Creating a Master Drawing Frame

From Manipedia

I was working on a project earlier in the year where the client requested that all consultants use a standard drawing frame, the frame was created in CAD by another consultant and at first I thought it was going to be impossible to create in Manifold due to the inability to create curved objects in the Layout and I would have to export the Map to an image file and place it in a CAD drawing.

I started thinking how AutoCAD uses paperspace to allow the user to create drawing frames and how paperspace is just another hidden model space view (similar to a Map component in Manifold). I hit on the idea of creating my drawing frame/template in a Map component, essentially creating a master template much like a master slide in PowerPoint. I’ve attached an example Map file showing an 11x17 drawing template.

I created a Map component containing a Drawing with the curved drawing frame linework, imported from CAD and formatted in Manifold, the drawing was set to Orthographic/metres, which meant I would need to set the Map’s view scale to 1:1000 for it to come out at the correct size in my Layout (yes I know it should have been millimeters and 1:1, but I was in a hurry!). I also added appropriate text, logo to the Map – any items that I wanted to appear in all Layouts.

Once I’ve created the map template I then place that in the Layout for the Map for the proposed figure and set it to the 1:1000 view. I add any text that is pertinent to the Map figure i.e. scale, drawing name, drawing number.

The advantages of creating the master template are that I can now make changes to the drawing frame and text and as that master template appears in all Layouts they are updated at the same time.

Media:MasterTemplate.map Source: [1]