Custom Drawing Border - Autodesk Inventor Drawing Tutorial | Autodesk Inventor 2021 IN DEPTH

[Music] hey everybody it's alex with engineering applied in this video i'll be showing you how to create a custom drawing border and autodesk inventor if you want more easy to understand and practical content like this made by an experienced engineer like myself make sure you like this video subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications so you don't miss out on any helpful content like this in the future if you're looking for a specific function check the description for time stamps and if you don't find what you're looking for in this video make sure you check out the other videos in my autodesk inventor series playlist because i know you'll find exactly what you need there let's get started okay everybody so here we are in our drawing template file and in this video we have two main objectives our first objective is to learn how to use our default drawing border parameters menu to change our default border style options okay so i'll go ahead and just insert that there so you can see an example of that okay so this is an example of one of our default borders of course we can change the lettering the numbering and so on and so forth and then the second objective is to cover how to sketch our own custom border using some of the sketch tools available in autodesk inventor now before we go ahead and start creating our custom drawing borders we need to set up our custom drawing template so that we have something to save these changes to i'll be providing a brief summary of that process in the beginning of this video however if you want more information on how to create a custom template i have a video specifically on that subject and i encourage you to watch it because it's good to know and understand how these files come into play in the background within autodesk inventor okay so the first thing we need to do is we need to open up file explorer in windows and navigate to this folder called enus you'll start in your c drive or the hard drive in which you've installed your operating system and you'll go to users public public documents autodesk inventor 2021 templates and you'll end up here in this enus folder all of our base drawing templates are housed here and this is where we'll start go ahead and copy this standard.dwg file here this is assuming that you like sticking with the dwg drawing format if you want to use the inventor drawing format you could do the same set of steps with this however if you don't have a preference i generally recommend staying with the dwg because it works both with inventor and autocad so after copying this we're going to jump up a level and we want to create a folder called history of course you can name this folder whatever you'd like so within this folder that you've created we want to paste that standard.dwg file this does one of two things the first thing this does is it creates a backup of the original drawing template that's used to generate new drawings so if we ever want to revert back to the default setup we have this available to us the second thing this does is that within this enus folder we can change this dwg file which allows us to maintain compatibility with this drawing button here in the home screen so essentially when you press this drawing button here within this new section on the home screen it looks for a file called standard.dwg and the en us folder and it launches that and it uses that base template to generate these new drawings off of so we're able to maintain the compatibility with this button and we're also able to make those changes without fear of losing that original styling setup that we had backed up here in the history folder now the next thing we need to do is we need to navigate back to the enus folder and double-click on standard.dwg so this is one way to launch the file another acceptable way to launch this file is you can go into autodesk conventor use the open command and you'll navigate to that same enus folder and launch that standard.dwg file from here okay if you try to launch it anywhere else you may not be opening the actual template file and your changes will not be saved okay so this is really critical so what we'll do is we'll go ahead and use the open command we'll go back to that enus folder and we'll launch it from here okay so we'll just click on standard.dwg and open now pay attention to the name of the file here at the top notice how it says standard.dwg this is really important if i open this file incorrectly and click something like if i went to the advanced menu and double clicked on standard.dwg here so i'm going to close this other instance if i click on this here i want you to see the top see how the top says drawing one so this is a blank new drawing that's based off of that template so it's still using that template file however it's not actually editing the template file okay so again we want to close this one this is not the correct one and let's go back to open and let's actually open it from here so standard.dwg open and here we go we are actually editing that template file now because it says standard.dwg at the top now i'm going to go ahead and exit out of my standard.dwg file because i actually don't want to make changes to this particular template because i already have it set up the way i want it to be set up so what we'll do is you'll continue working out of your standard.dwg but i'll work out of custom template and custom template 2 on my end okay so i'll go to open i'm going to open up my other template for this video so let's go ahead and start off by learning how to manipulate our default border and changing that default border using the parameters menu the first thing you want to do is you want to go up to the drawing resources folder in the model browser open that up and then you want to go down to your borders folder okay so you'll only see default border i went ahead and created this custom border so this border that you see here is my custom 4x4 border so that means it goes up to four horizontally and four sections vertically okay so what you'll want to do first is you want to go under a sheet one and yours will say default border so yours