in this section we're going to talk about how to create title blocks in autocad so we're going to start by first taking a look at this simple drawing here that we've done in our previous modules and what we want to do is mimic the title block from here so if we take a look at the measurements we will notice that we created a quarter inch from the bottom a quarter inch from the right a quarter inch from the top and we had a inch from the side as well this drawing is probably a little bit more clearer where actually it states these dimensions here so we want to do is going to go to our autocad we'll start with this first original border here and then we're going to go up 7 8 of an inch draw this line here and then we're going to go 5 inches and a quarter from here to here and another five inches and a quarter from here to here and then the last piece will be four inches and we should end up with one and a quarter at the end and then we'll come back to these side ones in just a bit so we're going to do is first open up your autocad and what we're going to do is create a brand new file by going to the a up here on the top left corner and then we're going to choose new and when you create a new file you're going to start off with the acad dwt okay that's the drawing template i'm going to click on open and that creates a default autocad file from this default template it doesn't have any settings in it the first thing we do is we're going to save our files we're going to go to file or application menu this big a up here hover over save as then choose drawing and from here you basically want to navigate to the folder that you want to save this in okay so i'm going to go in here i'm going to create a folder for me and i'm gonna call this one module three i already have one in here and this is gonna be where my drawing is going to be i'm gonna call this one title block underscore 128 and i'm going to put today's date on there okay so it could be xx or number number number number 2020 or 20 21 2022 whatever okay now what we're going to do is this project that we're creating here this title block this drawing file is going to be our template for every project that we're going to start here in this course okay so we want to keep it somewhere safe that we'll be able to retrieve later i'm going to hit on save and we're going to create a few settings in here that we don't have to keep on repeating from one project to another or from one module to another the first one is units so u n is a shortcut if you type in u n and then the space bar that will open up your units dialog box and we're going to change our units from decimal to architecture that means we're going to be working with fractions and whole inches okay the precision here is every 16th of an inch okay which is a good number we don't need to go down that low for for our assignments but this is a good precision and we'll keep it there i'm going to click on ok all right now we were introduced to this model space in here and in the model space it is this infinite space if i zoom out and zoom out and zoom out i can draw anything for as big as i want it the size of literally the whole world if we want to okay so and if you zoom in a little bit here you'll see these grid lines in here they're in the background okay we can turn that off or ignore it um down here is the grid f7 you can toggle on and off i'm going to take it off and the bottom left corner here is my x y axis x y is a flat plane horizontal is x up is y and if we were to rotate this we would see the z axis which is the 3d and we do not draw in the z-axis for this course everything is going to be an x and y-axis all right so let's draw a box to refresh our memory from our last lessons rec for rectangle then space or enter and then here i can click the first point left click and then i can type in d or click on d for dimension and i can specify that i want this to be let's say five inches so just five that's the default units is inches if i don't put the inches sign which is that double quotation here that means it's inches so it doesn't matter but if i want feet that's when i need to put the apostrophe so five enter and five again enter okay so here's this box i get to choose where i want to place it i'm gonna choose this top right here left click to release so in the model space is where you draw all your shapes okay so i'm going to draw a line enter i'm going to put in a few random shapes in here and then i'll do a circle here as well so this is a rectangle circular command and this was just the line command in here when i want to print this i want to put it in a layout i want to be able to organize this in a certain way and i want to make sure it fits if you are to imagine for example i'm building a house and my house is 25 feet by 50 feet let's do that i'm going to do a rectangle rec i'm going to go over here somewhere a little far away and click then i'm going to do d for dimension enter and type in the width first so that's going to be 50 then the apostrophe for feet enter and then i'm going to put in 25 apostrophe for feet enter okay now i need to zoom out by scrolling out and then i could choose where i want to place this so i'm going to place it here to the right there you go this is the size of my house my piece of paper is going to be 11 by 17 which is going to be this little tiny piece right here i won't be able to fit this that's where i need to be able to use scale similar to how we use scale and the architectural scale when we're doing hand drafting but how can i fit this on a paper that's why layout spaces are important that's where we can actually create a piece of paper and then place what we call viewports that look into the model space and scale the model space independently one viewport at a time let's see how this all plays out at the bottom here says layout one okay i'm gonna go to