Lynn Allen's Blog

Back in Australia (with another tip)

I'm back in Australia (Adelaide) and the Inventor tour continues!  My voice is getting back to normal and the audiences don't have to work nearly so hard to hear me...I was very sad about missing the start of NFL football this past weekend - so imagine my delight when I turned on the TV and found the Packers/Lions game!  I was absolutely thrilled...I was also able to catch some of the highlights of the other games. Mind you the game was playing at 6:00am Monday morning since I'm a day ahead of the US but that's fine with me!

So here is your AutoCAD tip for the day...

Changing your text to upper/lower case:

You get a drawing from someone else and they have entered all the text in the wrong case - what a drag!  There are two different means of changing your text to another case, depending on what type of text it is.  If your text is MTEXT, simply highlight the offending text, right click, and choose Change Case from the shortcut menu followed by a selection of upper or lower case.  As an added shortcut, you can also highlight the text and enter Ctrl+Shift+U for upper case, or Ctrl+Shift+L for lower case.

If your text is single-line - you can use the Express Tool TCASE to change it.  TCASE is much more powerful and gives you many more options (TCASE also works on MTEXT).  The figure below shows you the TCASE dialog and the many different options.

 

So there is another tip from Down Under!

AutoCAD Quick Tip - Attribute settings

Hope you all enjoyed a beautiful weekend - I managed to get out and enjoy a little golf and tennis myself - I must admit I LOVE summer!  I just finished writing a Cadalyst Magazine article on attributes so I thought I'd throw out a little teaser on some lesser known attribute settings that just might do the trick for you!  If you log onto the website you'll see a picture of yours truly and a link to my many columns (free!)...perhaps one of my past articles could help you in a pinch...

ATTDIA - Attributes prompt from the command line, if you are partial to dialog boxes set ATTDIA to 1. 

ATTREQ - no time to key in attribute information while inserting your blocks due to a rush job?  Set ATTREQ to "0" and your attributes will be "mum".  The default values will automatically be assumed and you can go back and change them later when you have more time.

ATTDISP - If you'd like to turn ON all of your attributes (even the invisible ones) or turn them all OFF, the ATTDISP command can help you out.  The ON/OFF settings are self-explanatory, Normal returns the attributes to their original settings.

Enjoy!

AutoCAD Tips for Speedy Move or Copy

This tip is for anyone who wants to grab objects and move or copy them ever so quickly!

1.  While at the command prompt - Select the objects to move/copy.
2.  While holding down the left pick button drag them to the desired location (do not accidentally select a grip)
3.  To Copy instead of move hold down the Control key while dragging (which requires a bit of coordination on your part).

or...what if there are so many grips on the objects you are trying to move or copy that you can't easily select a point on the object without nabbing one of those pesky grips?

Try this:

1.  Same as before, select the objects you want to move/copy.
2.  With the RIGHT mouse button, drag the objects to the location you want to move or copy them to
3.  The following menu will display making it easy for you to accomplish your goal!

Note:  The latter only works in AutoCAD 2005 or higher.

Enjoy!

AutoCAD Quick Tip - Get the Area of a Hatch Pattern

Need to find the area of a hatch pattern?  Don't forget the age old LIST command - simply select the crosshatching and AutoCAD will list the total area. 

Command: LIST
Select Objects: (pick the hatch pattern)
HATCH     Layer: "Const"
                            Space: Model space
                  Hatch pattern ANSI31
                 Hatch scale   10.0000
                 Hatch angle      0
                 Not associative
                 Area      315.3232
                

AutoCAD Quick Tip - Another Super Speedy Means of Counting your Blocks!

If you are on AutoCAD 2002 or higher - you can used the Enhanced Attribute Extract command (EATTEXT) to do a quick calculation of all your blocks...Simply use the defaults for the first three pages of the wizard and you'll find yourself looking at a very nice listing of all the blocks in your drawing - neatly tallied up for you! 

AutoCAD Quick Tip - Top Secret Options in Trim and Extend

Both Trim and Extend have two top secret options that come in really handy for those of us who've discovered them.

1)  When asked to select the Cutting Edges (Trim) or Boundary Edges (Extend) you can simply hit an Enter to select all the visible objects on the screen as edges.

2) When asked to select the objects to Trim (or Extend), you can use the very valuable Fence option to select many objects at one time.

These two top secret options will save you tons of time (and don't we use the Trim and Extend commands ALL the time?).  Don't forget that you can now hold down the Shift key within either of the two commands to switch to the other (so if you're in Trim it will switch to Extend and vice versa).

Quick Tip - Super Quick Extrusion of Text (and other objects)

Need to give your text an extrusion thickness?  Dust off the old CHANGE command.  Simply select the text (or any object(s) you want to extrude) and select Properties.  Select Thickness and give the object the desired extrusion.  Super Easy!

Command: change
Select objects: 1 found
Select objects:
Specify change point or [Properties]: P
Enter property to change [Color/Elev/LAyer/LType/ltScale/LWeight/Thickness]: T
Specify new thickness <0.0000>: 3

(I recently saw a tip where it was suggested you explode the text into individual segments with an express tool and then extrude it - yuck!  Wayyyyy too much work!)

Quick Tip - Pushing objects from one space to another

Have you ever needed to move objects from Paper Space to Model Space (or vice versa?).  I've seen it done so many convoluted ways including making a block of the objects and then inserting them into the desired space  yikes!  So here's an easy answer - the Express Tool - CHSPACE!   Change Space (CHSPACE) allows you to move one or more objects from one space to the other while maintaining their original appearance (such as size).  Give it a whirl!

Quick Tip - Controlling your Toolbars

Two helpful tips for better control over your toolbars

1)  To keep your toolbars from docking while you are relocating them - simply hold down the control key.

2)  Double-clicking on the double bar will automatically float the toolbar

Quick Tip - Polygonal Windows

Do you ever find that a rectangular window just won't do?  Try keying in CP (Crossing Polygon) or WP (Window Polygon) at the select objects: prompt.  You will be able to create your own polygonal window with as many vertices as you want - CP will select all objects within or crossing the window, WP will select only those objects within the window.  Only one rule here - the polygon cannot cross itself!

Note:  CP works great in the Stretch command...