Using Manufactures drawings in LibreCAD Video Lecture | LibreCAD: Become an Expert - Design Softwares

Louis Terry Fox here and tonight I'm
gonna show you how to download free DXF
files that you can work with in Libre
CAD and of course with the more
expensive commercial CAD programs out
there but uh this is very handy when
you're designing something and you're
going to design it around somebody's
product and a lot of companies have
these DXF files and they're available
for your download there is a lot of good
out of this there are some problems also
we'll talk about that okay what I'm
looking at right now is a company called
Budd industries and they make up metal
enclosures that make plastic enclosures
to for electronic components primarily
they're you make the smaller stuff it
looks like they've got some NEMA boxes
which might also work for a heavier duty
electrical work but what I'm most
familiar with is the electronic boxes so
we're going to go to for an example
we're gonna go to their small metal
enclosures which is something that you
would use for electronic box okay and
the first one I'm gonna pull up is this
copycat series and you'll find out
there's a reason why I'm pulling this
one up first you see it describes it it
even has a drawing here to do it but you
know you really if you were designing
something you might like to be able to
draw this out before you actually
actually design something around it and
you have the ability here to look at
these from get these in PDF format
but you can also get it in txf and DXS
what we're going to talk about today all
you have to do is just click on it and I
ask you if you want to open it or if you
want to save it and it turns out I've
already saved this thing we're going to
open it right now I'm going to open it
right into lubricant and there it is
everything we need to know okay there is
some problems that would drive us crazy
but as you can see I just downloaded it
okay first of all everything is an inch
format inch sizes if you go back to the
website and we'll go back to that you'll
see that everything is described in
inches here and in pounds it's all in
and the Imperial measurements I think
are what they're called the ones that we
use here in America well as I go into
the drawing let's go back to the leaper
cad where is it down here okay
first question I got is what's the
current drawing preferences in this
thing and you see that it has grid
turned on but its main drawing units in
millimeters
I go huh and there's really some
interesting stuff of what they've done
here also if you look the paper is
custom and it's 12 inches by 9 I think
so what I'm saying are 12 by 9 but that
would be in metric and that's
interesting
anyhow for the heck of it let's just see
what would happen if we try to print it
we'll go up here and do it
preview and one-to-one shirts I ain't
gonna get it it's not quite that small 1
2 125 1 225 surprised that didn't want
to scale at for us see I think I had one
two five came close and obviously it's
going a little bit past two margins so
we'd have to work with it and the paper
is still there custom paper if i go to i
go to edit current drawing preferences
to make the paper or more normal for us
in america letter okay and now i do a
print preview it scaled it for me and it
made it so it would fit so i could print
this now it would be at a weird scale I
couldn't take measurements off of it but
I could have the drawing okay
anyhow that's interesting that they use
metric even though they're using inches
as what they're using for they're
actually units of the thing they did
that so that way they could draw it to
scale and they could use decimal points
honestly create a skill drawing
automatically by doing that so you
couldn't just take this drawing and then
start trying to draw your knobs and your
meters and all the other things that you
might be wanting to put into this
cabinet by directly drawn if you'd have
to probably take parts and pieces of
and then scale them up to create what
you wanted and that's what we normally
did when we use boxes and professional
actual engineering we'd import these DXF
different kind different kind of box but
we would import these and then actually
work on them and draw the parts of
pieces which we also got DXF files for
those almost everything that you buy you
can find a DXF file for it almost
everything that you buy this a component
that you're going to use for something
okay now as we go back to the website
you see the other option is I just
clicked on that and then a lot of to get
go directly to the so Libre CAD I could
have clicked on it and choose download
and that's what I've done and I've done
that for a whole bunch of their cabinets
let's if we go back to the previous for
a lot of these right in here so I have
them on file right now
and as I did that I saved them in a
directory we're just going to close this
one save them in a directory that I call
bud boxes so we'll look at that
particular one that we just did and okay
there's still a few things as we start
working with this that we're going to
have a few hassles first of all you
notice that the text is very very small
on those dimensions so blissing them in
on a couple of them and it's also comes
in kind of funny and you're going to
have that problem anytime that you
import DXF the text seems to be the
biggest hassle also this percent percent
you that's stuck in this writing here it
says front view what that is is a
command is for AutoCAD and that would
underline that that thing
that's not available to us but let's go
in and we'll do a text modify
okay we can change it this height this
0.5 looks like pretty good - to me and
if I really wanted to underline that I
would just have to draw a line
underneath it I don't see underlined as
a function that's available and
lubricated but I probably wouldn't care
okay now let's look at this right in
here if we go into that first of all
let's just double check and see if it's
if it's going to work for us and I have
already done this and I am going to do
this top number here which is nine point
nine three and we're going to see if
it's one-to-one scale so I will go from
endpoint to endpoint and then I will
move it up a little bit so like I read
it and it's nine point nine three so
yeah it's scale one to one but it's in
millimeters and the real measurements in
inches so hey that's really handy so
let's now delete what I just did and now
we'll work with the actual dimensions
and I'll show you something kind of
