When purchasing individual licenses, the installation process is simple: Insert the supplied DVD and follow the prompts. Once installation is complete you can begin to customize and migrate settings, standards, styles, and so on from your old program. We’ll look into this process in more detail later. When sharing licenses across a company-wide network, it’s a little trickier, but nothing too difficult. First, you must decide how you want to store your licenses: all on one server, split up amongst multiple servers, or multiple servers with the same licenses on each server for redundancy.
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AutoCAD MEP 2013
You will then need to obtain a network license file from Autodesk and configure your server(s). Both these processes are thoroughly explained on the Autodesk website, which has very helpful stepby-step instructions on how to do both. Once you have your network license(s) and have you server(s) configured, you can install NLM on each machine. This process is also explained in detail on Autodesk’s website.
Now that AutoCAD is up and running on your machines , your users will want their specific settings, CUI files, plot styles, pen styles, and layer states transferred to their brand new, up-to-date program. Autodesk has a solution for this also: the ‘migration’ tool. This tool allows you to migrate almost anything you need into the new version of AutoCAD MEP you’ve just installed, including customized menus, files, commands, layer states, and even script routines. One benefit of doing this is that you can bring a sense of familiarity to the new program while still having access to the new features the program offers.
If your company has not established standards, now would be a great time to begin. You could begin with layer names, layer colors, plot styles, pen styles, and title blocks. The possibilities are almost endless. One example is writing a command in CAD to automatically add cross-references to a specific layer. If that layer does not exist yet, you can build a command to make the layer and specify the properties of that layer. There are many very powerful tools built into AutoCAD to help your company standardize drawings. Another great feature of AutoCAD MEP is the tool catalogs. These are electronic libraries of standard parts, pieces, components, and equipment that are commonly used in today’s mechanical and electrical industries.
If your company has established CAD plot standards, now is the time to add those plot styles and pen styles. This is easily done by opening the Print submenu in the main AutoCAD toolbar. In that submenu there is an option to “Manage Plot Styles.” Selecting that button will open an Explorer window that will allow you to add any existing pen styles/plot styles.
May 2012
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