. So, all your grid lines, your dimensions and so on, are common to both drawings. Now, what I want you to look at today though, is the ability to add a table to your comparison drawing. I'm just going to zoom out a little bit in the comparison drawing now, and just pan down a little bit so I've got a bit of space there above the comparison drawing as well. I'm going to go to the Comparison panel on the Compare tab on the ribbon and click on Drawing Information.

Now, the lovely thing about this is it'll tell you the information now about those two compared files. So you can see the names of them there. You can see they've been saved by me, and you can see the folder path and everything else. You've got some options at the bottom of the dialog box though, you can insert the information into the drawing, or you can copy it to the clipboard and perhaps put it into Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel, depending on what your requirements are. Let's have a look at that insert in the drawing option, shall we? If I click on Insert in the Drawing it prompts me now to specify the insertion point.

The insertion point of what? Well, it will be an AutoCAD table. I'm going to click up here and just drag and you'll notice there's the table. I can drag and it will scale it accordingly, depending on how far I move the mouse. Don't go too crazy, don't make it too big, and just click once, and there's your table. And then, as you can see, you can rotate it based on the insertion point. Get it nice and level using the polar tracking. You don't want it at a weird angle like that. And just get it on the zero line on the polar tracking, making sure obviously that your polar tracking is on.

Click one more time, and there's your table. But, the benefit you've got is the information in the table has the same color scheme as the Comparison panel at the top of the screen in the Compare tab, look. Comparison there, purple and green. Table, purple and green. Now, here's the best bit. Watch what happens if you change the color. If I change the color of drawing one in the Comparison panel, let's make that red, color 10, click on OK. Not only does it update it in the comparison panel, but it updates it in the table for me too, and any information in the comparison drawing would also become a red color.

Now, because we know that there's no information that's different on DWGCompare001, there's no red highlights in the comparison drawing. But, obviously if I now change the color of the green drawing, drawing two, which has got some information that is different to drawing one, let's change that to a different color, let's make it a nice pale blue, like so, nice sea blue. You'll notice that everything goes blue and even the results go blue in the drawing as well. How cool is that? So, everything is color coded in your comparison drawing to allow you to see and distinguish the differences between the two drawings that you've compared.