AutoCAD Tips and Tricks
This week's tips
Our community members love sharing their knowledge. Many of them have years of experience and have solved many CAD problems across a range of industries. These tips are just as useful whether you're just starting out with AutoCAD or whether you're a seasoned professional always willing to learn new skills.
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Today's Tip
Shift + Right-click menu
Object snaps are really important in AutoCAD and in addition to the running object snaps, many AutoCAD users have the Object Snap toolbar permanently docked on their screen. However, as screen space is often at a premium, you might like to consider accessing the object snaps from the Shift + Right-click menu. If you didn't know about this, you'll find that it's even better than the Object Snap toolbar because it takes up no space and it contains all the object snaps including "Mid Between 2 Points" and the Point Filters.
Yesterday's Tip
Mid Between 2 Points (m2p)
Sometimes you might want to find a point midway between two other points. In the past, you might have drawn a line between these two points and then used "Snap to Midpoint" but this requires the drawing of a construction line and isn't very efficient.
Enter the m2p object snap. This will find the midpoint between any two picked points without the need for a construction line.
How it works: Say you want to draw a circle midway between two squares, start the circle command and then enter "m2p" when prompted to specify the center point. Now just follow the prompts.
Command: circle
Specify center point for circle or [3P/2P/Ttr (tan tan radius)]: m2p
First point of mid: (pick first point)
Second point of mid: (pick second point)
Specify radius of circle or [Diameter] <20.000>: (pick to complete circle)
Tuesday's Tip
Add additional "standard scales"
To create additional "standard scales" in AutoCAD, type SCALELISTEDIT. You will then see the Edit Scale List dialog, shown on the right.
Click on the Add… button. In the Add scale dialog, enter the name of the scale, for example "1:1250", this is the name that will appear in the list. Then enter the Paper units and Drawing units as desired.
Note: "Drawing units" refers to the modelspace units.
Monday's Tip
Who is using that file?
If you are unable to open a drawing for editing (read-only) because it is in use, and want to find out who has it open, start a new drawing, or go to a drawing you have open and type WHOHAS at the command line. Browse to the drawing file using the file dialog box and double-click the filename (or select the file and click the Open button). A small message box will appear, showing who is using the file, the name of their PC and when it was opened.
Sunday's Tip
Do you want to turn it into one? <Y>
When using PEDIT and selecting an object which is not a polyline you will get a message asking if you want to turn it into a polyline. This can be quite annoying if you're having to create closed polylines from a bunch of lines. To stop getting this message, type PEDITACCEPT and press Enter. Then type 1 and press Enter. This will automatically answer "yes" to the question in future.
Saturday's Tip
Bring recent commands to the command line with the "Up" cursor key
Use the "Up" cursor (arrow) key on the keyboard to scroll through recently used commands on the command line. When you find the one you want, hit the Enter key to start that command.
You can also use the "Down" cursor key to scroll in the oposite direction.
Friday's Tip
Salvage a corrupted drawing
So, you opened a drawing only to find it has been corrupted. You've tried Recover but to no avail. Now what?
As a last resort, open a new drawing and then insert the corrupted drawing into the new one (). The insertion will only bring in the main (Model Space) components of the corrupted drawing; this trick does not recover any paper space objects. Hey, I didn't promise a miracle but it sure beats losing the drawing altogether now, doesn't it?.