ZWCAD Flex provides a fast and user-friendly environment for managing your 2D drawing files, supporting the essential workflows you use every day. The management of drawing files is mainly divided into seven parts: creating, opening, checking and finding, saving, closing, and transferring.
By default, when starting ZWCAD Flex, the program will automatically create a blank drawing file (Drawing1.dwg). You can also create new drawing file through the NEW or QNEW command.
· NEW: Create a new drawing file
· QNEW: Create a new drawing file quickly based on the default drawing template file
ZWCAD Flex provides multiple methods to open drawing files. You can operate it within ZWCAD Flex or directly operate the drawing file.
In the ZWCAD Flex interface, you can open drawing files by executing the OPEN command. Supported file types include DWG, DXF, DWF/DWFx, DWS, and DWT.
Common ways to open drawings inside ZWCAD Flex:
· Click Application Menu → Open → Drawing
· Click the Open button on the Standard toolbar
· Select Open from the File expansion menu
· Press the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + O
When the value of FILEDIA system variable is 1, executing the OPEN command will open the Select File dialog box. Enter the file name in the file name text box to retrieve it in current folder. Expand the file type drop-down list to specify and filter the target file type. Click the arrow next to the Open button to open the file in read-only mode.
You can operate the drawing file itself to open it in ZWCAD Flex:
· Drag the drawing file onto the ZWCAD Flex shortcut icon and release it.
· Drag the drawing file to the ZWCAD Flex program interface (excluding the drawing area) and release it.
· From the right-click menu of drawing file, select Open Method » ZWCAD Flex.
· Double click on drawing file. To use this method, you need to associate the drawing file with ZWCAD Flex. In the right-click menu of drawing file, select Open Method » Choose another application, select ZWCAD Flex, then check Always use this application to open .XXX files.
ZWCAD Flex supports opening multiple drawings simultaneously, controlled by the SDI system variable:
· When the SDI system variable value is 0, it supports opening multiple drawing files at once.
· When the SDI system variable value is 1, only one drawing file can be opened at a time.
Press Ctrl+Tab or Ctrl+F6 to cycle through multiple open drawing files from left to right or from right to left.
Execute the ADCENTER command to open the Design Center palette. The Open Drawings tab shows properties of opened drawings, such as layers, linetypes, text styles, blocks, dimension styles, external references, layouts, multileader styles, table styles, etc.
Execute the DWGPROPS command to open the Drawing Properties dialog, where you can view or modify drawing metadata:
· General: View general information about current drawing, including type, location, size, name, and time, which cannot be modified.
· Summary: View or modify the summary information of current drawing, including title, subject, author, keywords, comments, etc. You can set it according to the properties of drawing.
· Statistics: View the statistical information of current drawing, including the creation time, editing time, and recent editor information, which cannot be modified.
· Custom: View or edit user-defined information in current drawing, and you can add recognition information for drawing as needed.
In the Select File dialog box, select Find from the Tools drop-down menu to retrieve drawing files using following filtering criteria.
· File name
· File type
· Search location, can specify whether to search for subfolders
· Creation or modification time
In ZWCAD Flex, commands such as SAVE, SAVEAS, QSAVE are usually used to save files, and relevant settings can also be specified to automatically save or back up files.
ZWCAD Flex supports saving files in multiple formats, and different file extensions can be selected when saving files.
· Standard drawing file format (DWG)
· Drawing exchange format (DXF)
· Drawing template format (DWT)
· Drawing standard format (DWS)
For multiple currently open drawing files, all can be saved using the SAVEALL command.
Execute the OPTIONS command, and in the Options dialog box, you can set up a backup for drawing file. Every time you manually save a drawing, a backup file with the extension "BAK" is automatically created. When a drawing file is damaged, changing the backup file extension to "dwg" can restore the drawing file.
ZWCAD Flex will regularly automatically save the drawing files in use to avoid the loss of drawing data in case of unexpected program interruption or exit. The automatically saved file is named as "filename_zws********.zs$", where "file name" is current drawing name. You can change the extension of automatically saved file to "dwg" to open it through ZWCAD Flex.
Execute the OPTIONS command, enable or disable automatic save in the Options dialog box, and set the time interval for automatic save.
Incremental save refers to saving only the newly added or modified parts of the drawing file each time. Compared to complete save, it takes less time to save. Especially when modifying large drawings, the difference between the two save methods is more obvious.
Execute the OPTIONS command and set the incremental save percentage in the Options dialog box (or set the value through the ISAVEPERCENT system variable). The incremental save percentage is the percentage of the maximum space loss allowed during incremental save to the drawing file. When the cumulative loss of increment exceeds this value, a complete save will be performed. When set to 0, each save is a complete save.
You can close open drawing files by either closing them or exiting the program.
Close the drawing file through the following methods.
· Click the button at the right end of document tab, or close the specified drawing file through the right-click menu option on document tab.
· Double click the document tab to close the specified drawing file.
· Click the Close button in the upper right corner of drawing area to close current drawing file.
· Execute the CLOSE or CLOSEALL command to close the current or all drawing files.
Exit ZWCAD Flex through the following methods to close the drawing files. Exiting ZWCAD Flex means that all open drawing files will be closed.
· Click the Close button in the upper right corner of program interface to exit ZWCAD Flex.
· Right click on the ZWCAD Flex icon in the Windows taskbar and select Close Window to exit ZWCAD Flex.
· Execute the QUIT command to exit ZWCAD Flex.
If you need to distribute drawings, you can package drawing files, supporting files, and related files and save or transfer them. Drawing and other files can be packaged into folders or compressed packages.
Execute the ETRANSMIT command to open the Create Transfer dialog box and create a transfer from current drawing. The following associated files (if included) will be automatically added to the file list of compressed package.
| File Type | Description |
|---|---|
| DWG | Current drawing files and external reference source files |
| JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, … | Raster images attached to current drawing |
| PDF, DWF, DWFx, DGN | Underlay attached to current drawing |
| FMP | Font mapping file |
| CTB | Color related plot style files |
| STB | Named plot style files |
| PC3 | Plotter configuration files |
For files that cannot be automatically added to the transmittal package, you can manually select to add them to the file list and transfer them with drawing file.
Transfer packages can be created into three different types: ZIP compressed packages, folders, and EXE executable files, with the difference in their viewing methods.
· The ZIP file needs to be decompressed using the WinRar program before viewing.
· The folder can be directly opened for browsing.
· Double click on the EXE executable file to extract and view it.
For confidential drawings, in order to prevent file information leakage and ensure the security of drawing transmission, you can check Prompt for entering a password in the Modify Transmittal Setup dialog box, and set a password for the transmission package when saving. After encryption, a password must be entered to access the files in transfer package.
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