Tips and Tricks

[mrenfrow]

I am preparing some lunch time training events at my office. They include Sheet Sets/Fields, Tool Palettes, Tables and Tips and Tricks. The Tips and Tricks seem to be the hardest to prepare for. The reason is I don't know what people don't know! The following is a list I came with that include mostly commands I brought home from the instructors at AutoCAD University 2004. I would hope that some of you out there could just brainstorm some of your most favorite and obscure commands to add to my list.

ASSIST
Opens quick help in the info palette, which provides context-sensitive information

WHOHAS
Displays ownership information for opened drawing files

OPTIONS/DRAFTING/OBJECT SNAP OPTIONS/IGNORE HATCH OBJECTS
Setting for snapping to hatching

COPY VIEWPORT
Copy viewport frame from one drawing to another and maintain integrity of the view

TEXTTOFRONT
Brings text and dimensions in front of all other objects in the drawing

EDGEMODE
Controls how the trim and extend commands determine cutting and boundary edges

CTRL+0
Clean screen - clears the screen of all user interface items exceptthe menu bar and the status bar

PEDITACCEPT
Eliminates the prompt “do you want to turn it into one ?<y>” that occurs when you select a non polyline object

EXOFFSET
Current - this command allows you to offset objects to the current layer instead of the same layer as the original object
Multiple - this command allows you to offset multiple times without reselecting the object to offset

MTEXT
To save your changes and exit the multiline text editor click ok, left click in the drawing outside the editor or press ctrl+enter

EXPRESS/MODIFY/DELETE DUPLICATE OBJECTS
Deletes duplicate objects, lines, arcs and polylines

YE
You can use this macro to erase the objects on a selected layer

LAP
You can change the color and linetype of a layer without going into the layer manager

UTILITIES/OBJECT INSPECT
You can view text information associated with any object in a drawing

TRIM/EXTEND FENCE
Trim or extend multiple lines at once

[Coolmo]

We have an intranet site with all of our standards on it and I've placed a tips and tricks section in it that also includes common problems and their fixes. Things like why hatch patterns appear scattered or the solid hatch doesn't work and things to look out for and check when complex linetypes appear wacky. Stuff like that. Believe me, this cuts down on a lot of the same questions asked almost every day and we also invite suggestions to the site if someone gets something weird happening and they come up with a solution. Just a thought.

[mjfarrell]

If not real busy, search the Forums for some of the
good stuff from the Land Desktop gang.
I'm sure there are some nuggets in there worth sharing.

[dfarris75]

a couple i tend to share with friends and others in my office are maxsort and pickfirst. i have one friend that i have to tell pickfirst to every few months because he forgets it. :neutral:

[MHultgren]

One that I tend to use alot is in the PLINE command, to assure that a tangent is truly tangent to a curve, after you issue the pline command, type A for arc, draw your arc and then type (or right click) and select L for Line and then type L again for length. This will draw a tangent line from the end of the arc at the length specified, either by cursor input or at the command line. Watch for OSNAPS though.