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AutoCAD Tips
and Tricks
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Tips and Tricks Archive
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September 2007 -
Make sure that you don’t lose anything
Computers are usually very stable these days, at least as compared to years
ago. There are a couple of settings in
AutoCAD that can
make sure that you don’t lose days of work if something major does happen.
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Lynn Allen's Tips and Tricks for Using AutoCAD 2009
She's one of the best and she's done it again providing a
must have tips and tricks booklet for using the latest version of AutoCAD.
Read a page a day and you'll have yourself up to speed on AutoCAD 2009 in no
time!
An AutoCAD Quickie Hip Tip!
- If you hold down the control key while you are moving a
toolbar to keep it from docking. Lynn Allen, Lynn Allen's Blog, July
22, 2007.
Two Layer Tools - The LAYERP and LAYMCUR commands deal with
layers, and can be found on the Layers toolbar. Ward Romberger,
CAD-e-Corner,
July 20, 2007.
Discover the hidden AutoCAD Express Tools - Easily find top
secret hidden Express Tools from the Express Tools Help file. Lynn
Allen, Lynn Allen's Blog, July 16, 2007.
Drawing Recovery with Xreferences - Under File-Drawing
Utilities-Recover Drawing and Xrefs... in 2008 will recover a
drawing and all of it's Xrefs then provide you with a report! Todd
Shackelford, The Lazy Drafter, July 13, 2007.
Get a True Block Count - The Enhanced Attribute Extraction
command, EATTEXT, will count your blocks and write the information
out to an Excel file or an AutoCAD Table. Lynn Allen, Lynn Allen's
Blog, July 11, 2007.
AutoCAD Tip on Counting Blocks -
Quickly tally up the various blocks in your drawing using the
top secret Express Tool BCOUNT available from the command
prompt. Lynn Allen, Lynn Allen's Blog,
July 9, 2007.
Managing your Scales List -
AutoCAD has a drop-down list on the Viewports toolbar to quickly
assign a scale to a viewport. Shorten this list
SCALELISTEDIT
to delete and add scale factors from the
list. Lynn Allen, Lynn Allen's Blog, July 5, 2007.
Getting evenly spaced Baseline Dimensions
- The new DIMSPACE
command in AutoCAD 2008 makes it easy to make sure your baseline dimensions
look great and are evenly spaced. Lynn Allen, Lynn Allen's Blog, July 1,
2007.
AutoCAD CLEANSCREEN - If you are one that cherishes your screen real
estate in AutoCAD, try the CLEANSCREENON command. Shaan Hurley, Between the
Lines, June 27, 2007.
Data Linking - AutoCAD 2007 provides the ability to bring an Excel
spreadsheet into AutoCAD (as a Table) and have it fully linked. Lynn Allen,
Lynn Allen's Blog, June 25,
2007.
Power dimension in AutoCAD Mechanical; adding baseline dimensions
- Adding baseline
dimensions is just as easy as adding chained dimensions except power
dimension will rearrange the dimension stack for you if needed. Andrew de
Leon, Drawing the Machine, June 15,
2007.
AutoCAD 2008 Publishing Tips - Here are some tips for DWF. Volker
Joseph, Beyond the
Paper, June 14, 2007.
Drag and Drop Multiple Xrefs - Drag and drop Xrefs from
Windows Explorer into the current drawing in the same way as
dragging and dropping blocks into drawings. Shaan Hurley,
Between the Lines, June 13, 2007.
Revit 2008 Publishing Tips - Enclosed are Revit 2008
publishing tips. Volker Joseph, Beyond the
Paper, June 12, 2007.
Polar Mode - Polar mode does away with the need for
Ortho mode. Ward Romberger, CAD-e-Corner,
June 12, 2007.
AutoCAD Gurus use Layer States! - If you find yourself
spending too much time in the inner sanctity of the Layer dialog
box then you really need to take a look at Layer States. Lynn
Allen, Lynn Allen's Blog, June 12,
2007.
Match Property Settings - The AutoCAD Match Properties
command, MATCHPROP, is an easy way to paint properties from
existing objects onto other objects. Ward Romberger,
CAD-e-Corner,
June 5, 2007.
Explode Text - Have you ever seen your company logo,
client logo, or other specific text rendered with an unexpected
font? Ward Romberger, CAD-e-Corner, May
29, 2007.