interesting here let's go to
it
at an ende geometry we click onto that
dimension and notice what happens it now
moves it up above the line so I can
clean all this up if I want to its own
layer dim which is kind of cool so let's
just say that I wanted to make my
dimensions look a little different
they've set everything to black and
white and we can modify it to yellow
since I have the black screen and now I
can go in turn off everything except the
dimensions now I go into
change properties I'm gonna select
everything that's under mention and I'm
gonna make their lair well their lair
already was dim but I'm gonna make it by
later and now they're all yellow so now
if I turn on everything else I can tell
what's their dimension just by looking
at the top except yeah I can I could
tell this one it's every dimension so
you can modify it make it fit the way
you want it to fit you can take these
pieces and import them into other
drawings if you were wanting to show
your buttons and by the way this is an
isometric type drawing up up here which
is a way of making a 3d drawing on a 2d
paper and you can use these for a lot of
different things so it's very very
helpful and even though you have to work
a little bit with these dimensions we'll
go back and do that again edit geometry
click just accept it and don't do any
changes click accept it don't do any
changes and it moves everything off the
line for me and that's just because I
think it was their style of doing things
and you could also go back go to edit
current drawing preferences dimensions
let's say I wanted to make that text
height vigor so I can make it say 0.25
make it twice as big and now I have
bigger text there
so I can read it from a distance so the
drawings can be modified you can do a
lot a lot of stuff to them as you start
working through these so it's a really
good resource and that's the good news
and then the bad news about hey you have
to work with it a little bit there's a
little bit more bad news
and I'll show you that and I picked the
the best one to show you at first we'll
go ahead and save my modified one since
I didn't really modify much in it and
we'll go to this many boxes for an
example okay when this one comes in as
you look at the dimensions of it we'll
look at those zoom into them
you notice the dimensions are only lake
letters so what they've done is they've
created one drawing to show you how the
how the box works but then you have to
go to this table down here to find the
exact dimensions for the box you want
okay your answer for doing that would be
you copy the the parts that you want
over to another drawing and then you use
the stretch function and stretch it out
to make it the way you want it to make
it to the size of the actual box that
you're going to use and now that way
you'll actually have a scale drawing and
you didn't have to do a whole lot of
work you didn't have to draw the whole
drawing you only have to modify one of
these so that's the fix for it and that
will get the job done for you
and after you've scaled it to your
particular size you'd probably want to
save it as my box or whatever you want
to call it and then you could use the
drawing over and over and over for
different projects so this is a way of
getting getting DXF files for your use
and it helps the vendors and it helps
the people who sell these and it helps
you and it's a nice service that they
have out there now for lots of things
you can find many many many DXF files
out there for whatever you're interested
in go to your do web search for it then
what you do is go to go to the vendors
and see if it's one that you're going to
be buying and then we call them vendors
now the people that sell the stuff I go
to the order websites and then
they have DXF just download the DXF and
you're ready to go and it's a pretty
good way pretty good way to get the job
done
it'll done a whole lot easier than
drawing everything as you can tell they
use many different blocks we haven't
really talked much about blocks just
blocks a lot of times or hassles as I
turn these off I don't see anything turn
it off there I'll see what hbhb did the
whole box on what HB stood for but it
turned off the border on that drawing I
suppose they've got these blocks in here
but I don't know what they do they also
have all these different layers so yeah
you can turn things off and on there and
there's one other one I need to show you
a little something about C they have
some hidden lines you will have to
diddle with the scaling on those hidden
lines sometimes say hidden let's just go
to it before we do that see if we turn
this off yeah okay doesn't look very
hidden to me so we'll go to it and
modify the layer and it says it's a -
lets go to a - small
and that didn't help let's go to one
that will help current drawing
preferences I don't know if we want to
do this on the long run but for change
it to inches now the dash is looking
better and I don't know why that
happened that way any out you see you
can play with the drawing and get it the
way you want it should have made this I
will not be saving this one but I should
have made it my naming convention is
that I call it hacked when I've worked
with it a little bit until I get it but
I want that way I still have the future
future of boxes still have those in the
original format button I've got one and
I'm messed with and let me show you one
other thing say let's go back to zoom oh
okay there is another little problem
here with this if you go to this text
you see that they're all outside the
boxes what you can do to go to text and
then all you do is click on this one and
puts it in middle center and it centers
it up problem is you have to do it for
each and every one of those no no quick
way of being able to do it
but you can modify your text that way so
you get it right in the middle all the
boxes still beat the heck out of typing
all that's
but it is a little bit of a hassle there
all right I think I've showed you just
about everything I know about this I
must say this just for the heck of it
change text to different color let's
change it to green I like green text and
it all changed
so everything was by layer sometimes
some things are not by layer
dim has changed that to you so you see
the good the bad and the ugly on dealing
with these things so a whole lot you can
do it's a lot more good than air as bad
and ugly and it does work with Libra
Kennedy appreciate it you rustling
hopefully you got something out of this
appreciate you listening