will look more like this okay so you'll likely start out with something similar to this so what you'll want to do first is you'll want to right click on default border under sheet one and you want to click delete okay so what that does is it removes that default border from the sheet itself then go under the borders folder right click on default border there and go to insert drawing border now we get our default drawing border parameters menu that pops up now let's go ahead and step through all these options found in this menu before we continue on let's go ahead and expand this menu by clicking these two arrows in the bottom right hand corner now we have additional options available to us starting in the top left hand corner we have the ability to change the number of horizontal zones we have on the sheet along with the labeling okay so the horizontal zones were those letters that you saw at the bottom of the sheet so i'll leave a number four there and just click okay so we have one two three four horizontal zones that are numbered okay and then vertically we have one two three four vertical zones that use the alphabet okay so um this is typically how most drawings will be set up with some number of zones horizontally and some number vertically of course the larger sheet you want to use you might want to actually use more zones to specify the areas on those sheets okay because sometimes when you get into a larger drawing size like a size e or size f you need to get a little bit more specific or have more zones so that you can indicate a specific area on that drawing okay so let's go ahead and go back into our border parameters menu by right clicking on default border and we'll actually need to delete this from the sheet first right click on default border insert drawing border okay so let's open this menu back up so of course you can change your horizontal in your vertical zones as previously described and you can change the label so horizontally we have them numerically labeled okay so we saw numbers along the horizontal axis you can change it to alphabetical or you can remove the labels altogether by selecting none and this can be done for both the horizontal zones and the vertical zones moving down into the left we have our text style section where we can change the style of our text along the horizontal and vertical borders so by default it's set to by standard so if we leave it on that and hit ok this is what it looks like so the numbers and letters are of a smaller font size i believe this particular font size is 0.12 inches and this is based on the ansi standard now let's go ahead and delete default border go back into this menu okay let's try the next option label text and we'll hit ok now you notice the numbers and letters are much larger okay so if you prefer to have larger numbers and letters along the border of your sheet you have this option available to you as well now let's go ahead and delete this once again we'll go back into insert drawing border all right and our last option is note text and when we click ok you'll notice it's a small font size so if you prefer that condensed font size you can use this as well delete this one more time and let's go back into insert drawing border once again we'll go ahead and expand this menu once again and let's take a look at this label zones from set of options here so by default it's set to bottom right so if we're to hit ok notice how the numbering and the lettering starts from the bottom right hand corner so we have one two three four moving left and we have a b c d moving up alright so let's take a look at the other option so we'll delete this go back into insert drawing border expand the menu now let's try the top left we'll hit ok now we have a b c d starting from the top left and we have one two three four starting from the top left so depending on your preferences you have that option available to you as well let's delete that and go back into our menu once again and expand it so we can move on to the text layer section within the section we can change the text layer that we want to use for the numbering and the lettering along the border so i went ahead and created a custom layer as an example so how i did that was i went to the manage tab up here at the top and i went to the styles editor okay and so once you open that you want to go down to this tab that says layers and you want to expand that and you can just click on any of these options i went to new and i created a custom layer so i hit new and i'll just rename this to custom layer two all right and then what you could do is you can change the color of that text so if you click in this little box here this black box i went ahead and just changed it to red so i'll just do that again okay and i'll hit ok there so now we can hit save here at the top and then save and close when we go back into the default border menu we can change that text layer to our custom one so i'll just change it to custom layer 2 and hit ok and as you can see here all of the lettering and numbering is in red so you could do all sorts of different things by editing or creating new styles and then setting a new text layer now on a side note if you'd like to delete a custom layer that you've created all you have to do is delete your border first go up to the styles editor once again go under the layers section and right click on the custom layer that you want to delete so uh make sure you don't accidentally delete something you don't want to so any of these stock layers make sure you don't delete those right click on your custom layer that you want to delete and go to purge style click ok and then save and close we're now back in our border parameters menu and now let's take a look at the delimit zones by section so by default it's set to line so when i use this option all of these zones are divided by little lines okay all right so let's see the other option so if we go back into this menu and select arrowhead instead of little lines that separate these sections they're all little arrowheads okay so just depending on your preference there you have those two options available to you let's take a look at what else we have here moving to the right we have our line layer