i'm new to autocad, can someone please help?

Question

i drew my first floor plan on autocad 2008 today :) and i need to draw the second floor and basement floor plans as well. it seems like such a waste of time to redo all of the interior and exterior walls and pillars when i did them in a different drawing. isn't there a way to import or copy parts of one drawing into another? thank you!

Answer 1

While it's true you can copy/paste them into your drawing, the most common (and best) way to handle this is by using what is called an XREF. An XREF stands for eXternal REFerence. By linking an XREF into your drawing if you update it in one location it will update in all your other drawings and locations. By doing this, you will only need to draw these things once and they will automatically update in all the other locations.

The command is... XREF. It will ask you what file you want to XREF into your drawing and the location you want it to be. For now (since its your first time) just leave everything at the default settings and give it a try. Once your building is in your drawing, you can turn off the XREF layers of any entities you drew in your other drawing (that you don't want in this one) so that they do not appear in this drawing environment.

Take care and good luck!

Answer 2

You can also save the drawing that has the interior and exterior walls as a new file by going into the Files menu and click Save As.

This way you can erase the stuff you don't need in the new drawing and use this as your file for the 2nd or basement floor.

You can also copy within the original drawing a duplicate of what you did and make changes on this same drawings.

Lastly, use the XREF command as already mentioned.

Answer 3

1

Answer 4

Now if i was you I would do some research into autocad support groups. user groups and forums

do a web search for :-

autocad+support groups+user groups+forums

type it in the web search bar same as above