More About Updating the Standard of a Drawing

You need to update the standard of a drawing when this standard has been modified by the administrator.

The following topics are discussed:

Related Topics
Switching a Drawing to Another Standard
Setting Standard Parameters
Setting Styles
Updating the Standard of a Drawing

About the update of a standard file

When a standard file is modified, there is no automatic update of the drawings which use this standard. Each drawing contains a copy of the standard it uses, and retains this version until you explicitly update this copy or switch the drawing to another standard.


  • The most recent version of the updated standard is copied into the drawing and the previous standard parameter values are replaced by the latest ones, reflecting the latest changes an administrator or user may have performed in the standard file. This may have an immediate impact on the appearance of the elements inside the drawing.
  • Styles are not affected by this update, i.e. styles modified in the updated standard file will not be re-applied to existing elements. Indeed, styles are applied when creating elements (as they define the default values to be used for creation). If needed, new style parameters can be re-applied to an element using the Style toolbar: simply select the element whose style you want to update and select the updated style in the Style toolbar.

Annotations and dimensions

During a standard switch or update, annotations and dimensions are automatically updated (in order to apply the new standard), but not the geometry. To avoid differences between updated annotations and not-updated geometry, we advise you to update first your drawing before any standard switch/update.

International standards

When they follow international standards, some dimension values are automatically updated with the new international standards:


  • Dimension's vertical position: When it follows the international standard, i.e. 0 for ANSI, 0.5 for ISO and 2 for JIS.
  • Dimension's orientation reference and orientation: When it follows its previous international standard, i.e. horizontal with screen reference for ANSI and ASME, parallel with dimension line reference for ISO and JIS.
  • Dimension symbols: When the chosen symbols are the international ones, i.e. Open Arrow for ISO and JIS, Filled Arrow for ANSI and ASME.

Furthermore, if the target international standard is ANSI or ASME, radius type dimension has its dimension line representation set to 2 parts.

Styles organization

Note that after updating the standards, when opening a drawing, the styles are not organized in the Style toolbar exactly as they are organized in the Standards editor. However, the order of the styles' types (Sheet, Construction point...) is kept. This minor modification allows a better global performance.