The GreenTree Drafting Coach

There is plenty of patent and trademark drafting to go around. So we're sharing our knowledge & experiences with our fellow drafters. Over time you will find techniques and procedures that will improve your drawings. We will even discuss business practices for the drafting company. The links on this page are expanding often so come back again soon and see if you can learn anything from us - for free!

Your On-Line Coach is eager to hear from you. If you have tips, questions or comments, please email me. If you are a coach, too, then send your drafting tips and I'll post them with your byline.

Basic Parameters

Since we are generally limiting our drafting focus to patents and trademarks, let's start by reviewing the basic parameters required by the USPTO for patent drawings. You might want to bookmark that page or print it out for future reference. Be sure to check on it every few months to see if it has changed. The rules DO change occasionally. This applies likewise to trademark drawings.

Given these parameters, computer aided drafters should configure their systems to support effortless compliance. In the context of AutoCAD, this configuration can mean several things:

  • Prototype drawings,
  • Printer configurations,
  • Menu customization,
  • AutoLisp support functions.

    Let's discuss these...
    First of all, it must be noted that AutoCAD is so versatile that there are usually several ways to accomplish the task at hand. So the procedures that I discuss should be regarded as one way of doing things and not necessarily the only or the best way.

    Prototype Drawings
    A prototype drawing is a drawing file used as a template or 'point of departure' to preclude having to set up your drawing environment every time you begin a new drawing. Specialized drawing layers, fonts, snaps, grids, colors, etc. are saved in your prototype and used repeatedly whenever a new drawing is begun. You can have multiple prototype drawings to chose from at the beginning of a new drawing. In our case this means that we can have a prototype drawing for each sheet size and sheet orientation. For example, I have a prototype for A4 portrait drawings and another prototype for A4 landscape drawings.

    For my prototype drawings, I chose to employ paper space and model space to make things easier for me. In paper space I have a viewport established which is the exact size of the required site required by the patent office. I also have a rectangle offset to the interior of the viewport 1/8" as a safefty margin to cover the variations in paper sizes and printer performance that seem to inevitably occur. By keeping my drawing work within this smaller rectangle I am safe from exceeding the allowed site. I have other reasons to set up my paper space like this which I will discuss later. The actual drawing work will take place in model space. To facilitate the full use of the monitor screen, I have a separate viewport with the same proportions as my screen. To begin drawing I zoom in to this latter viewport so that it fills the screen and then switch to model space.

    My layering is set up solely with line weights in mind. All entity colors are set to change according to layer. I can tell by the color of an entity what the output line weight will be. More on this later.

    I use several preset text styles in my prototypes. I use one for figure numbering, one for item indexing, one for PCT sheet numbering and one for Greek characters. These text styles are preset with the actual height that I want them to appear. After drawing in model space and positioning the figure(s) within the site viewport, I ALWAYS switch to paper space to enter any text. This means that ALL my drawings are consistent in their text, since all printing is done from paper space with a 1 to 1 scaling ratio. I never have to worry about undersized text.

    Coming Next... Printer configuration.

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