layout one and this is layout two basically two different layouts we can create two three four five six seven eight etcetera so what i'm going to do here is i'm actually going to delete one of these so i can only work with one and i can duplicate it once i finish it so let's right click on layout two first i left click to select it and right click and i can go to delete and when i get this message here permanent delete i click ok now i'm left with one layout this is the layout here it's black uh background i'm going to right click in here and choose to page setup manager okay page setup manager if you are on a mac this will not be here you will not be able to right click and choose page setup manager this is going to happen somewhere up here in your file menu you need to be able to find this right here do a quick google search and you will find it there so page setup manager the fundamentals are the same whether using a mac or windows just a different location to find it and this is layout one here i'm going to modify layout one or i can create a new layout either approach would work so i'm going to choose modify layout one here but basically if i do that i won't be able to rename it but if i go to new then i'll be able to give it a name so let's try new instead all right what is the name of this um new layout i'm to call this one 11 by 17 and underscore 128 that's the course code so that i know that's what i created and use this layout for and then click on ok then this menu will open up the first thing i need to select is which plotter or which printer i am using plotter is uh is a fancy word for a large printer or oversized printer and in here i am going to look for the type of printer and we want to print to basically pdf whether you have adobe bluebeam qpdf whatever resource you have as long as you're able to get this out in a pdf the default ones that you all should have is the one that say autocad in front of them and if you're using a version before 2021 it may not say autocad in front of it but you're essentially looking for dw gt pdf or similar i'm going to try this one right here which says general documentation autocad pdf if you don't have it you can use cad to pdf that should also do the job the next thing i'm going to choose is the paper size so the paper size is 11 by 17. you see all these fancy names in here the these are the basically the official names for certain paper size when we talk about arc a it's a 12 by nine if we say arc c it's a 24 by 18. and then you there is ones that say full bleed next to them and there's ones that don't say full bleed next to them okay that's basically has to do with that margin if you take a look back here you see this dotted region uh that means it's not full bleed it won't print anything outside of that it gives you a a little um gap basically for safety because some printers have an eighth inch uh board white border around all the prints some of them have a quarter inch so that's what the this is for it's a safety factor we already are doing our own safety factor by doing that quarter inch quarter inch quarter inch around the perimeter and from the left side we're doing an inch so i'm going to go for the full bleed we're looking for full bleed 11 by 17 and that will be nc full bleed b 11 by 17 and once i do that i'm basically good to go for now this is landscape versus portrait now if you take a look up here this doesn't change much but you want to look down here i'm going to keep this at landscape i want it horizontal okay and basically you don't need to change anything here everything is one to one which is good that's all i'm going to click on okay and i want to make sure i select my 11 by 17 in here because that's my new layout that i want and click on set current in here and then click on close now this will update an 11 by 17. that's what we're looking at here it's a black piece of paper per se we see this thing right here if we left click to select it that's called the viewport for now let's move it to the side so select the m space or enter left click to choose a starting point and drag it to the side here for now let's create our border so we're going to start by creating a line l enter and you can't really snap onto these corners so what you want to do is just kind of zoom in and get that crosshair right there as close as you can notice that my cursor says the point so it's going to once it says zero zero this is the level of accuracy remember we just did units in the accuracy to the nearest sixteenth of an inch so from here to here is less than sixteenths that's why it keeps telling me that it's zero zero so graphically i'm just gonna go at the corner click and i'm going to draw a line i'm going to extend a little further out i'm going to trim these lines later okay then another line on the other side go right here or if i want to be super accurate i can actually just copy this one 17 inches across i'm going to hit escape twice and let's do that escape twice select this line so i'm left clicking and dragging okay but don't do those don't left click and hold otherwise you're going to get this kind of weird selection you want to just left click and let go right away and i'm going to cross over and select this line copy is co co enter and then i start my point is where this line is click and i move in that direction make sure you get in this nice green line and not the orange line orange means you're not straight green means you're straight so i'm going to go across and i'm going to type in 17 enter okay so that's 17 inches if you want to see those green yellow lines if you're not seeing them on your end you want to make sure that you have this on right here this is your polar tracking if you click on this arrow down here you could see polar tracking at certain degrees okay you don't want that off you either want polar tracking on or you want to have