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The Tutorials section provides over 100 original tutorials for AutoCAD, 3ds Max and other design applications. Michael’s Corner is an archive of productivity articles that brings you the best AutoCAD tips and tricks. Our Forum is a lively community where AutoCAD users can ask questions and get answers. The Downloads area provides free AutoCAD blocks, free AutoLISP routines and free images.
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AutoCAD Productivity
Avoid Using ‘Standard’ in Text & Dimension Styles
From: AutoCAD Productivity Articles #141
Originally published: August 2015
In addition to Layer 0, every single drawing on the planet has a Text style called ‘Standard’, and a Dimension style called ‘Standard’. They're the defaults.
When developing company standards, it's best to not modify the Standard styles; leave 'em alone and make your own.
And here's why. Let's say you have text you added to Drawing A (using your modified ‘Standard’ text style to use the Trebuchet font), and you drag that text into Drawing B where the Standard text style uses the TXT.SHX font.
Since Drawing B already has a ‘Standard’ text style—see opening sentence, above—who do you think will "win" when it comes to how the text looks? The text in Drawing B will use the font which is already assigned to the Standard text style.
In the illustration, you see the result when I drag the text from Drawing A into Drawing B. Questions?
See all the articles published in August 2015
Michael's Corner
Between 2003 and 2016, Michael Beall (and one or two guests) wrote almost 600 articles for CADTutor. The focus of these articles is AutoCAD productivity, and although some of them are now more than a few years old, most remain relevant to current versions of AutoCAD. The article above is just one example. Check out Michael's Corner for a full listing.
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Over the years, our forum members have contributed hundreds of images, showcasing their amazing work. The images above are just a small selection that demonstrate the wide range of project types our community is involved with. Take a look at our gallery to see all the images published in the last 12 months.
Tip of the Day
Auto-repeating Commands
Sometimes you need to repeat a command lots of times and it can be a bit tedious doing the usual
and or even using the Enter key on the keyboard. It would be really useful if you could just keep a command auto-repeating until you hit the Escape key Esc. Well, you can. All you need to do is make a small change to the CUI.For example, say you want to draw lots of circles and have the circle command auto-repeat so that you can just pick center, radius, center, radius etc. Here's what you do:
- Select from the pull-down menu to display the CUI dialogue box.
- In the "Customizations in All CUI Files" section, click on "Toolbars" and then "Draw" to reveal the Draw commands, and then click "Circle".
- The Properties area now changes to display the Circle button properties and under the "Macro" heading, you will see the macro used to start the Circle command. By default, this macro is:
^C^C_circle
. To cause the Circle command to auto-repeat, simply add a "*
" before the existing macro. Once edited, your macro should look like this:*^C^C_circle
. - Now click the "OK" button to save and return to the drawing.
Try the circle command and see what happens.
This technique can be used with most commands. For example, if you are doing a lot of dimensioning, you could auto-repeat the Linear Dimension command so that you can draw all your dimensions without breaking stride.
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