101 AutoCAD Productivity Tips & Tricks

101 AutoCAD Productivity Tips & Tricks

Preface

CadSetterOut.com

101 AutoCAD
Productivity
Tips & Tricks
Become the best CAD drafter in your office

Paul Munford
1/1/2015

101 AutoCAD Productivity Tips & Tricks

Preface

The CAD Setter Out is a blog dedicated to sharing tips and tricks for
creating technical drawings and digital models using CAD.
I firmly believe that creating drawings with your CAD software should be
intuitive and fun. I don't want your CAD software to negatively affect your
creativity or productivity!
The focus is on creating shop drawings for the construction industry
(because that's what I do) using AutoCAD and Autodesk Inventor
(because that's what I use).
You are all most welcome :D
Paul Munford
@Cadsetterout

101 AutoCAD Productivity Tips & Tricks

Preface

Contents
101 AutoCAD Productivity Tips & Tricks ............................................... 2
Preface .................................................................................................. 9
Create ................................................................................................. 10

01. Use polylines ...................................................................... 10

02. Use Layers ........................................................................ 11
03. Coming soon!...................................................................... 13
04. Coming soon!...................................................................... 13
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Edit ..................................................................................................... 14

21. CLIP ................................................................................. 14

101 AutoCAD Productivity Tips & Tricks

Preface

22. Grip editing ....................................................................... 14

23. Coming soon!...................................................................... 18
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Document ............................................................................................ 19

41. Mtext formatting quick tips ................................................... 19

42. Open or save a DWT file outside the default path .................... 19
43. How to set your linetype scale correctly ................................. 19
44. What Lies beneath? ............................................................. 20
45. Coming soon!...................................................................... 21
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101 AutoCAD Productivity Tips & Tricks

Preface

47. Coming soon!...................................................................... 21

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60. Coming soon!...................................................................... 21
Customize ............................................................................................ 22

61. Centering Mtext .................................................................. 22

62. Layering quick tips .............................................................. 22
63. Find your support paths ....................................................... 22
64. Coming soon!...................................................................... 24
65. Coming soon!...................................................................... 24
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Productivity .......................................................................................... 25

81. The SHIFT key .................................................................... 25

82. The ALT key........................................................................ 25
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101 AutoCAD Productivity Tips & Tricks

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97. Coming soon!...................................................................... 26

98. Coming soon!...................................................................... 26
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100. Coming soon! .................................................................... 26
About the Author................................................................................... 27
Resources ............................................................................................ 28

101. Let great CAD tips come to you! .......................................... 28

101 AutoCAD Productivity Tips & Tricks

Preface

Preface
It was 2004. I was standing in front of an office building wearing a suit.
After eight years in self employment, I was going to my first job
interview.
I'd never worked in an office before, I'd never had a job where I had to
wear a suit to work, I'd never worked for a salary. But I had a lot riding
on this, my family was depending on me.
As it turned out, I needn't have worried. The number of people out there
who know about woodwork, technical drawing AND computers is relatively
small. Despite my lack of experience, I was hired on the spot.
Looking back, this was a massive turning point in my career. I love
designing and working with computers. If I am a duck, CAD is my water!
But it took me a long time to learn how to use AutoCAD productively. I
literally spent every lunchtime and evening in my first few years of
employment learning everything I could to work smarter with AutoCAD.
I carefully noted my favorite tips in a notepad file on my desktop I joking
called my 'Spell book'. For the first time, I'm opening up my complete
spell book to you.
I hope that this eBook helps you to become super productive with
AutoCAD in the shortest time possible.
This eBook is for those of you who have learned the basics of AutoCAD,
and who are now ready to take it to the next level.
Questions or comments? Please email me:
Paul@Cadsetterout.com

101 AutoCAD Productivity Tips & Tricks

Create

Create
Tips relating to creating 2D and 3D geometry in AutoCAD.

01. Use polylines

Selecting just the geometry you want to edit in a complicated drawing can
be a PITA. Drawing with polylines, or editing your geometry into a
polylines later, gives you on single item to select - much easier!
Joining lines and arcs together that represent a single object (such as a
door frame, or a pane of glass) allow you pick that object with a single
pick.

