60 AutoCAD Tips in 60 Minutes

Lynn Allen - Autodesk, Inc.

AC330-1
If you want a plethora of power user tips, then be sure to join Cadalyst columnist and author Lynn Allen as she takes you through a whirlwind of productivity techniques that are certain to improve your everyday drawing life. At a tip a minute, you are certain to discover some AutoCAD features that will remove some of the tedium and boost your ability to meet project deadlines.

About the Speaker:

Lynn Allen, Cadalyst columnist and Autodesk Technical Evangelist, speaks to more than 30,000 users worldwide each year. For the past 16 years, she has written a monthly column in Cadalyst magazine called "Circles and Lines" and is the voice behind the popular Cadalyst videos -Tips and Tricks Tuesday with Lynn Allen. Lynn started using AutoCAD software with Release 1.4 over 20 years ago, and taught at the corporate and collegiate level for 13 years before joining Autodesk. A sought-after public speaker with a unique comedic style, Lynn is always one of the highest rated speakers and host of Autodesk University. The author of three AutoCAD books, her latest is entitled AutoCAD Professional Tips and Techniques. Email: lynn.allen@autodesk.com Twitter: Lynn_Allen Blog: www.autodesk.com/lynnallen

60 AutoCAD Tips in 60 Minutes

Introduction
With so much going on in our everyday drawing life we have a tendency to get in an AutoCAD rut. The goal behind this course is to show you a variety of tips that will spark a new awareness and lead you down the road to increased productivity!

User Interface Tips:

1) AutoComplete (Tab to cycle) After keying in a one or more characters - use the tab key at the command line to cycle through all of the command and system variable combinations 2) Arrow to move up and down command list. Up and down arrows can take you through previously executed commands. Great for Lispers. 3) Control+9 to toggle command line on/off. 4) Right Click on the command line to retrieve previous commands from the shortcut menu.

5) Move Model space/Layout tabs to the Status bar for more screen real estate. Move to and from the status bar via the right click Hide Layout/Model tabs option.

6) Dynamic editing of Layout Tabs Double Click to rename the tab. Use Control key to copy layout tabs, simply drag to move them. 7) Drag and Drop layout tabs to Sheet Set After saving your drawing you can easily drag and drop your layout tabs to the active sheet set.

60 AutoCAD Tips in 60 Minutes

8) Maximizing Viewports Double click on a viewport to open and edit the contents as though you were in model space. No need to worry about accidentally modifying the scale factor and yet zoom and pan all you want. Click outside of the red area to quickly get back to your paperspace layout.

9) Taskbar to 1 Display all open files at the taskbar by setting the system variable TASKBAR to 1. 10) Customize the Quick Access Toolbar for maximum productivity! (Layer drop-down, SAVEAS)

11) Search for commands in the Application Menu Cant find a command in the Ribbon? The Application Menu will show you where it is!

60 AutoCAD Tips in 60 Minutes

Tool Palette Tips:

12) Quickly create a Tool Palette of your blocks in Design Center

Tip: Be sure to PURGE the drawing with the blocks first! 13) Drag and Drop blocks to your Tool Palette Highlight a block and use a right click to drag a block to an open tool palette. Your new tool with also remember the layer, rotation angle, scale, etc. 14) Set up tools to automatically scale to your drawing Set the Auxiliary scale factor to Plot Scale or Dimscale

15) Drag and Drop Hatch patterns to your Tool Palette Highlight a hatch pattern and use a right click to drag the hatch pattern to the tool palette. The pattern, layer, scale factor, and rotation angle are also saved with the hatch pattern. 16) Drag and Drop a Dimension to save all the settings and the layer for speedy additions of new dimensions with the same settings. 17) Easily customize your icon with an existing image file. 18) Bonus tip: Use ADD Selected in AutoCAD 2011 to achieve much of the same results

Layer Tips:
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60 AutoCAD Tips in 60 Minutes

19) Customize your Layer Columns For maximum productivity be sure to turn off any columns you arent using. 20) Layer States for maximum productivity

AutoCAD gurus use Layers States so they can avoid constantly changing the layer settings.

21) Applying Layer States per Viewport

After setting up your layer states you can apply them to individual viewports

22) SETBYLAYER

This is a fantastic command to set any object (including those within nested blocks) back to BYLAYER!

Misc. Layer Tips:

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60 AutoCAD Tips in 60 Minutes

23) Layer Translater (LAYTRANS)

Great for mapping layers from one naming convention to another

9) LAYWALK (View layers individually)

Use the LAYWALK command to quickly view individual layers 10) LAYDEL (Delete even the most stubborn layers!) Use this fantastic Express Tool to delete any layer (except for 0 and defpoints) 11) LAYISO Isolates layer(s) for easy editing. AutoCAD 2008 and above allows you to fade the other layers so you can see the objects on the other layers but not accidentally modify them.

