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90 AutoCAD Tips in 90 Minutes
90 AutoCAD Tips in 90 Minutes
90 AutoCAD Tips in 90 Minutes
AU-314-3
If you want a plethora of power user tips, then be sure join Cadalyst columnist Lynn Allen as she takes you through a whirlwind of productivity techniques that are certain to improve your everyday drawing life. At a tip a minute, youre certain to discover some AutoCAD features that will remove some of the tedium and boost your ability to meet project deadlines. Be sure to hold on
lynn.allen@autodesk.com
Introduction
With so much going on in our everyday drawing life we have a tendency to get in an AutoCAD rut. The goal behind this course is to show you a variety of tips that will spark a new awareness and lead you down the road to increased productivity!
Note: Turning on Automatically save workspace changes can potentially cause AutoCAD to close slowly.
2) AutoComplete (Tab to cycle) Use the tab key at the command line to cycle through all of the command and system variable combinations 3) Arrow to move up and down command list. Up and down arrows can take you through previously executed commands. 4) Control+9 to toggle command line on/off. 5) Right Click on the command line to retrieve previous commands from the shortcut menu. 6) Move Model space/Layout tabs Move to and from the status bar via the right click Hide Layout/Model tabs option. 7) Easy Move and Copy of Layout Tabs Use Control key to copy layout tabs, simply drag to move them.
8) Drag and Drop layout tabs to Sheet Set After saving your drawing you can easily drag and drop your layout tabs to the active sheet set. 9) Right Click on Status Bar toggles to quickly change the settings.
Set up your status bar for maximum productivity. Right click on any tool and select Display 11) Maximizing Viewports Double click on a viewport to open and edit the contents as though you were in model space. No need to worry about accidentally modifying the scale factor and yet zoom and pan all you want. Click outside of the red area to quickly get back to your paperspace layout.
12) SCALELISTEDIT Edit the viewport scale factors and remove those you dont intend on using. Not only will this speed up AutoCAD but it will make it easier for you to select the right scale factor. Anchored Palettes Anchor your palettes to the left or right of the screen for maximum productivity. Take advantage of their roll-up capabilities
13) Clean Screen (or Ctrl 0) Rid your display of clutter (except for the menu bar, status bar and quick access toolbar). Great for client presentations 14) Taskbar to 1 Display all open files at the taskbar by setting the system variable TASKBAR to 1. 15) Customize the Quick Access Toolbar for maximum productivity! (Layer drop-down, SAVEAS)
Tired of toolbars moving accidentally lock them down! 17) Minimize the ribbon for maximum screen space Click on the arrow to minimize the ribbon.
19) Drag and Drop blocks to your Tool Palette Highlight a block and use a right click to drag a block to an open tool palette. Your new tool with also remember the layer, rotation angle, scale, etc. 20) Drag and Drop Hatch patterns to your Tool Palette Highlight a hatch pattern and use a right click to drag the hatch pattern to the tool palette. The pattern, layer, scale factor, and rotation angle are also saved with the hatch pattern. 21) Set up tools to automatically scale to your drawing 22) Drag and Drop a dimension to save all the settings and the layer for speedy additions of new dimensions with the same settings. 23) Easily customize your icon with an existing image file.
Layer Tips:
24)Customize your Layer Columns For maximum productivity be sure to turn off any columns you arent using. 25)Freeze Columns Use the Freeze Column option from the right click menu to keep a column from scrolling
Using these three columns in the Layer dialog you can assign layer properties PER viewport. 27) Deactivate the Status Column to save time
AutoCAD gurus use Layers States so they can avoid constantly changing the layer settings. 29) Applying Layer States per Viewport After setting up your Layer States you can apply them to individual viewports.
30) SETBYLAYER command This is a fantastic command to set any object (including those within nested blocks) back to BYLAYER!
Use the LAYWALK command to quickly view individual layers 33) LAYDEL (Delete even the most stubborn layers!) Use this fantastic Express Tool to delete any layer (except for 0 and defpoints) 34) LAYISO Isolates layer(s) for easy editing. AutoCAD 2008 and above allows you to fade the other layers so you can see the objects on the other layers but not accidentally modify them.
35) Autodesk Seek Use the DC Online tab in Design Center to easily get to the content on Autodesk Seek (or just select the Autodesk Seek button in AutoCAD 2010)
2005 Autodesk
TIMESAVERS:
36) JOIN command (Glue) Use the Join command to glue together polylines, lines, arcs, elliptical arcs and splines. Join two lines together that are collinear, even if there are gaps between them. Join different types of objects together if there are no gaps. Join more than one arc, even with gaps, as long as they lie in the same imaginary circle. You can even use the JOIN command to turn an arc into a circle. 37) OVERKILL This Express tool is a great way to delete duplicate objects and clean up your drawing. OVERKILL removes unneeded objects by deleting duplicates and combining line and arc segments that overlap. There are multiple settings to ensure you get just the results you want.
38) JPGOUT, BMPOUT, PNGOUT, TIFOUT These nifty commands commands make it easy for you to turn your drawings into graphics 8
files. 39) Print to a graphics file via the Plotting Wizard Use the Add-a-plotter Wizard to have great control over creating a graphics file.
Select Edit Plotter Configuration to control the resolution. 40) CHANGE command to shorten/lengthen Use the age-old CHANGE command to quickly lengthen/shorten line segments to a specific point (Ortho on) 41) Highlight objects and use a right click to Move and Copy
42) Speedy Array (Control key) Select objects, select a grip, C for Copy and hold the Control key down to do a quickie array! 43) Shift to turn Ortho ON Any time you want to temporarily toggle the Ortho on/off you can do so by holding down the Shift key 44) Speedy Trims/Extends Hit an extra enter to turn the entire drawing into a cutting edge (objects dont highlight though!) 45) Fast Corners using Shift in FILLET command Use the Shift option in the FILLET command to quickly square off corners.