ortho on okay ortho is 90 degrees all right let's draw another line l enter i'm going to go to this corner here but notice when i go to the corner it's trying to snap all the way to the top okay so what i'm going to do is i'm going to trick it a little bit if i go down to my snap options here i have intersection extension midpoint endpoint and center on so when i go here right at that corner or edge i should say and i go down straight okay it doesn't let me pick this all right so what i'll do is i'm going to go in here and i'm going to turn on nearest for a second and nearest is not really the best to keep on all the time okay so make sure you turn it off when you're done nearest so basically it's going to go to the nearest point where i have that along that line click and i go across and it's okay if i go a little further hit escape twice and i'm going to go back and turn off that nearest i'm not a big fan of it hit skip twice select this line co copy enter and then you're going to go down 11 inches so 11 enter okay and that's basically the exterior perimeter of my piece of paper i need to go down a quarter inch click select the line and enter for move then i'm going to click on the line and go down a quarter inch that's 0.25 okay i'm going to work some fractions here today select this line move and enter click to the left and then 0.25 enter one more select this line m enter and i'm going to click on the line and move up 0.25 enter and i'm going from the left one inch so i'm going to select this line m enter for move then select the line and move to the right one inch so it's one enter that is the perimeter of my title block all right the next one was the bottom one was 7 8 of an inch from there so i need to copy this line i'm going to select this co for copy enter and then i'm going to click a starting point move up seven slash or dash eight enter okay so that's that line here we also have five and a quarter in so i'm going to select this line copy select the starting point at the intersection move to the right 5.25 enter and i can do the math five two five and five to five is ten and a half or i can hit escape select this line copy c or enter click on this and move to the right that's 5.25 enter all right the next one was four inches so i'm going to select this line co enter and move in that direction four inches okay that was fun now the we know that this last one doesn't go all the way to the top so we have the trim command tr enter enter okay that's two enters tr enter enter if it doesn't work for you that means you are in the middle of a command always hit escape twice or a few times until it tells you here command cancel then try again tr enter enter all right click on the piece i don't want so i'm going to get rid of this get rid of this i'm going to get rid of this and this and clean this up a little bit i can also left click and hold or not hold because you get that weird selection again just left click and let go and see if you can touch these two lines and then left click again and we'll get rid of multiple lines at the same time we want to clean this up a little bit this guy here so left click and i'm going to go down and then left click again left click go across and left click left click left click that was easy i bet you were probably thinking this was significantly faster than hand drafting all right we've done a lot of work here we need to do control s to save uh we can also go to the application menu s now let's open up our title block sample one more time to see where we are here so we created the border we created this line on this line and the vertical lines this was one big box we're leaving as is we need some guidelines for the text if you notice here this was a quarter inch quarter inch that's half an inch the whole space was 7 8 and we have some space here and some space here so we could try to get this exactly and accurately okay we can kind of cheat a little bit an eyeball slightly we do need to know that we are working with a quarter inch lettering in here and a quarter inch lettering in here and here is an eighth inch lettering so that we need to get right but the spacing maybe we can try to eyeball a little bit we'll see this box right here was splitting in half and this box right here was splitting into three different portions okay so let's go back to our autocad and see how we're going to do that okay this box is one big box this box is half this one's a fun one so i'm going to tell enter okay as if you're going to draw a line hold shift and then right click and i'm going to choose the option between two points mid between two points then you're gonna click the first point the second point and it's gonna start already the center between these two points and you left click to release here and then hit escape twice so that was easy and we know that we need to draw a quarter inch lettering in here and in here and center it or kind of eyeball it right in between okay let's go to this one this one we need to divide into three pieces so this might get a little tricky before we dive in there let's work with the text first and then we will see how everything fits in here in our sample title block that we're using we need to write the new york school of interior design and then basic drafting and then we have space here for the drawing name okay so let's do that i need the text command right here under home you can see text there's an arrow under text in here there's a multi-line text a single line text let's use the multi-line text and then i'm going to click somewhere here for now and i'm going to basically draw a box try not to snap on to anything you see how it's trying to snap onto this center here if you want to turn off your snap so that you don't get that feel free to do that too even if you have to draw a smaller box and then come back and make it bigger again that's okay