AutoCAD Tips and Tricks


If you send someone a file, please send the various files that are needed with the drawing. Open the drawing up and see if it has any XREF's or IMAGES attached that need to be sent. Check that the XREF's don't have XREF's. Send along your PCP file for printing it so that it looks good when they plot it. Did you use any custom fonts, either ACAD or True Type? If you don't want to deal with all of this, simply use the new command PACK to create a set of drawings and information for use by your consultant. He'll really thank you for this. The PACK command will create a folder with your drawing, the XREF's, font files, the Font Map file (.fmp) and anything else that your consultant could possibly want open the drawing with. It will even recreate the subfolder directory structure for you to eliminate some of the pesky problems when dealing with XREF's that have a saved path.

This actually brings up a nice thing to do. When creating an XREF, uncheck the box for save path, and make sure the file you are XREF'ing is in the same folder as you drawing is - no more problems when moving files around.

We used to use the CHANGE command or DDCHPROP all the time to fix drawings coming into the office to match our standards for plotting. In r13 there was the new command DDMODIFY that was probably the slowest command of them all. Now, in r14 they have fixed the speed of this command, and it is very useful at changing almost everything about an object.

To go with DDMODIFY I find MATCHPROP to be indispensable. This allows me to pick an object that is correct and then pick the object that I wish to make exactly like it - i.e., to match it.

Your F3 key turns you running osnaps on and off. This is nice when you just need to pick a quick point without any osnaps, and also for beginners just learning to use the osnaps. They can turn them off and on as they get frustrated with them until they learn how to work with the osnaps. Something to remember when using the osnaps is that sometimes you don't want to pick on a line, but rather in space, thereby not picking an osnap, but rather a relative position from the first point. This is

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