1. Tutorial: Using Powerpoint as an Engineering Drafting Package Dave Quesnel ME 104Q Fall 2004

2. Start your Experience by drawing a few simple shapes. Just play around You can’t hurt anything. You can’t hurt anything…really!.

3. Customize to make life easier PowerPoint is customizable using the tools/customize menu above. Go to the View menu and click on Rules and Guides to set up for precision drafting. Go through this tutorial more than once Set the Percent size of the display to make the paper that represents 8.5 X 11 be as large as possible on your screen. 66% for example. Put the “make font 1 point bigger” and “1 point smaller” on the toolbar along with the subscript and superscript tools. I also recommend putting the group, regroup, ungroup, Move to back, front and move toward back and toward front on the drawing bar. Also, place the connect the dots line, the spline line and the squiggle line on the toolbar along with some nudges, snap to grid, edit points, curve, and anything else you use a lot.

4. Screen Shots ---Use the Prt Scr (Print Screen). Shift PRTSCR….CNTRL PRTSCR give the entire screen and ALT PRTSCR copies just the active window. They copy the info to a clipboard file which can then be pasted into other documents such as WORD and POWERPOINT documents. You can resize the screen shots. This is a screen shot showing how my screen is set up for drafting in powerpoint…I have customized the upper and lower toolbars. This screen shot used “ALT-Prt Scr” to copy only the active window to the clipboard so you don’t see the rest of my screen. I put this note on top because the screen shot is “just a picture”..Use control V to paste or use Paste Special from Edit menu to select which type of bitmap you are generating.

5. Explore how each command works and by all means try right clicking on items when they are selected, try holding down the shift, control, alt, etc to see what they do. Use cut copy and paste via the control x,v, and c commands…these are much faster than using the pull down menus. Try out the drawing tools, the snap to grid etc. With a little Practice and the realization that you can create items already drawn in once document and cut and paste them into others, You can start creating drawings at high speed. Magnify your drawing to get the fine details correct. That is to make sure ends of lines attach correctly. Use the snap to features to get tangency and precision placement. Use construction lines to have references for snapping objects, then erase them when finished.

6. Every drawing or powerpoint slide needs a title. This gives it a name. The no name choice works but then the drawing has no name. When you hit “New Slide”, you are offered a choice of types. Choose one that has a title on it. Enter the title in the title box. Then shrink it to whatever size you need. Shrinking and growing text is done often so modify (ie customize) the toolbar by adding the A^ A’ button to the format toolbar. It is also helpful to have superscript and subscript on the format toolbar. If you want to copy a slide….go to the slide sorter view and copy and paste the entire slide. This has a different effect than copying the entire slide and pasting to a blank slide…The latter will cause round off errors in the values of the key points that locate the objects you have drawn and make your drawing less precise. SOOOOO….Copy the template in the slide view (4 little slides at lower left)

7. Do this tutorial by saving a copy before you start. Then, if you trash the copy….no problem. There will be an opportunity to learn while you draw some practice objects that use the various tools. Begin by checking out the views under the view menu. These can also be accessed by the buttons at the lower left. There is the slide view, the outline view, and the slide sorter view. Copying of the drafting template with the ME104Q drafting form is best done in the slide sorter view where you can clone copies as needed. This avoids shifts of various pieces that happen with cut and paste methods. Slide sorter is the 4 little boxes down there.

8. The next slide is the template. It was copied by opening this presentation and the template, switching both to slide sorter view, then cutting and pasting the template to this presentation. Switch to slide sorter view by both methods….view menu and the 4 squares at the lower left of the screen and back to the slide view and also try the outline view. Notice what is shown. Now try cloning the template and placing a new template just after the first slide in this tutorial….Then delete the new one. Switch back to slide view on the slide following this one. When you begin drawing for ME104Q….use the template provided on the ME104Q website rather than this Sample