Command entry: pline

You can draw directly using Polylines, or you can draw your shapes with
regular lines and then join them together to make Polylines. Using
Polylines will save you clicks and picks for the remainder of the drawing.
Drawing a Polyline is a simple as drawing a regular line, in fact youre
drawing with Polylines every time you draw a rectangle!

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Create

Polylines must consist of lines and arcs that are on the same layer, and
have the same properties such as line type and line weight. If you join a
group of lines and arcs together these properties will be taken from the
first entity you picked.
Command entry: pedit
If the first line or arc you picked is not a Polyline already the following
prompt is displayed:
Object selected is not a polyline.
Do you want it to turn into one? <Y>: Enter y or n, or press ENTER
You will want to enter Yes! You can get rid of this annoying prompt by
setting PEDITACCEPT to 1

02.

Use Layers

Layers in AutoCAD are often thought of as plastic 'overlays'. All of the

geometry you create is hosted on a layer. Layers can be used to control

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Create

the colour, line weight and line type of your geometry. Layers can also be
used to filter geometry on and off to create the plotted drawing that you
want.
The correct use of layers depends on which industry you are working in.
The layering standards for Civil and Architectural drawings are far more
important than mechanical design.
My advice is to go with the flow on layering, as long as you are using the
same layering standard as the rest of the people in your office, company
and (preferably) industry, you will do well.
For a really comprehensive tutorial on the layers, check out this series of
posts by Mike Thomas on the Design and Motion blog.
AutoCAD Layers deep dive series

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Create

101 AutoCAD Productivity Tips & Tricks

Edit

Edit
Tips relating to editing your 2D and 3D Geometry.

21.

CLIP

Use the CLIP command to crop X-references - double tip, it works on

Blocks too!

22.

Grip editing

Grips are those little blue shapes that pop up on your geometry when you
select it.
Grips are a very simple and precise way to edit geometry, and they work
particularly well with geometry that has been collected into a polyline.
When you pick on a grip, look at the command line. You will see a short
list of options available to you including Base point and Copy.
By typing B for base point at the command line and hitting Enter you
are free to pick another point to move or stretch your geometry by. By
typing C at the command line you will copy the geometry as you
move/stretch it.

When youve picked on a grip, right click!

Right clicking on a Grip will display a shortcut menu of commands to
modify that object.

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Edit

To select multiple Grips, pick an entity to highlight it. Now hold down the
shift key and pick on a grip. The grip will highlight in red and you are now
free to pick another grip
You can even pick grips on multiple entities. When you have picked all the
grips you need to, you can now perform an operation on all of the grips at
once.

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101 AutoCAD Productivity Tips & Tricks

Edit

Turn Dynamic input on! Grips and Dynamic Input go together like melted
cheese and sweet chilli sauce. To turn Dynamic Input on click on the icon
in the status bar.

Select an entity and then hover over a grip. You will get immediate
feedback on the properties of the Geometry.

When you click on a grip you will see options for editing the geometry
right there in front of your eyes!
If the highlighted tooltip isnt the feature you want to change, just keep
hitting the Tab key until the feature you want to change is highlighted.

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101 AutoCAD Productivity Tips & Tricks

Edit

You can use the Down Arrow key to pick other options and the up Arrow
key to repeat previous input.

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Edit

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Document
Tips relating to creating drawings, including line type definitions,
Annotations and so on.

41. Mtext formatting quick tips

Ctrl+Shift+U: changes selected Mtext text to uppercase
Ctrl+Shift+L: changes selected text to lowercase.
Ctrl+U to underline selected text. Use Ctrl+O to overline selected text.
Ctrl+Spacebar: removes font formatting -- bold, underline, etc.

42. Open or save a DWT file outside the default path

Have you ever browsed to the folder you want to open a drawing from
changed the file type to DWT and then been really annoyed when
AutoCADs Open dialog flips you straight to the default Template folder?
I know I have, and the trick was staring me in the face for years before I
noticed it - just hit the 'Back' button in the dialoge!

43. How to set your linetype scale correctly

There are now four AutoCAD variables that govern your line type scale. It
can seem a little confusing, here are my suggested values:
LTSCALE = 1.0
CELTSCALE = 1.0
PSLTSCALE = 1
MSLTSCALE = 1
To change a variables value, simply type it in at the command line and
enter a new value when prompted. These values are saved in the
drawing, so its worth getting them right in your template file.
For a full explanation of WHY I suggest these values, read:
AutoCAD Line Type Scales, The Secret Truth.

