The format of a drawing refers to the boundary lines, referencing marks and graphic elements that appear on every sheet before any drawing elements are shown or added. These usually include items such as tables for the company name, detailers name, revision number and date.

When you start a new drawing, you are prompted for a format file (.frm) to associate with the drawing. This file carries all the format graphical information, and it can also carry some optional default attributes like text size and draft scale. For a multisheet drawing, you can have two default formats—one for the first sheet and another for the remaining sheets.

Creo Parametric ships with several standard drawing formats for various sheet sizes. You can also create and save your own format files.

You can change the format on any sheet (including the first sheet) independently of the formats on other sheets; therefore, you could use a different format on each sheet of the drawing.

Like a drawing file, a format file retrieves default values from a .dtl Detail options file.  If you want your format .dtl file to have the same values as your Detail options file, retrieve the Detail options file into the format by clicking File > Prepare > Drawing Properties, and click change against Detail Options. The Options dialog box opens. Use the Open icon in Options the dialog box to retrieve the .dtl file. The system reads only those options valid for formats.

To reuse an existing format (that is, one that was created in another system), use the interface options (such as DXF, SET, IGES, TIFF, and so on) to import it into your format.