Creating and Managing Drawings
Templates and startup
A new drawing is normally created with QNEW, which builds the file from a drawing template (.dwt). The template carries the units, layers, linetypes, text and dimension styles, layouts, and title block that every drawing in a project should share. NEW opens the Select Template dialog; opening a .dwt directly with OPEN also starts a new unnamed drawing rather than editing the template. Save a company standard with SAVEAS and choose Drawing Template (*.dwt).
Units and setup
UNITS sets length and angle display; the underlying insertion units are stored in INSUNITS and the drawing measurement system in MEASUREMENT (0 = imperial, 1 = metric). LIMITS defines the grid and extents boundary used by the Limits plot option; it is not the same as the drawing extents reported by ZOOM Extents. DWGPROPS stores title, subject, and custom properties.
Saving, recovery, and cleanup
QSAVE saves in place, SAVEAS writes a new file or format, and autosave writes .sv$ files on the SAVETIME interval; a .bak copy is made at each save. Use DRAWING RECOVERY or RECOVER for damaged files and AUDIT to check and repair the current drawing. PURGE removes unreferenced named objects such as unused layers, blocks, and styles; it cannot remove layer 0, the current layer, or objects in use.
Rule of thumb: put anything reused (layers, styles, title block, page setups) in the .dwt, and keep model geometry in drawings, not templates.
Traps: QNEW versus NEW, LIMITS versus extents, and expecting PURGE to shrink a file that contains many unused anonymous blocks (use -PURGE for nested items).