About Configuring AutoCAD Mechanical

Configuring AutoCAD Mechanical establishes settings before you start drawing.

Begin by creating a drawing based on one of the stock templates supplied with AutoCAD Mechanical. These templates are based on international drafting standards. If your company uses a variation of a drafting standard, use the template corresponding to that standard, modify the settings per your requirements, and save a new template.

The Options dialog box handles configuration settings, particularly in the AM:Standards tab. The settings in this dialog box can be broadly categorized as system-wide settings and drawing-wide settings. The program saves system-wide settings in the Windows registry and applies them to all drawings you open. The program saves drawing-wide settings with the template you create. In the Options dialog box, the icon indicates these settings.

There are many configuration settings in this dialog box, making it possible to create several configuration workflows. The following diagram shows a high-level configuration flowchart which takes into account the interdependencies of different configuration operations and provides a workflow that applies under most circumstances. Click a box in the flowchart to display related information.

About Selecting a Drafting Standard FAQ What is Automatic Property Management About Configuring Master Settings for Text and Leaders About Configuring Dimension Styles About Configuring Standard Part Content Libraries About Configuring Mechanical Structure About Configuring the Layout of Hole Charts About Configuring Symbols About Configuring the BOM About Configuring Drawing Sheets About Detail View Styles in AutoCAD Mechanical About Section View Styles in AutoCAD Mechanical About Setting Up Standard Based Balloons About Setting Up Standard Based Parts Lists About Distributing Configuration Files

When you finish configuring your system, you have a new .dwt file (a drawing template) and a few other files such as .dwg (drawing) files that contain custom title blocks, custom parts lists, and so on. Copy these files to the corresponding folders on other computers running AutoCAD Mechanical. You can alternatively copy these files to a shared folder and use the Files tab on the Options dialog box to point to them.

The topics linked to the flowchart are:

  1. About Selecting a Drafting Standard
    AutoCAD Mechanical groups all settings governed by drafting standards and saves them to a profile referred to as a standard.
  2. FAQ: What is Automatic Property Management?
    Automatic Property Management refers to the process where every AutoCAD Mechanical command checks a group of settings known as the Object Property Settings and honors them during execution. This enables each command to be “aware” of the other commands and intelligently react to objects in the drawing area. This process is best illustrated using an example.
  3. About Configuring Master Settings for Text and Leaders
    Because text and leader lines are the most common objects used for annotations, AutoCAD Mechanical provides a single configuration point (the Standard Settings dialog box) to specify their settings. The settings are referred to as the master settings for text and leaders.
  4. About Configuring Symbols
    When you select a drafting standard, AutoCAD Mechanical uses a set of symbols that comply with the standard.
  5. About Configuring BOMs Balloons and Parts Lists
    The BOM is a table that contains information about the parts and assemblies within a drawing. The program uses this information to generate parts lists and balloons.
  6. About Configuring the Layout of Hole Charts
    AutoCAD Mechanical enables you to pre-configure the format of hole charts, saving it with the drafting standard.
  7. About Detail View Styles in AutoCAD Mechanical
    A detail view style is a named collection of settings that control the appearance of detail boundaries, identifiers, and labels of detail views.
  8. About Configuring Dimension Styles
    When you select a drafting standard for a drawing, a set of dimension styles that comply with the standard are automatically added to the drawing.
  9. About Configuring Drawing Sheets
    When you select a drafting standard for a drawing, the drawing sheet formats that correspond to the standard become available for selection in the AMTITLE command.
  10. About Section View Styles in AutoCAD Mechanical
    A section view style is a named collection of settings that control the appearance of section lines and section view labels created by the AMSECTIONLINE command. They also control the appearance of model documentation section views.
  11. About Configuring Standard Part Content Libraries
    Although the Standard Part Content Libraries shipped with AutoCAD Mechanical contains more than 600,000 pre-drawn standard parts and standard features, not all are not installed by default.
  12. About Configuring Mechanical Structure
    To use mechanical structure in a drawing, enable mechanical structure first.
  13. About Distributing Configuration Files
    Configuration settings are stored in multiple files. To distribute configuration settings to other computers, you must copy all of these files.
Parent topic: About the Configuration and Setup Guide