How to: Clean up a supplied (architectural) drawing using the wizard
Not version-specific
Stabicad
Context: Why clean up? As an MEP engineer, you often receive drawings. These contain a lot of data that is unnecessary for you (such as architectural dimensions or hatches) and settings that conflict with Stabicad. To make the drawing workable, fast, and 'clean', you use the built-in StabiTOOLS Cleanup wizard.
Have you not yet checked the scale of the drawing? [Link to Article: Check Scale] please do this first.
Getting Started: Using the Cleanup wizard
- Open the supplied drawing (.dwg).
- Open the StabiTOOLS palette, go to the Setup tab, and click the Clean up drawing icon (the brush).
- The interactive wizard opens. Instead of clicking 'Finish' immediately, you can use the Next button to browse through the various configuration screens to tailor the script to your needs.
- Go through the tabs and check the following recommended settings:
- Set plot scale: Set the correct scale based on your previous check (e.g., 1:100).
- Freeze defpoints layer: Check this to hide unnecessary (often invisible) reference points from the architect.
- Convert UCS to WCS: Essential! This resets the coordinate system and the elevation to zero, which prevents issues with 3D modeling.
- Color to ByLayer: This forces the architectural lines to adopt the color of their layer (for example, dark gray/color 8), ensuring your own installation elements stand out clearly in color.
- Purge and Audit: Check these boxes. This is the 'deep clean' for AutoCAD; it removes unused blocks from memory and repairs minor database errors.
- Have you set all the desired options? Then click Finish.
- Stabicad will now run the script automatically. Save the drawing afterwards.