46) FILTERS command Go directly to the undocumented FILTERS command to quickly delete excess layer filters.
System Variables:
47)PEDITACCEPT
Set PEDITACCEPT to 1 to avoid the irritating Do you want to turn it into a polyline question. 48) IMAGEFRAME (set to 2) DWFFRAME, PDFFRAME, OLEFRAME, XCLIPFRAME and DGNFRAME (or FRAME in AutoCAD 2010) When set to a value of 2, these commands display the frames but do not plot them. Note: FRAME set to 3 indicates varied settings and no override 49) OSNAPZ to replace Z Value with Current Elevation When snapping to objects with different elevations, you may want the current elevation to be used for the Z value. Set OSNAPZ to 1. 50) PLINEGEN - Sets how linetype patterns generate around the vertices of a 2D polyline.
51) WHIPARC to 1 for smooth arcs and circles (forget dealing with VIEWRES!) 52) Set HATCHGAP to a value other than 0 so you dont have to search for holes in your hatching.
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Attribute Tips:
53) ATTDIA to display dialog box for attributes If you prefer a dialog box when inserting blocks with attributes set ATTDIA to 1. 54) ATTMODE to display all visible and invisible attributes Set the system variable ATTMODE to 0 to make all the attributes in your drawing invisible. To display them as originally created set to 0 and to turn them all on regardless of their settings set ATTMODE to 2. 55) ATTREQ Suppresses the attribute prompts and uses the defaults When you are in a rush and want to use the defaults for your attributes you can set ATTREQ to 0. 56) Move locked attributes with ATTEDIT 57) BURST Explode blocks without losing their assigned attribute values.
OPTIONS Tips:
58) Default Template File for QNEW Use the Files tab to set a default template file for starting new drawings. This will eliminate you needing to select a template file each time (use the NEW command if you want to select a different template file).
59) QTEXTMODE to speed up drawings with lots of text Turning on QuickText will convert your text to rectangles (Display Tab)
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60) Hidden Messages Turn those hidden message back on in the System tab in OPTIONS.
61) Right Click Customization Configure your right mouse button to do BOTH a shortcut menu and an enter in OPTIONS (user preferences tab)
62) Speed up your Annotative Scaling Turn off Maintain Visual Fidelity while you are drawing. Turn it back on right before saving to a lower release number.
63) ISAVEPERCENT - the higher the number (100 max) the faster your saves!)
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TEXT Tips:
64) Easy Copy and Paste from WORD Copy the text to the clipboard, drop it into the MTEXT Editor. 65) Control the Text Sample string with MTJIGSTRING 66) Two fast means of exiting the MTEXT Editor: Click outside of the dialog box or Control+Enter 67) Automatic Columns in MTEXT
68) TEXTTOFRONT command Bring all of the text to the top of the draworder with the TEXTTOFRONT command. 69) Creating multiple lines of single line text (DTEXTED set to 2) Picking in other locations throughout the drawing while in DTEXT makes it easy to create many single text strings at one time. 70) Use FONTMAP to map a complex font to a simple font. example: romans.shx;arial.ttf
Table Tips:
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72) Tables wrap automatically over multiple columns (as long as Table Breaks are enabled) 73) Hard Enter (linefeed) with Alt+Enter inside of a table cell
Misc. Tips:
74) Get the Dimscale value quickly in Properties (under Fit)
75) Customize Quick Properties to display DIMSCALE Set up QP so a simple click will show you the DIMSCALE for a dimension. 76) Create smaller PDFs with DWF Create a DWF file out of your drawing firstthen create a PDF. Files will be half the size! 77) Inverse XCLIP and dynamic grips Use grips on clipped XREFs to dynamically change the clipping and to invert the XCLIP.
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79) Use OSNAP Tracking to quickly find the center of a box (in fact use Object Snap Tracking to make your life much better period!)
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Dimensioning Tips:
88) QDIM This fantastic underused command can help you knock out dimensions in no time 89) DIMBREAK Your drafting instructor warned you about the dreaded crossing dimension lines didn't he! We go to great length to break our dimensions to avoid such a travesty. We end up exploding the dimension (bad, bad, bad!), and then breaking it manually. DIMBREAK to the rescue! The process is simple. You select the dimension that you want to break and then the dimension(s) that are on top of that dimension. AutoCAD does the rest for you!
90) DIMSPACE to evenly space baseline dimensions Use the friendly DIMSPACE command to correct baseline dimensions which are not equally separated. 91) DIMSPACE to even out continuous dimensions You can also use DIMSPACE to correct continuous dimensions that dont line up! 92) DIMTMOVE
Almost there!
93) SELECTIONANNODISPLAY to 0 that magically turns off ghosting with annotative objects
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94) Set INDEXCTL to 3 if you work with an excess of clipped xrefs (or XREFs in viewports)to speed things up. This turns on layer and spatial indexes. AutoCAD will read in only the objects that are inside the clipped area (or inside a viewport). 95) FILTER command for serious object filtering!
96) Missing dialog boxes Alt+spacebar Key in the command that is invisible, then hit Alt+spacebar plus enter to get the dialog box on your cursor. You should be able to retrieve it at this point. If not use the arrow keys to drag it into sight (usually left arrow key). 97) IMAGEQUALITY set to Draft for faster loading images (back to High to print) 98) Use Autodesk Design Review to compare two different drawings. www.autodesk.com/designreview 99) Visit my blog: www.autodesk.com/lynnallen to get your questions answered. 100) Go to Autodesk University 2010!
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