Drawing Templates
 
 

Pro/Desktop has two features that help you make 2D drawings. They are formats and templates

Formats: You can set the paper layout, borders and style by creating a standard format. Formats are created by making a standard .dra file and saving it. This tutorial will walk you thru making a simple format.

Templates: If you want all of your 2D drawing to have the same view layout you can make a template that automatically extract views from a 3D object. You can specify a format (which you can make) for a template.

 

 

How to make and use your own template

First we must pick an existing template to modify. We will modify template3 since it most closely resemblies what we want out of the new templete.

File>Open --> Browse to Program Files>PTC>ProDesktop>Program>Drawing Formats and load up template3.dra

 

  • Once template3 is load you must change the format file that the template is using
  • Drawing>Sheet Setup
  • Choose the existing format radio button
  • Browse out to the format file created in the format tutorial.
  • OK

  • The new format is much smaller than the old format. The new format is 11 x 8.5 so that it will look good on a normal printer. All that has to be done is to resize the view boxes so that the fit in the new format.
  • Before resizing, you should delete the little graphic left over from the last format.
  • Select all of the lines
  • Right Click>Activate Sketch --> Hit your delete key
  • To resize the view boxes just alter the dimensions.
  • Make the three views 2.5" x 2.5"
  • Add dimensions to the Trimetric View Box so it can be resized to 3" x 3"
  • Move the view boxes into position by select a line on the view box and then click n drag the box to its position
  • Move the appropiate titles back into their view boxes
  • View>Autoscale

  • File>Save as
  • No
  • Save the file in the ProDesktop/Program/Drawing Formats Directory
  • Name it: wp_template.dra
  • To get the template to show up as one of the six choices you must modify a few things
Right Click on bmp link, button.bmp, and save the bmp file in the Drawing Formats directory. Get the bmp not the gif you see at the right. This will be the button you will see when you are asked what template you want to use
  • Now browse out to the Program Files>PTC>ProDesktop>Program>Drawing Format directory
  • Right Click Templates.lst and select properties
  • Deselect Read Only & Archive
  • OK
  • Now edit Templates.lst with Notepad. (Double click it, use notepad)
  • Change Template3.dra to wp_template.dra
  • Change the bmp to button.bmp
  • Change the text to "Use the West Point, EM370 Template"
  • Save the file

  • To see the template in action
  • load up basic.des from the samples directory
  • Tools>New Drawing>Select the West Point Template

 

 

 

 

  
Tutorial By Steve Schweitzer, 2001