section so just like the text layer we can create custom styles and layers for our line element along this border so let's go ahead and do that now we'll click cancel we'll go up to styles editor and within our layers menu i'll just create a new one and i'm going to call this custom line we'll leave it as the color black but we'll change our line type so i want this to instead of being continuous let's do a dash dot and uh let's change our line weight to something a little bit thicker maybe 0.039 inches we'll go ahead and hit save and save and close we'll go back into our default border menu expand this go to this drop down and we want to find custom line there we go and when we click ok you'll see that now i have my dash dot border that i selected okay and notice how it also applies that to these little uh subdivisions here these little lines that divide each segment okay so that is how you create a custom line layer let's go back into that menu so we'll delete that insert drawing border expand the menu and let's take a look at by standard so of course by standard just puts the standard solid continuous line all the way around with the default line weight go ahead and delete this again insert drawing border all right so now let's move down to the center marks option when this option is enabled or when you see a little check mark inside of this box that essentially just means that it places arrows that are centered with each side of the border okay but when we take a look at it disabled so let's take a look at that we uncheck that box and hit ok there's no arrow denoting the center of each border so just depending on your preference you can select either one of those two options for that let's go back in here and moving down here to the bottom of this parameter window we can change our sheet margins so all you have to do is change the number in each one of these boxes depending on which margin you want to change so let's say we want to shrink each margin down by a quarter of an inch so let's do that so i'll type 0.25 here 0.25 here so our top and bottom are going to be a quarter of an inch and our left and right margins are going to be half an inch so let's go ahead and type 0.5 in both of these and click ok now you can see our margins are shrunk down so we have smaller margins and our borders are closer to the edges of our sheet that wraps up everything with our default border now let's take a look at how we can create custom borders from scratch okay so the first thing we need to do is we need to clear any existing borders off of our sheet so let's go ahead and do what we did before right click on default border and go to delete now we want to go up to the manage tab and we want to go over to this define section and click on border when we do that it opens a sketch menu and we can go ahead and sketch our border to our specifications one thing i'd like to go ahead and point out are these anchor points that are fixed in each corner of the sheet so we can use these anchor points to dimension the borders off of okay so we can set our margins this way so let's say for example and i'll just exit out of this real quick let's say for example that we want to create a border similar to this so i want to enclose the numbers and letters along this border and i also want to add a generic table of revisions that gets resized every time my border changes well this is very simple to do so let's go ahead and define our new border let's delete this first go to the define section and click on border and now let's go ahead and start drawing up some shapes that will get us to that end result let's go ahead and drop this two-point rectangle here all right now we can dimension it off of the anchor points so i'll set this margin here on the left side and we'll set that to three quarters of an inch we'll do the same for this right side but we're going to use a function i want this dimension to always match this one so instead of typing a number in i'll just click on this dimension and hit that check mark there we go so anytime i change this one value this one will change with it by the same amount we'll do the same thing for the top we'll go ahead and dimension this off of this anchor point here okay and i want these to be a half inch so we'll just leave it like that and we'll do the same thing down here but i want to set this equal to this dimension there we go now we have the starting point for this now let's go ahead and create the offset that we want so what i'll do is i'll just select offset and i want 0.35 inches all right now we can hit ok and let's go ahead and dimension this so that it always moves properly okay and we'll set that equal to this dimension there okay there we go and we'll do the same thing for this side okay we'll set that equal to the initial dimension and the same thing down here okay so now we have that set and of course you go along and you set your lines for the segmentation so of course we'll just drop a line anywhere here so the general idea here is when we set a dimension between this line and this line for example so when we set that distance we want that distance to be set as a function of the total line length okay so the overall length of this line here at the bottom and how many segments we want on this axis so for example say we want four segments on our size c sheet all we have to do is set some reference dimensions so we'll go ahead and do that now we'll go to general dimension and you'll pick a line so we can pick this line even though it's already fully defined and we can click accept because when we click accept it says hey this is a driven dimension that means that this dimension cannot be changed directly it's simply just showing a reference dimension based off of other driving factors the driving factors for this line length is the margin size okay so anyways we'll go ahead and set one for the vertical axis as well all right doesn't matter which one okay so now what we can do is recall these reference dimensions as part of the formula that sets the spacing so let's say for example i want to have four segments along the bottom i can just pull this dimension here and we'll type in the equal sign we'll click on this dimension and we'll do divided