Time-Sensitive Right Click Customizing - Maximize the power of the mouse by
assigning options multiple options to the right mouse button. Lynn Allen,
Lynn Allen's Blog, May 23, 2007.
AutoCAD Selection Techniques - Most editing commands
issue the standard Select objects: prompt and you then click on
every object you want to add to a selection set. Ward Romberger,
CAD-e-Corner, May 23, 2007.
AutoCAD Tool Palette Rollup and Rollout Speed - How to
change the speed of the Tool Palette Rollout and Rollup.. Shaan Hurley,
Between the Lines, May 22, 2007.
Specify Current Tool Palette or Group - New in AutoCAD
2008 TPNAVIGATE. Shaan Hurley,
Between the Lines, May 22, 2007.
Changing the Sample Text String in MTEXT -
Change the sample string that displays every time you enter the
MTEXT command by using the
MTJIGSTRING command. Lynn Allen, Lynn Allen's Blog,
May 16, 2007.
Search and Replace Attribute Values - How do you globally replace
attribute text using the FIND command and GATTE Express Tool? Lynn Allen,
Lynn Allen's Blog,
May 10, 2007.
Delete Layer - If Purge won't remove an unwanted layer, here are
some heavy handed tools that will, LAYDEL and LAYTRANS. Ward Romberger,
CAD-e-Corner, May 8, 2007.
Setting Hatch Boundary boundaries - AutoCAD displays this message
when it has to analyze over 1000 entities. Ward Romberger, CAD-e-Corner, May
1, 2007.
Creating Small PDF files - Lower the resolution of the PDF generator
from 1200 down to 300. Lynn Allen, Lynn Allen's Blog, April 27, 2007.
Create Multiple Page PDF files directly from AutoCAD
- set the new PUBLISHCOLLATE
system variable in AutoCAD 2008 to 1 to create a multiple sheet PDF directly
from AutoCAD. Lynn Allen, Lynn Allen's Blog, April 23, 2007.
Reducing the size of PDF files - Although it's better
to us DWF, sometimes you just have to use PDF files. Lynn Allen, Lynn
Allen's Blog, April 17, 2007.
Quick Select - Quick Select allows you to use criteria for selecting
objects. Ward Romberger, CAD-e-Corner, April 13, 2007.
Reversing XREF Clipping - The new Invert Clip option in the XCLIP
command lets you clip the inside out. Lynn Allen, Lynn Allen's Blog, March
28, 2007.
Boxing your Text - Use the Express Tool TCIRCLE to place a box
around text. Ward Romberger, CAD-e-Corner, March 21, 2007.
Converting to DGN - The DGNEXPORT command makes simple work of
exporting your DWG design data to V8 DGN format. Lynn Allen, Lynn Allen's Blog,
March 20, 2007.
Power dimension in AutoCAD Mechanical; adding chain dimensions
- Create chained dimensions using the Chain option provided by power
dimension. Andrew de
Leon, Drawing the Machine,
February 27,
2007.
Power dimension in AutoCAD Mechanical; using distance snap
- Power dimension will ask you to specify the dimension line location; keep
dragging your cursor.
Andrew de Leon, Drawing the Machine,
February 23,
2007.
Multiple Insertion Points Part II
- To make sure that the entire block is moved, be sure to include a Base
Point Parameter.
Lynn Allen, Lynn Allen's Blog,
February 6, 2007.
Creating Blocks with Multiple Insertion Points
- You can easily create a block definition with multiple insertion points in
the dynamic block editor. Lynn Allen, Lynn Allen's Blog,
February 5, 2007.
Moving Data from One Drawing to Another
- Use good old Cut and Paste to move objects from one drawing to another. Lynn
Allen, Lynn Allen's Blog, February 2,
2007.
Adding More Startup Switches -
Simply right-click on the your AutoCAD shortcut and select Properties from
the startup menu.
Lynn Allen, Lynn Allen's Blog, January
11, 2007.
Suppressing the Sheet Set Manager
- Suppress the Sheet Set Manager upon entering AutoCAD. Lynn
Allen, Lynn Allen's Blog, January 9,
2007.
Trimming or Extending something that doesn't intersect a boundary or edge
- There are a couple of cool modifiers in the Trim and Extend commands like
the Edge option. Lynn Allen, Lynn Allen's Blog,
January 2, 2007.
Configuring for speed - Is your AutoCAD is too slow? Speed things up
a tad while you are waiting for that drawing to open. Todd Shackelford, The
Lazy Drafter, April 3, 2006.
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