9. X-XXX-0001 Revision with Reason No.DateInitials TEMPLATE for ‘A Size’ Drawing (nominal 8” x 10” when printed at 100%) Save often to protect your work. Erase this label before you start Remember to “Save AS” to minimize file size, once you complete the drawing. Slide title for web index is the Drawing No. Project# -TEAM # -Sequential Number Drawing No. Company Name Descriptive Part Name Designed byChecked by Engineer Drawing Type Dummy Descriptive Part Name Date of This RevisionDrawing Issue Date Drawing SizeScale as DrawnScale as Printed Engineer Phone # Parts List QuantitySupplier Quantity Required ### AssemblyA 8 x10 1:1, 1in=1in B. A. Drafter M. E. Engineer Xxx-yyyy DD/MM/04 1:1 =100% NOTES: Material: Alloy Specification with condition ADD OR CHANGE NOTES HERE Break sharp edges and corners All dimensions in inch units. Unless otherwise indicated, use default tolerances below x.x +/- 0.050” x.xx +/- 0.010” x.xxx +/- 0.005” Angles +/- 2 o

10. Now is time to start drawing I’ll draw on the left…. You draw on the right….. Use the tools below from the draw menu to do the following Draw a line Select the line tool by clicking on it Try changing the thickness, the arrow style, and the line type. Change the line color to blue. Does it look something like this? Hold your mouse over the tool to see what it is called.

11. More Artwork Draw a circle and a rectangle See what happens when you hold down the shift while drawing them. See how it forces the rectangle to be square and the circle to be round -----this makes precision drawing easier

12. Why are they green? PowerPoint starts with opaque green (or whatever default you have chosen…I recommend you keep the default setting of powerpoint so you do not get confused when working on different systems.) You can change the color of the drawn objects later... to clear for example for line drawing or any other color. I suggest you leave them green until you need to change a bunch. Then use the arrow to pull a box around lots of stuff and select them so you can change the fill color all at once. Change the color of these objects to blue, then red. Experiment with line color different than fill color. Note: a white box cannot cover up or be used to pevent something from showing because most printers produce a faint line 1 pixel wide that does not show on the screen.

13. Lets try some rotates Draw a rectange of a specific size. This is for scale drawing To do this, turn on the guides. (see view menu, guides and rulers) should be on. Click on the guide. Notice how a number appears this is the distance in inches from the origin. If you press shift before you click on the guide, the number is the distance from where you clicked on the guide. Thus you can easily use the guides to draw dimensioned objects by starting with a reference line, and, placing the guide at a desired distance. And then drawing the object from one to the other. Press “ALT” to temporarily release the snap to grid feature to allow every number. If you have difficulty getting a specific dimension, raise the size of the display in the upper size box.

14. So Draw a rectangle that is 3 by 1 First, draw a reference line up and down and left and right (these come in the drafting template). Use shift to lock it to the horizontal and vertical.) Place guides on the line. Then shift click the guide to get into measuring mode. Drop the guides at the right spots. Now use the rectangle tool to drop a rectangle onto the reference marks. Change color, line style etc. Usually I use the smallest line style while drawing, then change them at the end to reflect the different point thicknesses I want. Reference lines

15. If your system acts weird If a text box opens with the center text feature on and you want left justified as the default, change it to what you want and hit the Draw Menu (lower left of this screen), selecting “Set Autoshape Defaults”. Youcan also use this to make the opening text size different in a text box. Can’t find out how to do it….use the help command (question mark in the call out bubble on top right) If you mess up the customize, do not reinstall the software to fix it. Powerpoint remembers your customization. This is most problematic if you “drop” the customize tool from the tools menu as happened to me once. If so, go to the help and find the keystroke sequence to start customization so you can put it back. Read the help tips. Share with others what you know. Save AS every so often because Powerpoint saves changes which speeds up saves but increases file size.

16. Copy your precise dimension rectangle to this page, twice Notice how it copies to the same location of the page and the second copy is offset. Select the second copy and hit the rotate button….the curved arrow with the green dot at center in the Draw Menu By clicking on the green “handles” you can rotate. Experiment with the shift while rotating and note how it locks in to certain useful angular positions.

17. Now try building a frame. Make a precsision 1/2 “ X 3 rectangle, copy it twice, rotate one then shorten it to 1/2 by 1.5. Copy it. Now slide them around to make this figure. Use the guides and reference line to get dimensions correct. Use the CNTROL “C”,”X” and “V” for copy, cut, paste Notice how I used guides to Place the frames exactly 0.5 from each end.

18. Grouping Copy your frame to this page. Then group it using the command in the Draw pull down (it really goes up) menu. Use a selection box around to select all the pieces. Now rotate the entire object to 45 degrees using the shift. Now put it back. Notice any waves in the inclined lines are recovered on returning to original orientation.