by four okay and then when we hit enter it sets the distance that we would need to have four total segments so let's go ahead and create some copies of this little line segment we'll go up to copy we'll click on the line segment we'll select our base point and let's just go anywhere it really doesn't matter because we're going to dimension this anyways okay there we go so now we can click done and as you can see we have equal spacing here in our section so we have one two three four segments now we need to set the spacing between these lines so we'll go ahead and just pick up the spacing and we'll set it to be equal to the initial length which is then driven off of this overall length so you get the general idea we're just trying to automate this process as much as possible so that when we change the sheet size all of the border and all the elements drawn off that border will change accordingly all right so skipping ahead a little bit here i went ahead and drew up the rest of the lines and dimensioned them the same way that i did this one so here on the vertical axis i reference this overall dimension divided that by four total segments that way this dimension is always driven off of this total length and how many segments i want okay and so these lines on the top i just drew lines and set them to be vertically constrained to the ones down here so that they always follow these ones and then the same set of operations for these horizontal lines on this side so i set them to always be horizontal to these lines so that um only these lines here and these lines here have to change and these ones and these ones follow so again just automating as much as possible so let's go ahead and click finish sketch and let's go and save a custom name here so i'm just going to call this custom border video all right so i'm going to click save there now you can see in our borders folder we have our new custom border and of course we can insert that and see what it looks like all right so there we go so now we have the starting point for our custom border but let's go ahead and take a look at this little error here in the bottom right hand corner as you can see here the border slightly overlaps the title block this is an easy fix all you have to do is go back into your custom border so remember you have to delete it off of your sheet before you can edit it now let's go back into the custom border by right clicking and going to edit okay so what we need to do is we need to designate this point here as a snapping point for the title block so all you have to do is hover over the point of interest that you want to use to snap your title block to so i'll just click on that point there then you want to go up to the format section here in the ribbon so in your sketch tab go all the way to the right under format and you want to hover over this option here so this is connection point grip you want to make sure that this is highlighted in a blue box okay so that means that this point is now a connection point grip we can click finish sketch go to yes to save those edits and now when we insert this custom border back in it snaps to this interior point as opposed to the exterior point now let's go ahead and try to resize the sheet to see what happens with the border so if you hover over sheet one right click and go to edit sheet you can change the size of your sheet on the fly so let's go ahead and change this to a larger size let's change it to size e and as a side note you can also change the location of your title block by clicking each one of these buttons so if you want your title block to be in the bottom left hand corner you can click this little button here top left hand corner here and so on and so forth and you can also change the layout of your sheet between landscape and portrait so we'll go ahead and leave it in the bottom right hand corner and let's go ahead and change this to size e we'll click ok now even though the sheet increases in size all of my margins stay the same and the segments here have been sized automatically so that is why i was emphasizing the automation of those formulas so that you only have to change one parameter at a time you don't have to go back and change everything manually anytime you want to change your sheet size so let's go ahead and revert this back to a size c okay now let's take a look at some of the other things that we can add to our border so of course we need to add the letters and numbers so let's do that now we'll delete this go back into our custom border edit and like these lines that we've placed here you can place text so let's go ahead and do one example of that so i'll just drop this here i'll type a letter a okay and let's change the size actually no we'll leave it 0.12 inches now you want to think about the anchor points for your text fields so that you can dimension your text appropriately so let's say that we want this text centered in this field well let's go ahead and center justify it and justify it towards the middle so that our anchor point for this letter resides in the middle so if you look closely there's a little dot here in the middle that we can select and dimension off of so let's do that now first of all we can recall the dimensioning of this offset so let's do that we'll click that dot and that dot drop this somewhere over here this is fine now let's find our um offset dimensions for this so here we go 0.350 and of course we want to divide that by two all right so there you go that is the um vertical spacing for this lettering now we need to space it centered to this segment here so what we can do is we can take this dimension here and divide that by two and what that'll do is it'll center each letter in the middle of each one of these zones so let's go ahead and do that now we'll go to general dimension pick up this point here and pull off the same side okay drop it there we'll pick up this dimension and divide that by two so that way anytime this distance changes this distance will change accordingly by exactly half of that which would center this letter every time all right so there we go and now let's add another letter so let's go ahead and just type text again all right we'll type the letter b we'll do the same