Draft/Isodraft to Drawing Editor Interface

An Draft drawing Sheet, or an Isodraft isometric, is transferred to AutoDRAFT via a DXF-format file. Where AutoDRAFT/AutoCAD and the AVEVA software are running on separate hardware you must create the DXF file and manually transfer it from the AVEVA platform to the AutoDRAFT platform. Where AVEVA and AutoDRAFT share the same platform, entering the Drawing Editor will cause the translation from AVEVA format to DXF format, and the transfer of the file to AutoDRAFT, to take place automatically.

The Drawing Editor drawing file is an AutoCAD drawing file with a set of AutoCAD layers dedicated to drawing information transferred from Draft/Isodraft (its style table will contain linestyle definitions generated by Draft/Isodraft).

AutoCAD entities should be added to a drawing on layers other than those allocated to Draft. If the Draft part of the drawing is updated by overwriting it with a new drawing file imported from Draft, none of the entities on the user-allocated (that means, AutoCAD) layers will be lost.

The Drawing Editor can be used to change Draft entities displayed in AutoCAD (the Drawing Editor, of course, does not ‘know’ about the Draft database hierarchy), but these changes will be lost when the Draft part of the AutoCAD drawing is next updated from the Draft picture.

AutoDRAFT can only be used to create new drawings, or open existing ones, with Isodraft.

Note:
Draft Layers referred to in this manual should not be confused with LAYE (layer) database elements in Draft. Draft layers are AutoCAD layers that have been allocated to drawing data generated by Draft. AutoCAD layers are described in the AutoCAD Reference Manual.

See for an illustration of the use of AutoDRAFT layers.

Note:
It is possible, within the Drawing Editor, to map the Draft layers onto user-defined AutoCAD layers. See Layer Mapping.