Drawing standards
CADABRA reads your conventions out of drawings you have already released. There is no form of settings to fill in.
Who can set one up, and where
Drawing standards need Drawings access, which is Enterprise today. Without it the upload returns "Your plan does not include Drawing Standards."
A standard belongs to the person who created it, not to the organization. Each member of an organization sets up their own, and they are not shared across the team.
- Dashboard:
/dashboard/standards. Create, name and switch standards, add files, pick the sheet template, download or delete a file. - Task pane: the person icon at the top right of the panel opens Settings, and Drawing standards sits between Modeling standards and Updates. Manage drawing standards opens the same lists.
The row for the standard drawings are generated from is marked Active. Any other standard is switched to with Use this standard.
The limits
- 5 standards per person. A sixth is refused: "You can keep 5 drawing standards. Delete one to add another."
- 10 reference drawings per standard. The eleventh is refused: "A standard can hold 10 reference drawings. Delete one to add another." Source models, templates and sheet formats do not count against it.
- 25 MB a file. Larger files are rejected before they upload.
- 2 to 60 characters for the name. Outside that the dashboard says "Give the standard a name between 2 and 60 characters."
The 13 file types, and what each one is for
The drop zone reads "Drop files here, or choose files", and under it, "SOLIDWORKS, DWG, DXF, STEP and PDF, up to 25MB".
| Stored as | Extensions | What happens to it |
|---|---|---|
| Reference drawing | .slddrw .pdf .dwg .dxf | Counts against the limit of 10. Only the first two are read. |
| Source model | .sldprt .sldasm .step .stp | The geometry a reference drawing was made from. Nothing is learned from it on its own. |
| Drawing template | .drwdot | Selectable as the sheet template for that standard. |
| Sheet format | .slddrt | The border and title block a template draws. |
| Sheet capture | .png .jpg .jpeg | Written by the panel when it captures a sheet. Stored, and hidden from the file table. |
What learning reads out of a drawing
- Title block fields, split into the ones filled from model properties, the ones that carry a date, and the ones it could not resolve either way.
- Projection, first angle or third angle.
- Units and the dimension policy that goes with them.
- Typography, the text height and typeface used when dimensions and notes are written.
- Notes, separated into the standing notes that belong on every drawing and the excluded ones that were specific to that part.
- Scales actually observed, each with the part type it appeared on and how many references it came from, plus the scale policy inferred from them.
- Layout policy, view roles, bend notes and feature callout rules, held per part type.
A reference that could not be read is kept in the standard as a failed reference with the reason, rather than dropped silently. The panel counts what worked: "Learned from 4 drawings", or "Not learned from a drawing yet".
What the Standards page tells you
A standard shows three counts, Drawings, Models and Templates, and, once a learning run has finished, a line reading "Last learned" with the date.
A badge appears next to the standard name only when something needs your attention. It is one of three values, and each one comes with the sentence that says what to do:
- Learning failed. "The last run could not read your files. Check they open in SOLIDWORKS, or add a different drawing."
- Needs review. "Conflicting conventions in your files. Removing older or one-off drawings usually resolves it."
- Updating. "Your files changed since the last run. The next drawing picks up the new style."
There is no readiness score, no percentage and no "Ready" state.
Picking the sheet template
Each standard carries one active template, chosen under Sheet template. There are three ways to fill that slot:
- Learned from your references. The template is derived from what the references showed. Until the first learning run completes, this option is annotated "CADABRA default until the first run completes".
- CADABRA default. The template that ships with CADABRA, regardless of what was learned.
- An uploaded
.drwdot. Every drawing template you have uploaded to that standard appears as its own option, and the one in use is tagged Active template in the file list.
The switch is saved immediately and re-read. If it did not take, the page says so rather than leaving a selected radio that means nothing.
With no standard of your own
Drawings Mode still generates. It falls back to ASME defaults, described in the panel as third-angle projection with the CADABRA template. Nothing is invented from your files, and the drawing QA notes the gap as "no learned projection convention".
Add one released drawing and the next generated sheet uses what it read.
More than one standard
Issuing to two conventions, for example a metric house standard and a customer standard, means two standards, each named. One is active at a time and generation always uses the active one, so switching is a setup step rather than something you say in a prompt.
Creating one confirms with the name you typed, followed by "created. Switch to it when you are ready."
What this feeds
Drawings Mode reads the active standard on every run, and drawing to CAD uses the same upload path when you attach a PDF of a print. Geometry conventions are a separate field, modeling rules.