19. Check out the items in the Draw Pull down menu Highlight all these boxes, then try align and distribute (on Draw Menu) Try center, right, left aligns. See how it makes it easy to set stuff up. Note the check box for “relative to slide, try only one or two highlighted Move them around manually and experiment with the alignments

20. Customize as needed Any commands you really like, you can add to the draw toolbar. Just right click the draw toolbar, and move the commands to where you want them. For example if you often use the auto shapes, move it to the tool bar. If you often use the group, move it to the tool bar. You can have it your way, just like you want it. I have gotten used to the standard set up….this is what appears on most peoples screens when you start. It is handy to move some when using as a drafting system. Group, Ungroup, Regroup and the standard Autoshapes are really useful.

21. Making really small stuff. There is a limit to how small you can make circles, for example But, here is a way around the limit. Draw a circle 4 times larger than you want, for example, and place it in a 4 by 4 inch box. Group them, then shrink the group. To 1/4 size. Instant 1/4 size circles that are to scale. Here is the 4 inch X 4 Inch square I shrank…Magnify to check out the circles. The little circle at left is the smallest that can be drawn without this shrink method. Now you can ungroup and move the little circle, copy etc. This scaled shrinking is very useful. Here they are moved and changed to finer line style

22. Snapping to Things. Try snapping a line tangent to a circle. Go into the Draw and choose snap to shape, then draw a line and swing it. Note how it tends to stick to the circle. If it tends to click right by, it has reverted to snap to grid, so try again.

23. Order and Nudge These are pretty self explanatory…Just give them a try with some objects. Order tells which is stacked on top, bottom, middle. Nudge just moves them a pixel or two. Hold down Alt to use the mouse for fine positioning. This toggles the snap to grid state temporarily. I have found that after an initial learning period, the nudge commands are not all that useful. That is why they are not on my customized set up.

24. X-XXX-0001 Revision with Reason No.DateInitials TEMPLATE for ‘A Size’ Drawing (nominal 8” x 10” when printed at 100%) Save often to protect your work. Erase this label before you start Remember to “Save AS” to minimize file size, once you complete the drawing. Slide title for web index is the Drawing No. Project# -TEAM # -Sequential Number Drawing No. Company Name Descriptive Part Name Designed byChecked by Engineer Drawing Type Dummy Descriptive Part Name Date of This RevisionDrawing Issue Date Drawing SizeScale as DrawnScale as Printed Engineer Phone # Parts List QuantitySupplier Quantity Required ### AssemblyA 8 x10 1:1, 1in=1in B. A. Drafter M. E. Engineer Xxx-yyyy DD/MM/04 1:1 =100% NOTES: Material: Alloy Specification with condition ADD OR CHANGE NOTES HERE Break sharp edges and corners All dimensions in inch units. Unless otherwise indicated, use default tolerances below x.x +/- 0.050” x.xx +/- 0.010” x.xxx +/- 0.005” Angles +/- 2 o Here is a template to practice within this tutorial. Feel free to explore all the commands Keep in mind that you will print most stuff in black and white so that the colors in the TITLE BLOCK here are just to make it easy to read and modify If you see something…you can draw it…curved arrow..use spline and add the arrow.

25. You can also ungroup…make some changes…and regroup. Once you have some stuff drawn…you can copy your own stuff and use it in other drawings You can even set up a drawing that has symbols and commonly used stuff just to be available for “cut and paste”…you can draw fastners carefully once, then cut and paste and resize Check out the format object command This one lets you make precision dimensions and rotations. It is right here on my screen and also on the right click of an object

26. Try some 3 D stuff Be sure the autofill (with or without semi-tranparent) is on to a color and choose the two D object. If your defaults are set correctly, then you should see this when your draw a two Dimensional rectangle And these when you apply 3D Use the rotate tool to see the shading effects. Try 3D shading to help enchance effect

27. Try doubleclicking the line symbol…the line tool stays turned on until you change it…really speeds things up Feel free to use construction lines for perspective or for lining things up Pulldown the View menu…pick guides command (see the help)…lets you make measurements

28. Most 3D is more effectively done by just using 2D drawing to show what you want. Start with some standard construction lines and go from there. Happy Drawing… We will do more on projections later….. Engineering ART used to be only pencils and Watercolors Now it can be PowerPoint…it can be impressive. The point of engineering art is to represent 3D concepts on 2D media for effective communication