60 AutoCAD Tips in 60 Minutes

12) COPYTOLAYER Allows you to make a copy of an object to another layer. You can even create a new layer if needed! 13) Autodesk Seek Use the DC Online tab in Design Center to easily get to the content on Autodesk Seek (or just select the Autodesk Seek button in AutoCAD 2010+)

Autodesk Se www.autode
TIMESAVERS:
14) JOIN command (Glue) Use the Join command to glue together polylines, lines, arcs, elliptical arcs and splines. Join two lines together that are collinear, even if there are gaps between them. Join different types of objects together if there are no gaps. Join more than one arc, even with gaps, as long as they lie in the same imaginary circle. You can even use the JOIN command to turn an arc into a circle. 15) OVERKILL This Express tool is a great way to delete duplicate objects and clean up your drawing. OVERKILL removes unneeded objects by deleting duplicates and combining line and arc segments that overlap. There are multiple settings to ensure you get just the results you want.

60 AutoCAD Tips in 60 Minutes

31) CHANGE command to shorten/lengthen Use the age-old CHANGE command to quickly lengthen/shorten line segments to a specific point (Ortho on) 32) Highlight objects and use a right click to Move and Copy 33) Speedy Array (Control key) Select objects, select a grip, C for Copy and hold the Control key down to do a quickie array! 34)Shift for more than one hot grip

35)Speedy Trims/Extends Hit an extra enter to turn the entire drawing into a cutting edge (objects dont highlight though!). 36) More Trim/Extend: Shift key to switch between Trim and Extend and Edgemode 37) Fast Corners using Shift in FILLET command Use the Shift option in the FILLET command to quickly square off corners (no need to set the radius to 0)

60 AutoCAD Tips in 60 Minutes

38) FILTERS command Go directly to the undocumented FILTERS command to quickly delete excess layer filters.

System Variables:
39)PEDITACCEPT Set PEDITACCEPT to 1 to avoid the irritating Do you want to turn it into a polyline question. 40) OSNAPZ to replace Z Value with Current Elevation When snapping to objects with different elevations, you may want the current elevation to be used for the Z value. Set OSNAPZ to 1. 41) PLINEGEN - Sets how linetype patterns generate around the vertices of a 2D polyline.

42) WHIPARC to 1 for smooth arcs and circles (forget dealing with VIEWRES!) 43) SELECTIONANNODISPLAY Set to 0 to turn off ghosting with annotative objects

60 AutoCAD Tips in 60 Minutes

OPTIONS Tips:
44)Default Template File for QNEW Use the Files tab to set a default template file for starting new drawings. This will eliminate you needing to select a template file each time (use the NEW command if you want to select a different template file).

45) Right Click Customization Configure your right mouse button to do BOTH a shortcut menu and an enter in OPTIONS (user preferences tab)

46) Speed up drawings with Annotative Scaling Turn off Maintain Visual Fidelity while you are drawing. Turn it back on right before saving to a lower release number.

Display Order:
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60 AutoCAD Tips in 60 Minutes

47) TEXTTOFRONT command Bring all of the text to the top of the draworder with the TEXTTOFRONT command. 48) HATCHTOBACK command Sends all hatch patterns to the bottom of the draworder .

Table Tips:
49) AutoFill AutoCAD Tables Use AutoFill to do automatic numbering in Tables.

50) Tables wrap automatically over multiple columns (as long as Table Breaks are enabled)

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60 AutoCAD Tips in 60 Minutes

Misc. Tips:
51) Control the Text Sample string with MTJIGSTRING 52) Fade External References (by default they are faded by 70% in 2011) XDWGFADECTL

53) Use OSNAP Tracking to quickly find the center of a box (in fact use Object Snap Tracking to make your life much better period!)

54) BURST to explode blocks with Attributes and maintain their attribute value (not definition) 55) Reverse Search for Xrefs In Design Center, Use the Search tool to do a reverse search for drawing files that are xrefd into other files.

56) The Magical QDIM command Use for speedy dimensioning!

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60 AutoCAD Tips in 60 Minutes

Zooming Tips
57) Zoomwheel Controls the direction of the Scroll Wheel for zooming in and out 58) Zoomfactor Controls the speed of the mouse wheel (3 to 100) undo doesnt work on ZOOMFACTOR 59) VTOPTIONS top secret command that controls the transition speed of zooms (or whether or not there is a transition)

60) Turn your mouse into a Joy Stick with Ctrl+Wheel 61) Double Click for Zoom Extents

Keys, Keys, Keys

62) Control+R to cycle through all of your viewports 63) Control+A to select all the objects in your drawing 64) Tab to cycle through object snaps

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60 AutoCAD Tips in 60 Minutes

65) Hold down right mouse button to clear grips 66) Visit my blog: www.autodesk.com/lynnallen

67) Go to Autodesk University 2011!

Visit Autodesk University Online to view my other 30 tips!

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60 AutoCAD Tips in 60 Minutes

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