Drawings & Dimensions

Create a production drawing by chat — sheets, views, dimensions, notes, balloons, BOM tables, GD&T, weld and surface-finish symbols — then check the layout and export it. All sheet positions and sizes are millimetres.

The one-prompt drawing

The fastest way in. Open the part you want drawn, then ask for the whole sheet at once.

Create an A3 drawing of this part with front, top and right views and dimension every feature

CoPilot creates a drawing document, adds an A3 sheet, inserts the three views and dimensions the part. Views are auto-laid-out: the first view is centred on the sheet and later views are arranged around it from their bounding boxes and the sheet size, so they neither overlap nor run off the edge. You only need to give a position when you want a view somewhere specific.

Put the isometric view in the top right corner of the sheet

Sheets

Sheet sizes A0, A1, A2, A3, A4, Letter and Legal are supported by name, or you can give a custom width and height in millimetres.

Add a second A2 sheet at 1:2 scale

Change sheet 1 to A1 and set the sheet scale to 1:5

Create a custom 500 x 350 mm sheet

To see what a drawing already contains:

List the sheets in this drawing with their size, scale and how many views each has

Views

Available view types are Front, Back, Left, Right, Top, Bottom, Isometric, Section, Detail and Projected. Section, detail and projected views are children of a parent view, so name the parent when you ask for one.

Add front, top, right and isometric views of the active part

Add a section view through the centre of the front view

Add a detail view of the bolt circle in the top view at 2:1

Existing views can be moved, rescaled, retargeted or removed:

Move the isometric view 60 mm to the right

Set the front view scale to 1:2

Delete the back view

The scale a view actually achieves is read back after the change, so if the CAD system rounded or overrode your request, the reply tells you the real value rather than the one you asked for.

Reference planes showing in views? Ask CoPilot to hide them — “hide the datum planes”. Hidden reference planes stop appearing in drawing views, which is usually what you want before printing.

Dimensions

Dimension types are Linear, Horizontal, Vertical, Radial, Diameter and Angular. You can ask for a whole view to be dimensioned, or for one specific measurement.

Dimension the overall width and height in the front view

Add a diameter dimension to the large hole in the top view

Dimension the distance between the two hole centres in the top view

Add an angular dimension between the two angled edges in the front view

Behind the scenes CoPilot first queries the visible edges in the view — their type, geometry and sheet coordinates — and then attaches the dimension to the right ones. You do not have to do anything for that; it matters only because it is why naming the view in your prompt helps so much.

Every dimension is checked against its expected value

When CoPilot knows what a dimension should read — 60 mm for the 60 mm width — it passes that expected value with the dimension, then reads the created dimension back from the sheet and compares. A dimension whose value does not match is deleted and reported, rather than left on the drawing looking authoritative.

The practical consequence: if a dimension you asked for is simply missing, it was almost certainly removed by this gate. Ask again, and if it keeps failing, name the two entities more precisely.

The width dimension is missing from the front view. Add it again — it should read 100 mm.

Telling CoPilot the expected value is a feature, not a formality. “Dimension the plate width, it should be 100 mm” is strictly better than “dimension the plate width”, because the first can be verified automatically and the second cannot.

Annotations

Notes and balloons

Add a note in the bottom left of the sheet: "ALL DIMENSIONS IN MM UNLESS STATED"

Balloon every component in the isometric view

Balloons can be attached to a specific entity in a view, so they point at the component they label.

BOM tables

Insert a bill of materials table in the top right of this sheet

Inserts a BOM table on the sheet for the assembly the views come from. For an Excel BOM instead of a drawing table, see Assemblies.

Centre marks

Add center marks to all holes in the front view

Centre marks attach to circular entities — circles and arcs — in the view you name.

Weld symbols

Weld types available: fillet, square groove, V groove, bevel groove, U groove, J groove, plug, spot and seam, with a size, and the all-around and field-weld flags.

Add a 6 mm fillet weld symbol, all around, on the bracket-to-plate joint in the front view

Surface finish symbols

Basic, machining-required and machining-prohibited symbols, with roughness values.

Add a machining-required surface finish symbol with Ra 1.6 on the top face edge in the front view

GD&T and datums

Feature control frames support straightness, flatness, circularity, cylindricity, profile of a line, profile of a surface, angularity, perpendicularity, parallelism, position, concentricity, symmetry, circular runout and total runout, with tolerance value and datum references.

Add a datum feature symbol A on the bottom edge of the front view

Add a position tolerance of 0.2 mm referencing datums A, B and C on the hole in the top view

Add a flatness tolerance of 0.05 mm to the top face in the front view

Removing annotations

Annotations can be deleted selectively, by type, position, value or text. Ask for a dry run first if you are clearing a lot at once — CoPilot can preview what would be removed before removing it.

Show me which dimensions on sheet 1 read less than 5 mm, but do not delete anything yet

Delete all the notes on sheet 2

Check the layout before you print

Two independent checks are worth running on a finished sheet.

Check this drawing layout for views that are off-sheet or overlapping

This is a geometric check: it compares view bounding boxes against each other and against the sheet, and reports offenders by name.

Take a screenshot of the drawing and check that the views and dimensions look right

This is the visual check. CoPilot captures the sheet, looks at the image and corrects what it finds — catching things a bounding-box test cannot, such as a dimension sitting on top of a view line.

To audit a sheet in text form:

List every annotation on sheet 1 with its type and value

Layers (NX)

In NX, drafting objects can be moved between layers and layer visibility controlled from the chat.

Move all the drafting dimensions to layer 90 and make layer 90 the work layer

Hide layer 200

Layer commands apply to NX only. In the other three CAD systems, use their own layer management.

Exporting

Export this drawing to PDF at C:\drawings\bracket.pdf

Export the drawing to DXF

PDF, DXF and DWG are the usual drawing exports. Part and assembly exports (STEP, IGES, STL, Parasolid, SAT, JT) are covered in Part Modeling.

Drawings of a variant

If your part or assembly has configurations, model states, arrangements or family members, a view can be pointed at a specific one.

Retarget the front view at the "Long" configuration

See Assemblies for how variants work in each CAD system.

A workflow that holds up

Open the part or assembly you want to draw, and check it is the right one: “what document is active?”
Ask for the sheet and views in one prompt. Let the auto-layout place them; correct positions afterwards if you must.
Dimension one view at a time, naming the view. State the values you expect so the accuracy gate can do its job.
Add annotations — centre marks, notes, GD&T, weld and finish symbols.
Run both checks — the layout check and the screenshot check.
Export to PDF and look at it yourself before it goes anywhere.

A drawing is a controlled document. Everything on this page produces a draft for your review — read Verifying results before a CoPilot-produced sheet is issued.