all right so here i'm going to type the new york school interior design all caps and i'm going to left click to release and hit escape twice okay now i need to know what that size is if i click on this text and then to select it right click and go to properties uh it's going to open up the properties dialog box right here and i'm going to open it up a little bit and it's going to tell me here that the text height is 3 16 of an inch if i go in here and i change this to a quarter to one slash 4 enter you'll see that will update the text size to a quarter okay we're going to talk about textiles in another class but for now we just want to put at least the correct size and eyeballing it to fit in the right place i mean it looks like somewhat on center i'm going to have it selected here use m enter to move and just shift it up a little bit and then i will take a look at that title block sample here we're about quarter inch away from the edge in here okay so this looks like it's in a good spot so there you go that's done i can do a shortcut here and i can copy this select the co enter and just move it here escapescape okay and we're going to double click in here update this text and select all this here and i'm going to type in basic drafting i know this is already a quarter inch and i'm going to left click since i have some space here i can double click and probably do dash space one two eight okay then i'm going to copy this over co enter if i choose this line as my starting point and go down then it's going to keep the same spacing so i might want to do that i'll turn snap back on so i can snap onto this corner and then copy it down here hit escape twice and double click in here and this is going to be drawing name so ctrl a if i am inside here in the text box i can select like this or i can do ctrl a if i'm inside the text box and type in drawing name all right almost there then we have three lines in here one of them is the date scale and drawn by and there's a value after it date scale and drawn by minimize this here i'm going to go to text again i'm going to draw the text box right here and i'm going to type in date and then colon enter scale and drawn by and click outside to release select the text but that one was a bit smaller okay so the size here was 1 8 of an inch i'm going to go to text height 1 8 enter skip skate and i'm going to just center it right here i could create them as three separate entries but the spacing here is okay so i'm happy with this what i want to do is select this now and copy it co enter and move it to the right and put some values in here so in our sample we want a little far here so we can this is good enough spacing and i'm going to double click here the date to basically edit the date of my file and then edit the scale and perhaps put my name in here now the information that is going to change you want to keep it separate from the ones that does not change for example every drawing is going to have a different scale it's going to have a different date but since i'm the one was always drawing this then perhaps i need to keep the drawing by separately so i'm going to double click in here and select this and erase it or you can do control x or command x so that you can copy it or cut it and then hit the backspace so that you don't want to escape out of this text box when you have this extra entry here okay you want to just keep it contained nice in here and i'm going to put in just a sample for now one quarter of an inch equals one foot and zero inches and for the dates i'm going to put in number number dash number number so i need to hold shift here number number slash number number slash 20 number number okay and then click out of here i shortcut again since i want to make sure everything aligns rather than having to draw all these reference lines i could just copy this over co enter and then move it over align it in here click hit escape twice then i'm going to double click in here but this time i'm erasing the top and then enter so that it lines up and put my name okay and then click here to release when you're using fractions you'll notice that they take on a different shape and then this is a bit clustered so maybe i'm actually going to end up clicking this and moving it down a little bit okay to space it a little bit better but that means i need to go in here and ctrl x this is just letting me know that i can insert this into another application that's okay but make sure you copy this over down okay this is the part where perhaps it's easier to copy this one so it ensures that it's somewhat aligned escape twice double click in here ctrl a to erase enter enter and here drawn by and uncle okay so as you can see there is kind of a um a thought process behind what you're doing you you need to think and have an intent as you're drawing because not everything comes straight forward there you do something sometimes you have to erase again and do it again etc etc but i'm sure you've figured that out by now last but not least i need this right here so i'm going to go to text and i'm going to put the drawing number so this is going to be let's say for example 3 a as my first assignment for example i need to select it and i'm going to make it a little bit bigger let's try half an inch let's see if this is appropriate the most we're going to have is you know assignment let's say 14 b so we want to make sure that we're able to fit this in here okay so that's a bit too big let's try 3 8 which is slightly smaller than half an inch and then move this right to the center in here okay we need one more line in this case horizontally for our title block we really need this if i do tr trim enter enter this is our actual title block that's what we're using for all our classes and then for the next assignments and the following one we need to create the boxes in here so since it's not part of