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44. What Lies beneath?

Don't forget to click on the little arrow in
the plot dialogue to reveal options such as
plot style options and paper orientation!
Here's more on more options!
AutoCAD Plotting, What is hidden beneath
the Plot Dialogue arrow?

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101 AutoCAD Productivity Tips & Tricks

Customize

Customize
Tips relating to customizing your AutoCAD install, including CAD
management.

61. Centering Mtext

CENTERMT, Toggles grip editing of Mtext width. Mtext will stretch in
width from the side or from centre.

62. Layering quick tips

if you set the undocumented system variable LAYERDLGMODE to 0,
the Layer command will invoke the old interface instead of the new
one.
You can create a printable layer list from the new layer palette by
selecting everything (CTRL+A), copying (CTRL+C) and then opening a
new spreadsheet and pasting (CTRL+V).

63. Find your support paths

Ti find out which Windows folders are included in your AutoCAD support
paths, type OPTIONS at the command line.
You should find yourself in the FILES tab of the options dialogue. Expand
the 'Support File Search Path' node to see which folders are included.

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Customize

101 AutoCAD Productivity Tips & Tricks

Customize

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Productivity
Everything else!

81. The SHIFT key

Holding down the SHIFT key while creating fillets will join two lines
together into a polyine with a 'zero radius' filet, without over writing your
previous fillet radius setting.
This is a great way of joining reluctant geometry together for a CNC tool
path - it works with Chamfers too.
When using TRIM or EXTEND, pressing SHIFT will toggle between one
command and the other - if you type TRIM and press SHIFT while
selecting geometry, AutoCAD will extend instead of trim.

82. The ALT key

Alt+F File menu
Alt+E Edit menu
Alt+V View menu
Alt+I Insert menu
Alt+O Format menu
Alt+T Tools menu
Alt+D Draw menu
Alt+N Dimension menu
Alt+M Modify menu
Alt+W Window menu
Alt+X Express menu
Alt+H Help menu
Alt+R Recent Documents
Alt+C Open Documents
Alt+A Recent Actions
Alt+S Open Menu Browser with focus on Search
Hold down the ALT key and type '0160' to insert a blank space in a text
field. This is really helpful when working with the sheet set manager.

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About the Author

Paul Munford is the CAD/CAM Manager for Halstock
Cabinet Makers in the UK.
After studying Theatre Production Design at
College, Paul worked as a freelance Scenery Design
and Builder for eight years.
Working as an Art director on Pop Videos, Adverts, Television shows, and
Feature films, Paul gained a wide range of experience in scenery design
including Presentation work, Graphic design and Drafting (by hand).
In a parallel career, Paul worked on the shop floor in Exhibition and
Events, working his way up (literally) from guy-that-unloads-the-van,
through Carpenter to Charge hand to Workshop manager to Project
Manager.
All of this came to a head in 2004 when (with Mortgage, Marriage and
the family life beckoning) Paul gave up the la vida loca and decided that
it was time to grow up and get a proper job.
Paul decided to focus on the one skill that brought all his diverse
experience together (technical drawing) and went to night school to
learn this 'CAD' thing he'd heard so much about.
Little appreciating how few people there are in the job market with the
desirable combination of experience in making, technical drawing and
computing, Paul walked into his first salaried CAD Drafting position a few
months later - and stepped into a whole new life...
You can read more about Paul's experiences at Cadsetterout.com

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Resources

Resources
101. Let great CAD tips come to you!
Here is a list of some of my favourite AutoCAD Resources on the Web.
My tip here is to use a feed reader such as Outlook or Feedly to collect the
RSS feeds from each of these blogs.
New content will appear in your feed reader as it is published on the blog,
saving you the trouble of having to visit them to find out what's new.
For a complete listing of every Blog that I follow, check out the
Cadsetterout Links Page.

http://www.mycadsite.com/tutorials/index.htm
http://www.cad-notes.com/
http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/
http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad
http://designandmotion.net/blog/
http://cadtrainerguy.com/
http://bestcadtips.com/
http://cadpanacea.com/
http://blog.jtbworld.com/
http://thecadgeek.com/
https://cadtipstricks.wordpress.com/

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Resources