justification oh and by the way if you justify it left and top for example it moves that anchor point so wherever your justification is it'll move that anchor point so see it's to the top left hand corner now so let's go ahead and change that back towards the center and middle we'll click ok and let's move this into position all right let's set some constraints here so i'll set horizontal between that middle point and that middle point okay so it holds that vertical position now and uh let's set the spacing so we'll do the same thing as the letter a so we'll pick up the middle point there we'll pick up the distance from this line and we want to set that equal to this distance because this distance is driven off of this divided by two therefore this always matches this so we can just copy this one directly and click finish sketch and of course so on and so forth you can add those letters numbers accordingly in that same manner so let's go ahead and insert this now and see what it looks like so there we go now we have our lettering centered up with these sections and if i were to change the sheet size those letters will move with it so let's try that let's go down to a b size and there we go so everything is still centered okay and it auto-dimensions itself now before i go ahead and finish up this video i wanted to take a moment to walk you through the finished version of this example so that you can see all of the elements and design considerations that went into completing this custom border so the first thing we're going to do is we're going to remove the current border here by right clicking on custom border video delete okay and let's insert this custom border 4x4 that i made all right so there we go now this border has the same design elements the only difference is that i put the numbers along the horizontal parts of the borders and the vertical borders have letters so let's go ahead and edit this so you can see all of the elements in here so like before i have the separating lines that are dimensioned off of a function between this point and this inner line so this time i'm using the inner line it really doesn't matter just as long as you're keeping everything consistent okay and i did the same thing with the vertical partitions now in this particular version i added a general table of revisions so all this is is a bunch of line elements that are dimensioned to my specifications and i didn't size these based on a function like i did the width of each segment okay um that's because i don't want the table of revisions resizing every time the sheet resizes okay i need to keep the same amount of space for my text entries regardless of the sheet size so that's why i left this with a static length here let's click finish sketch and we'll click no now let's go ahead and resize the sheet to see what happens go to edit sheet change it to a size e for example we'll click ok and now as you can see here all of the segments auto resize themselves based on those formulas that i entered in for their dimensions and this table of revisions has stayed the same size because that is the way i wanted it to be so that i always have the same uh font typed into this field and i have that same amount of space available to me at all times so again just make sure that you're paying close attention to your design requirements for your custom border and that you're automating it as much as possible so that it requires the least amount of inputs to change all of its characteristics one final note i'd like to leave you with is the fact that you can copy and paste your custom border so not your default border notice when i right click on this there's no copy option but let's say for example we want to use our custom border 4x4 template that is four segments along the horizontal axis and four segments along the vertical axis and turn that into an eight by eight for example where i have eight segments on each uh end of the border okay so what you can do is you can right click on your initial starting border that you want to use as a template you can click copy and then you can right click on the borders folder and then click paste okay and see here it says copy of custom border 4x4 we can of course rename that by left-clicking and let's call this custom border um 8x8 right and after we've done that let's remove this border from our sheet so we'll go to delete we'll right click on this custom border 8x8 go to edit and now we can go ahead and start adding additional segments and changing our formulas accordingly so that way we can still retain our 4x4 version of this and also have an 8x8 version for larger sheets so if you need to get a little bit more specific on your zones and your drawing this would be a great way to save a bunch of time by recycling an older template and using it to modify it for a later use that's all for this segment of the autodesk inventor drawing creation module where i showed you how to create a custom drawing border i really hope that you found this tutorial to be helpful and that you put what you've learned into practice so you can continue developing your skills as you work your way through these lessons also before you watch the next video in the series make sure you subscribe to my channel and turn on notifications to stay up to date on future content that will help you create the future you want for yourself and of course don't hesitate to leave a comment or reach out via my website contact page and let me know if there's anything else you'd like to learn about or see on this channel i really appreciate you choosing to stop by and learn with me and i'll see you again soon [Music] you

Channel: Engineering Applied

Views: 1,324

Keywords: autodesk inventor 2021 tutorial, autodesk inventor tutorial for beginners, inventor tutorial 2021, inventor professional 2021 tutorial, inventor 2021, autodesk inventor 2021, inventor 2021 tutorial, autodesk inventor, autodesk inventor tutorial, inventor, autocad 2021, how to create custom border in autodesk inventor 2021, custom border autodesk inventor 2021, custom drawing border in autodesk inventor 2021, drawing border

Id: 4zj_AsE5uDo

Length: 31min 1sec (1861 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 11 2021