Michael’s Corner

Michael's Corner is a monthly publication written by Michael E. Beall, Autodesk Authorized Author and peripatetic AutoCAD trainer. Michael travels all over the USA, bringing his fantastic experience and great understanding of AutoCAD to his clients. Michael's Corner brings together many of the tips, tricks and methods developed during these training sessions for the benefit of all users.

Michael's Corner provides something for every AutoCAD user. Every month, a number of articles cover a wide range of topics, suitable for users at all levels, including "The Basics" for those just starting out. Essentially, the aim of Michael's Corner is to help all AutoCAD users work smarter and faster.

This month…

From the Vault

Originally published December 2007

Custom Button #3: Automating UCS Object & UCS World

When working on a drawing that's oriented at a non-orthogonal angle, it sure would be nice to be able to just whip that drawing around to be horizontal so you don't need ibuprofen by 10AM from kinking your head looking at the thing. Back in August 2004 I covered use of the UCS command to bring a selected line to horizontal, now let's put that on a button!

We will begin with the same process from October's coverage concerning how to add a command from an existing toolbar to a tool palette. In this case, we will be working from the UCS toolbar.

Instructions to Automate UCS Object and UCS World

1. Open the UCS toolbar and open your tool palette window.
2. Right-click on the title bar of the tool palette title bar (or in between icons on the palette) and click Customize Palettes to open the Customize dialog box.
3. Move the Customize dialog box aside. As you will recall, it's simply the key to get in the "door" for the process of copying a button to the palette.

4. Click and drag the UCS Object button from the UCS toolbar and drop it onto your palette. Also, drag and drop the UCS World button from the UCS toolbar onto your palette.
5. You can now close the UCS toolbar and close the Customize dialog box; we got what we needed.
6. On the tool palette, right-click the UCS Object button and edit the Command String field to read as follows. You will notice that spaces are replaced with semi-colons so that pressing Enter will be more obvious. While you're there, you can change the Name of the button if you want. I added the text + Plan in this example.

^C^CUCS;OB;PLAN;;

7. On the tool palette, right-click the UCS World button and edit the Command String field to read as follows. You will notice that spaces are replaced with semi-colons so that pressing Enter will be more obvious. (Edit the Name as desired.)

^C^CUCS;W;PLAN;;

Note: The UCS Object routine will not work on Xrefs, but don't panic. All that's required is for a line to be drawn on the line in the Xref to be aligned. I have my students make a separate button for Xref alignment and the command string reads like this:

^C^CLINE;ENDP;\ENDP;\;UCS;OB;PLAN;;

Here's what the additional characters mean:

ENDP After launching the Line command, this kicks in the Endpoint object snap.

\ Backslash; Pause for user response (also used in last month's corner on Revision clouds).

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