Sunday, March 29, 2009

TipBits

AutoCAD Typing Tip.
Did you know that in many places you can type the first letter of what you are after and it will scroll to items beginning with that letter.  The best place to try this is in the layer drop-down.  Hit the drop down arrow to display the list and for e.g. if I want to go to the wall layer which is way down the list I type 'w' and it scrolls to the first w in the list.  Now you may have 'A-' at the beginning, I now have '1' but you will still have several different groupings (if not why the prefix?) that you can type.  If I want to go to the roof of level 1, typing '1' gets me close. Typing 'S' gets me close to my 'Site' levels.

Try it in the colour, linetype and plotstyle dropdowns. Generally any dropdown will respond. In the layer manager itself.  Try it in your plotter dialogue box when you change printers. (remember your printers 1st letter for quick setting).  There are lots of places where this will just give you that little bit of speed and if you are impatient like me it will be appreciated.

Moving Objects
Did you know that you don't need to type the move (or m) command to move something.  If the distance is arbitary like text or a tree then you only need to select the item to highlight it,  place your curser on it (not the grip) and press and hold your left mouse button anywhere on the object and you can move it.  You can select multiple items and move them all as long as your mouse hold starts over one of the objects.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

HI it's me the angry cadmonkey!

If you know how to DISABLE this stickymove behaviour I would sure like to hear it. Unintentional use makes me scream

Nathan Ellery said...

No Sorry! I always found it a little (just a little) awkward to make it happen so I can't imagine doing it by accident. But then we all have different work practice. If I see how I promise to post it.

Thanks for dropping by.