presentation graphics in autocad 2004 gd32-3l and gd43-4l · presentation graphics in autocad 2004...

Presentation Graphics In AutoCAD 2004 GD32-3L and GD32-4L

December 2-5, 2003 ◊ MGM Grand Hotel Las Vegas

Presentation Graphics In AutoCAD 2004

GD32-3L and GD43-4L Speaker : Christie Landry, Autodesk, Inc.

Assistant s: Matt Murphy and Traci Van Patten for GD32-3L

Assistants : Eddie Perlberg and Kevin Durham for GD43-4L

Code Class Description

This course will cover some basic to intermediate techniques to use AutoCAD 2004 to produce presentation drawings. We will walk through the steps of creating a presentation board that consists of a color floor plan, a colored elevation, details, and images. We will use new features such as the new tool palettes, the addition of pantone colors and gradient fills, and old favorites like raster images to produce our presentation board.

Why would you want to use AutoCAD as a presentation tool?

What has changed in the software to make this possible?

256 AutoCAD colors we love to hate them.

Colored Floor Plan.

The New Tool Palette as a tool for presentation.

Giving our Elevations POP.

Enhancing your Details.

Putting our Presentation Boards Together.

Image Options

About the Speaker: Christie is an AEC Applications Engineer with Autodesk. Christie holds a B.F.A. in Architectural Design from the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. Christie worked as a designer and job captain for various design firms in the Boston Area. She was also a CAD manager for a large architecture firm supporting approximately 100 users. Christie is very excited to bring her experiences with implementation and support as a CAD Manager to the Autodesk Building Solutions Division team.

[email protected]


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Why would you want to use AutoCAD as a presentation tool? Architects and Designers have been using various tools to produce their presentation deliverables. Many have used such analog tools such as markers, colored pencils, watercolors, cut paper, sticky back, the list is endless. There are just as many programs people use to generate the same type of graphic deliverables as there are analog. So why would you want to use AutoCAD to produce these graphics? Well before we answer that question let’s first discuss the process we take in order to get our vector based drawing files out of our CAD application into another application for applying color and why we do that. In order for a file to be imported, placed or inserted into another application for color application the file must printed then scanned, printed to a file, or exported. In all of those cases the results may vary as to how well that file is translated into the other application. Once a desired translation is found someone must now change their way of thinking and use a different tool to produce their graphics for presentation. So why would we want to use AutoCAD to produce these graphics, because we are not going to have to fuss with results that are not desirable and we do not have to learn another piece of software to get the job done. AutoCAD 2004 has the functionality we need to produce those pastel type floor plans and gradient fills to generate those artistic graphics for presentation.

What has changed in the software to make this possible? Once upon a time AutoCAD was only good at creating lines, arcs, and circles. Those days are now long gone with the addition of the RAL and Pantone Books, gradient fills, and the benefit of being able to store these colors on a centrally located tool palette is what has change to say the very least. These are just what we are going to cover in our short time together, but there are many other changes in the software making it possible to preview our colors before a print preview or a plotted drawing or even work faster because the file sizes are not impossible to work with.

Colored Drawings and the 256 AutoCAD colors we love to hate them.


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Simply stated, they’re ugly, but we’ve convinced ourselves that there is a place for them. (Who am I kidding?) They are a great way to differentiate our lines in construction documentation, but as colors I want to be on a presentation drawing they definitely are not!

Other Options

Notice the color selection.

AutoCAD 2004 has licensed all the Pantone and RAL Color Books, thus giving the designer endless color choices. I guess this could be good and bad.

Creating Colored Floor PLans

Open Floor Plan.dwg


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AutoCAD 2004 has several ways in which we can start colorizing the floor plan. If you open the Layer dialogue box you notice that several graphic layers have been created starting with the letter “G”. In addition you will also notice that the colors that are designated for those layers are Pantone colors. One way we can create our color floor plans is to use the basic Solid Hatch command assigning the correct room use to the correct layer.

Tool Palettes

In AutoCAD 2004 and the addition of the Tool Palettes we can now store our most commonly used Hatches and assign them to the proper layer. Right click on your Tool Palettes and select “New Tool Palette”. After you create a custom Palette you can copy and paste a hatch pattern from one of the sample palettes. Right click on the hatch and go into the properties.


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In the Tool Properties dialogue box you can Name the Hatch, select the type of hatch, in this case it will be a solid. Under the General drop down you can select a Color and a Layer for the hatch to automatically go on. In this example the Color is ByLayer in order for it to defer to what color the layer is. This will enable people to work both by using the Palettes and using the Hatch command.

In order to select a hatch pattern on the Tool Palette just select the hatch drag and drop it into your drawing where you want the hatch to fill. Finish coloring the floor plan using either the basic hatch command or the hatches on the Tool Palette.

This technique of creating Tool Palettes for our standard colors will also be used when creating our colored elevations and details, in addition to other tools.

Giving our Elevations POP

Open South-Elev.dwg

Gradient Fills

We’ll begin colorizing our elevation by giving it a background. You’ll notice that the elevation has a ground plan and a rectangle added for our sky. In addition to the Pantone and RAL Color Books, AutoCAD 2004 has also added the ability to do Gradient hatch patterns.

