If you're working in AutoCAD 2006 or one more up to date, at the Command line, type the first letter of the command you wish to start. Do not press (ENTER); instead, press the TAB key repeatedly and watch as AutoCAD runs through an alphabetical list of all commands, beginning with the letter you first typed. When the right command appears in the command line, press to start it.
This isn't a very efficient way to invoke a command but it's a great way of finding commands you never knew existed; try it yourself and you will discover that AutoCAD has a lot of commands… Also, you can press SHIFT+TAB to walk back through the list. UPDATE: On Nov. 10th, we posted that you could use CHAMFER as a way to trim up lines without having to change your Fillet Radius. We've learned, from an alert reader, that if you fillet your lines while holding down SHIFT then the current default fillet radius value will be ignored. It's a bold, new world.
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When you want an accurate dimension, but also want specific text to appear below the dimension line, select the desired dimension and open the Text Override option in the Properties palette. Enter brackets (<>) to tell AutoCAD to use the default associative dimension text, then enter a backslash \ followed by an uppercase X (a lowercase x will not work). That tells AutoCAD to place the remainder of the text below the dimension line. Next, enter the text. [Top Dimension] <> GO FROM THIS TEXT
[Bottom Dimension] <> \XTO THIS TEXT Object snaps are really important in AutoCAD and in addition to the running object snaps, many AutoCAD users have the Object Snap toolbar permanently docked on their screen. However, as screen space is often at a premium, you might like to consider accessing the object snaps from the Shift + Right-click menu.
If you didn't know about this, you'll find that it's even better than the Object Snap toolbar because it takes up no space and it contains all the object snaps including "Mid Between 2 Points" and the Point Filters. Do you want to turn it into one? <Y>When using PEDIT and selecting an object which is not a polyline you will get a message asking if you want to turn it into a polyline. This can be quite annoying if you're having to create closed polylines from a bunch of lines. To stop getting this message, type PEDITACCEPT and press Enter. Then type 1 and press Enter. This will automatically answer "yes" to the question in future.
Often, you find yourself using the Trim command to tidy up loose ends of lines. If this is the case, don't bother selecting cutting edges, just use the "select all" option.
Start the Trim command, ModifyTrim from the pull-down menu or TRIM from the command line. At the prompt, simply hit (Enter) to accept the <select all> option. Now, just pick the line ends you want to remove. There's another old trick. We hardly ever use CHAMFER, so we use it to clean-up corners. Set the distance of the chamfer to "0", select the two lines...and you have two lines that meet with no overlap. If you're new to AutoCAD or even if you're not and you find it difficult to remember all the keyboard shortcuts to your favourite commands like L for Line and C for Circle or even 3DO for 3DOrbit, then you need to know about the AutoCAD Alias Editor.
Enter ALIASEDIT at the command line and AutoCAD will launch a tiny application window that lists all the shortcuts in alphabetical order. As this is a seperate application, you can keep it minimised on your taskbar until you need it for reference. Essentially, this editor simply lists the contents of the acad.pgp file where all the command aliases are stored. Those of you who are a bit more adventurous, may even like to use the Alias Editor to create your own aliases or edit existing ones. |
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March 2016
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