Little AutoCAD tricks

I use the keyboard for a lot of functions in autocad so here are a few functions:
F3 to toggle on/off object snaps
F8 to toggle on/off ortho
Cntrl + Tab will cycle through all your open CAD drawings one by one
Lastly, instead of rotating angles for example, 270 degrees, use - 90 degrees.

I know there are more so this is just my two cents.

Thank You, Mr. Ranger

I just learned TODAY that you can edit text by double-clicking on the text.

I personally like the shift right click that brings up a list of onsnaps. Must thank Andy Nold for teaching me that one.

Cy

Hey, that's a new one for me. I like it.

When selecting objects, to move, scale or rotate, while it is asking what to select, press p, for previous selection. C for crossing, that is anything your box crosses. If you select something you don't want, type R for remove, and then a for add to add more.

N:-)

if you have osnaps on, when you place the curser over an object (line, curve, text, etc.) you can press "tab" to cycle thru the different osnap choices.

Unless it has changed, you need to be very careful with the ALIGN command. It is 3D. If you align a group of objects to a line that has an elevation chage, it will 3 dimensionally move and rotate to that line. That means if you have a line that is 100 feet horizontal in the group you want to align and the reference object has different elevations, your slope distance will now be 100 feet and your horizontal will be less.

s for scale
m for move
ro for rotate

> When selecting objects, to move, scale or rotate, while it is asking what to select, press p, for previous selection. C for crossing, that is anything your box crosses. If you select something you don't want, type R for remove, and then a for add to add more.

Extending this a little further, experiment with these selection set options (as excerpted from the AutoCAD Help):

>WPolygon - Selects objects completely inside a polygon defined by points. The polygon can be any shape but cannot cross or touch itself. The last segment of the polygon is drawn so that it is closed at all times. WPolygon is not affected by thePICKADD system variable.
>
>CPolygon - Selects objects within and crossing a polygon defined by specifying points. The polygon can be any shape but cannot cross or touch itself. The last segment of the polygon is drawn so that it is closed at all times. CPolygon is not affected by the PICKADD system variable.
>
>Fence - Selects all objects crossing a selection fence. The Fence method is similar to CPolygon except that that the fence is not closed, and a fence can cross itself. Fence is not affected by the PICKADD system variable.

--
Ladd Nelson

laydel

Deletes the layer(s) that won't go away.

Filedia (it is a toggle).

I forget what it does, but it is written on a note taped to my desk.

(I am out of town right now)

"You may occasionally find yourself in a situation where the NEW, OPEN, and SAVE commands do not provide a dialog. Simply enter FILEDIA at the command prompt and enter a value of 1. If you attempt to PLOT and fail to get a dialog, simply enter ` at the command prompt and enter a value of 1."

Most people don't know what trim and extend can both be done from the same command. If you're trimming a bunch of lines (trim command) and need to extend a line to that same one you're trimming at, just hold the shift button down and click on that line....it will extend. Also, if you're in the extend command, just hold shift down as you're clicking and it turns into the trim command. Neat stuff! 🙂

While drawing a line (and some other commands that escape me at the moment) if you hold down shift it acts like a temporary ortho, but lately with Civil3D 2011 it's been turning ortho on.

Using shift does a lot, but you gotta be careful, many the time I've been holding shift for whatever reason and need to pan by holding down the scroll button. If you do this you get a 3D rotation, easy to correct but it is annoying.

Someday soon (I hope) some bright mind will show us how to :

1] hover over a piece of text in numerical form with the mouse

2] click the mouse point over the text

3] click convert the numerals to the opposite of either metric or Imperial in a different font and lay it out behind in brackets of one's choice

"Hope Springs Eternal" ..... Alexander Pope

Hopefully yours,

Derek

DIMALIGNED

I like DIMALIGNED to automatically draw tie distances on plans. Just click on the two points and you get the arrows and a tie distance, then you can use the grips to move the location of the text. You use the DDIM command to set up the units, significant figures and leader& arrow details.

The Group command is one of my favorites.

You can group together any assortment of objects on the screen into a single, translatable and rotatable entity for easy placement. It trumps a Block, since there is a simple toggle to turn the grouping on and off.

I use it a lot for architectuals that I want to have reside in the drawing, and not merely xref'd.

Speaking of xrefs, if you have express tools then xlist and ncopy are fantastic.

xlist tells you what layer an xref's line, symbol, point, etc is on from the native .dwg, and

ncopy (for nested copy) allows you to copy xref's entities into your drawing.

If objects overlap and you want to select one of the lower objects, position your cursor above the objects. Then hold down SHIFT and hit the space bar until the object you want to select is highlighted. Release SHIFT and click with the mouse. This lets you pick lower objects without messing around with Draw Order.

When typing commands at the command line, TAB is an auto-complete. Type the first few letters of a command and hit TAB to auto-complete. If it's the wrong command, hit TAB again to go to the next command in the list. Hit SHIFT+TAB to cycle backwards through the commands.

There's a setting in MAPIOPTIONS -> General tab that can make your life easy or difficult, depending on what you want to do. It's the option for "Shift+Left Click Image Select". This can make it very easy to select images. But it can also interfere with the ability to remove items from a selection set by holding down SHIFT and picking them - if you have a background image and this option is turned on, you will select the image instead of removing an item from your selection set. You may want to turn this option on/off, depending on what you're doing.