Steal My AutoCAD Folder Structure & Save Hours

Example Download & Must Use App!

Hey All,

In case you missed last week’s email, welcome to the new email format/series where I help you increase productivity, stand out as an expert in the field, and teach you the ins and outs of climbing the Career Ladder as an Engineer, Designer/Drafter!

Each week I deliver useful tips, case studies, examples/tutorials, helpful downloads, and career insights, and help you keep up with the rapidly changing landscape of Technology and software in our industry!

This week, we have a helpful Quick Tip, I share my streamlined example CAD Folder Structure and a must-try Time-saving tool!

Quick Tip:

Drawing organization and file safety are an essential pillar of productivity in design and engineering. Having a well-thought-out and organized typical file structure is a must when it comes to keeping your files organized and easy to access for future revisions and coworkers alike.

To help keep your files safe, make sure you’ve set up your Automatic Save settings in AutoCAD! To check your settings, use the OPTIONS command to bring up the drawing options and select the Open and Save tab. Then make sure Automatic save is checked on and choose your save time interval, the default is 10 minutes, but I like to up mine to 20 min. to reduce the interruptions during my work process. Your interval will depend on your risk tolerance and type/size of drawings you work on. You can also change up the file extension name for your temporary save files though I recommend leaving the rest to default.

This video looks at how to open your auto-save files if you ever need to recover them:
AutoCAD How To Find & Open Autosave Backup Files!

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Are your project folders and drawing files organized properly?

Do you have a method to your madness?

I know I didn’t for a few years, well that’s not exactly true.

When I first started doing side projects and consulting, I had a system that I thought worked really well, heck I am willing to bet a lot of engineers and drafters use a similar system to what I used and even think it’s working well for them now.

It wasn’t until I started working on more and more complex jobs that I realized my organized folders weren’t very organized.
Here is a folder layout similar to what I used originally:

As you can see in the example screenshot above, I used a pretty typical layout.

The CAD FOLDER held all of my projects for a client or a year (depending on how I had it set up) and then the specific project was the PROJECT NAME folder.

Next, I would save all of my .dwgs in the CAD folder and any drawings or files (images etc.) I used as external references in the XREFS folder.

The PDFs folder was used when I printed the drawings to pdf to send to my client.

Pretty simple and organized right?

I thought so, at least until I started getting bigger projects, with files in both Civil 3d and basic Autocad, revised and new surveys, base imagery with multiple image files, points files, revisions, 3d models etc…

I know there are all kinds of variations depending on the type of drafting you do (civil, architectural, mechanical…) but as a consultant/small office in general they all require you to be able to easily find files and data.

This is where my current and IMPROVED folder system has helped me to save countless hours of searching and frustrations!

(Learn my Improved Folder System and download it for free as well as learn which Tool saves me the most time with Sheetsets. Access them with your premium subscription to Design x Technology)