my template i won't put it in there for now i'll just keep this blank okay so now i am basically good to go now let's talk a little bit about these viewports these viewports are think of them as a crystal ball that lets you see into a space that's not really there so if you are in paper space or layout space in here this viewport allows you to see into your model space okay you can already kind of figure out that here is the box and here's those shapes that we created here it's looking into that space and i can have a few of these i can select it co for copy enter and i can have a few of these viewports around hitscape twice and i can double click and notice when i double click this frame turns white and thick and i can scroll in and out in here and focus on different shapes so if this shape is that big for example how big is it really in relationship to that 11 by 17 that's when the scaling comes in at the bottom right corner here it's giving this weird scale this is a 0.477 of its actual size if you click in here i could say i want this one to one which means the actual actual size and there it is it kind of got big here i'm going to pan a little bit by holding my middle scroll button and once i get it where i want it to go i can double click outside to deactivate the viewport notice how this became thin again and then i can grab this viewport and enter move and i can put it let's say here so that i can print it out at actually five inches if i was to print this out and measure this it would be five inches by five inches which is one to one the actual scale of this title block okay let's say i want this big shape over here well if this house if i double click in here it fits fits nicely it can almost fit on that sheet it's pretty good this is scaled.01 that's really really tiny okay if i was to put this one to one i won't even see anything i mean this is 50 feet by 100 or 50 feet by 20 feet it was and our page is only 11 by 17 so i need to zoom out zoom out so i can get that on my page again so how do i fit that in here that's the scaling again let's double click out here i'm going to click this on viewport and move it out of the way and i'm going to take this viewport and move it in here and i'm going to make this viewport nice and big they actually intersects the boundaries of my title block and double click in here and i need to know what scale is this what scale is it actually going to fit on my page this 25 by 50 feet border or house what is that point zero two i am clueless to know what that is but what i do know is i've practiced some architecture scale assignments and i can give it a shot and see what happens let's say i start by quarter inch quarter inch was pretty close to what i had because it was point zero point two okay in here if i tried to go a little bit bigger i go to three eighths well that's too big and it doesn't fit on my sheet if i go a little smaller a quarter inch that's kind of perfect i got lucky there uh that it hit me you know the right scale from the first time now you want to make sure that you don't accidentally let's say you double click outside here we know we're going to go down here and this is quarter inch so i'm good to go but if i double click in here and i kind of do this by mistake or zoom out not because i zoomed in and out it doesn't mean it comes back to quarter inch notice here it's not quarter inch anymore okay so it's not you have to go back and put it in at a quarter inch so to protect yourself from doing this by mistake there is a lock button in here if you're inside the viewport so you notice the thick border i can lock that viewport so if i zoom in or out it actually zooms in and out of the entire canvas and it does not affect the scale of the drawing okay and i can double click outside here another good thing about viewports is that if you have any objects in the way you can hide it by basically selecting the viewport and i'm going to basically just move it click and hold here and just drag it over i can make this smaller now to block out any other elements that are around here okay now the question is am i going to see this border when i print the answer is by default yes we need to put this layer on a depth point layer a def point layer is a layer that does not print and if you go up here we only have one layer in here that's it so we're going to talk about layers in another class in modern depth but for now in order for me to get that def point layer in here i need to draw one dimension that is all so we're going to go to dimension right here under home dimension and i'm going to just basically click here and then click here and then click down here okay and then hit escape twice and i'm going to take that dimension select it and then delete it i notice if i go up here def point is here it makes absolutely no sense but that's how the software works now what you have to do is select this border and put it on def point layer okay this means that when you print this border is not going to appear only whatever you have inside here will appear now what i'm going to do is get rid of this viewport get rid of this viewport here and i'm going to keep only one viewport and if you accidentally deleted it or you need to make another one from scratch the command is viewports v-i-e-w if you touch type in view ports it comes up right here and we're using a single you can make several viewports at the same time as you could see here three at a time three verticals i prefer doing one at a time uh click ok and i basically just need to draw a box click and click and that's basically the viewport again this is ready to be my template i just need to go to my model space here and erase all the stuff in here i don't need it and i will do control s for the final save and this is the file that i'm going to use i'm going to open save as for all my cad assignments going forward