Type H. The Boundary Hatch and Fill Dialogue box appears. There are three tabs to choose from; Hatch, Advanced, and Gradient. Select Gradient and notice our options. We can select a One color or Two color gradient. Select the Two color. To the right of the colors you can select the three dot button and the Select Color dialogue box appears and you can now select from your Color Books Tab.


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Once you have selected your gradient colors you have a choice of how you would like your gradient to display and whether you want it centered, or at an angle. At this point you can select Pick Points and select the area inside of the rectangle above the elevation. Notice how this had made our elevation POP.

Now another way a gradient fill can enhance your presentation is the ability for the gradient to make something appear to be round. We can use the gradient fill to help the curtain wall to appear curved in our elevation. In addition to the curtain wall all of the concrete columns also have that round shape to them.

The Tool Palettes have the solid hatch fills that were used on the elevation.


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Enhancing your Details

In addition to making your elevations POP the gradient tool can also enhance details with colored vignettes.

You can use one or two color gradients with your solid hatches. You can adjust the gradient pattern, and choose from linear, spherical, or parabolic transitions for your gradient. Gradients improve the quality of your presentation drawings.

Presentation Boards

Open Board-Plan.dwg

This file has three layout tabs set up. One tab is a blank. One is for a landscaped presentation board and the other is set up for a portrait presentation board. We will start with the Landscape Layout Tab.

Start Finish


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Raster Images

Raster Images will round out our presentation boards. They will allow us to place graphics, scanned material samples, and inspirational images for our design. We will be inserting four raster images onto this sheet.

To insert raster images go to Insert>Raster (or type IM). The Image Manager Dialogue box is opened. This dialogue box looks much like our Xref dialogue box.

Select Attach.. and select the cubicle 2.tif and place it down on the lower right hand corner of the elevation. Scale the image and enter. Next Attach… raster image cubicle 1.tif then place that image up on the upper left hand corner of the elevation. Attach…

two additional images carpet.tif and terrazzo.tif and place them on your sheet.

The order objects are created, inserted, or copied determines what order they will display.

Display Order

Overlapping objects such as raster images, text, wide polylines, lines, and solid-filled polygons are usually displayed in the order they are created: newly created objects are displayed in front of existing objects. When you change the display order of your objects (Tools>Display Order), the new order is saved with your drawing.

The display order is going to be essential to assembling our presentation boards. This functionality gives us the ability to play with the ordering of our objects and images.

Select the Portrait Layout Tab.

Start Finish


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On this sheet we are going to Attach… four sample materials that relate to the elevation materials. Brick.jpg, Alum.tif, Alum2.tif and ConGry.tif. Once placed on the board, we can arrange these images once on the sheet. The images have boundaries. In order to move, scale or modify these images in any way you much select the boundary. Once you have placed the images in their appropriate locations you may want to play with which images is in the front.

Under Tools>Display Order you can see the options we have for how we want our objects to display. The universal two are Bring to Front and Send to Back. However depending on how many images you have may make it necessary to bring an object behind another and not behind everything and you have to use Bring Above Object and Send Under Object to take care of that.

Select one of your materials you brought in and go Tools>Display Order>Send Under Object. You are now prompted to select the object to which your image will be sent behind.

So what options to you have for your images?

Image Frame

Once you’ve arrange your objects and want to continue working and want to lock the images in place instead of locking the layer you have another options. That option is turning off the frames of the images. By typing imageframe you are prompted to have the frames turned off or on. When you turn off the frames you can no longer select the frames or manipulate them in any way. You cannot turn just one


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frame off it is an all or nothing deal. In addition to the imageframe option you have the ability to adjust, change the quality and transparency of your image inside of AutoCAD.

Image Adjust

Brightness - Controls the brightness, and indirectly the contrast, of the image. Values range from 0 through 100. The greater the value, the brighter the image and the more pixels that become white when you increase contrast. Moving the slider to the left decreases the value; moving the slider to the right increases the value.

Contrast - Controls the contrast, and indirectly the fading effect, of the image. Values range from 0

through 100. The greater the value, the more each pixel is forced to its primary or secondary color. Moving the slider to the left decreases the value; moving the slider to the right increases the value.

Fade - Controls the fading effect of the image. Values range from 0 through 100. The greater the value, the more the image blends with the current background color. A value of 100 blends the image completely into the background. Changing the screen background color causes the image to fade to the new color. In plotting, the background color for fade is white. Moving the slider to the left decreases the value; moving the slider to the right increases the value.

Image Preview - Displays a preview of the selected image. The preview image updates dynamically to reflect changes to the brightness, contrast, and fade settings.

Reset - Resets values for brightness, contrast, and fade to default settings (50, 50, and 0, respectively).

Image Quality

High - Produces a high-quality display of the image. AutoCAD displays the image more slowly than a draft-quality image.

Draft - Produces a lower-quality display of the image. AutoCAD displays the image more quickly than a high-quality image.

Image Transparency

Several image file formats support images with transparent pixels. When image transparency is set to on, AutoCAD recognizes those transparent pixels and allows graphics in the drawing area to "show through" those pixels. Transparent images can be gray-scale or color.

presentation graphics in autocad 2004 gd32-3l and gd43-4l · presentation graphics in autocad 2004...

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