Drawing Templates Difference Between Autocad

[Kuwar.DALAL]

Hello all, thanks for your reply. I was wondering if there is a difference in Autocad Electrical Templates and regular AutoCad drawing templates? Can they be interchanged and used with one another, what could be the possible pitfalls of doing something like that?

[jseefdrumr · Accepted solution]

There's not any technical difference, and you can theoretically use either type of template in either type of software. BUT:

ACADE manages a lot of data behind the scenes, and some of that is tied in to invisible blocks that reside inside your drawings - and, if they are set up that way, in the templates used for ACADE. So, if you used a template that held one of these invisible blocks in vanilla ACAD, what would happen? Nothing. It basically wouldn't know what to do with that block and would ignore it.

But going the other way, something happens. If you try to add ACADE symbols or wires or most other electrical things to a drawing that doesn't have the needed invisible block, you'll be prompted to add it before you can continue.

If you are in a situation where you're using both types of software but want them to share a template file, I'd create electrical templates and use those in vanilla applications, instead of the other way around. Vanilla won't care about Electrical's hidden data management blocks, but Electrical will throw up that warning about the missing block every time you start a fresh drawing that doesn't already have it.

[Kuwar.DALAL]

Thank you much. This makes a lot of sense!