Top AutoCAD Tips to become a Power User #techtuesday

AutoCAD Tips to become a Power User

AutoCAD Tips – Copy and paste options

Copy and paste like a pro by utilizing all of the options available in AutoCAD AutoCAD provide some special cut copy and paste options found in either the right-click contextual pop-up menu or in the clipboard panel of the ribbons home tab. Keyboard shortcuts are also shown in the pop-up menu for even faster access.

Some of the special options include being able to define a base point when selecting your entities. So you can then match the insertion point and you’ll target drawing. You can then pay some as a block, a hyperlink or to their original coordinates. The ribbon also gives you access to paste special command useful for when pasting spreadsheet data.

AutoCAD Tips – Command Options

Uncover additional functionality you may not be aware of in the command line. Make sure to look at the command line while a command is in use. It will always prompt you for the correct input sequence and may provide various options for how to use it. For example, both scale and rotate commands have a reference option, allowing you to use selected distances or angles.

The fillet and chamfer each have a polyline option. So you can edit all that is of your polyline with just one click. Even the zoom command has options such as “all” and “extends”. Accessing these options is as easy as entering the highlighted hot-key or by clicking the option word. If you have dynamic input turned on all of the same options that are available for using pull-down menu

AutoCAD Tips – Keyboard combos

Take advantage of AutoCAD’s keyboard shortcuts that can improve your productivity. Here are two to get you going. Bypass the enhanced attribute editor to quickly edit an attribute, hold down the control key when selecting the attribute and it will highlight similar to single-line text for editing.

Clean up those corners quickly by using filet or chamfer by holding down the shift key when selecting the second object.

To reference all AutoCAD shortcuts, just visit autodesk.co.uk shortcuts forward-slash AutoCAD.

AutoCAD Tips – Viewports

Lockdown your layout view or settings to avoid accidental changes. Don’t let a panel Zoom mess up your carefully constructed and scaled lounge viewport. Once you have it right. Always lock the viewport here are two ways to do so. First select the viewport right click from the contextual popup menu. Expand display, locked, and select. Yes.  Click on the lock icon next to the annotation scan in the status bar. This is the easiest and most common method.

AutoCAD Tips – AutoCAD on Any Computer

Access, edit and design CAD drawings, even when you’re away from your primary workstation. With the AutoCAD web app, open a web browser to start designing in the AutoCAD web app on any computer. There’s nothing to install. Working in AutoCAD web app is much like working in the new AutoCAD desktop because the AutoCAD web app has ribbon tools and command line.

You can get up and running quickly by going to web.autocad.com and signing in with your Autodesk ID. In this case, we’re just going to add a piece of text to this drawing.

So that’s web.autocad.com

AutoCAD Tips – Blocks palette

Insert blocks more efficiently with the blocks palette. Easily find the blocks you need with thumbnail icons that provide a preview of available blocks to insert. The palette’s three tabs allow you quick access to find the block you need. You can find blocks from the current drawing from libraries or from the most recently inserted. No matter what type you’re working in, you’ll still have access to all your familiar insertion options, such as scale, angle, rotation, etc. And you can even check the repeat placement option to save additional stuff.

AutoCAD Tips – Favourite places

Stop wasting time by continually navigating multiple levels of folders in the file Open dialog box. Once you get to your folder. Click on the tools in the upper right corner, then add current folder to places. A new icon will appear with the name of the folder. Now you can just click on your new place to jump right to the folder.

AutoCAD Tips – Annotative scaling

Display the same object at different scales in model space or layout using the annotative feature. When you set objects or styles to be annotative in the process of scaling them becomes automated for you. To automate scaling, select the annotatives checkbox in the style dialogues or set individual objects in the properties to be annotative.

Annotative scales can be added to an object either manually or by assigning them, or by allowing them to be added automatically by the viewport. Once the scales are added to the object, it will appear at the correct size for that scale. In addition to annotative subjects, such as text and text dimensions, multi leaders and attributes blocks, and hatches can be set to be annotative as well.

AutoCAD Tips – DWG compare

Identify the differences between two drawing revisions with DWG compare. DWG compare allows you to quickly view the differences between drawings, all objects that are in both would show as gray. Those not in the current drawing will be red. And those only in the current drawing will be green.

You can toggle your comparisons on and off and any changes that you make will reflect in the comparison in real-time. You could even bring objects from your compare drawing into your current one. DWG compare can also insert revision clouds, which may speed up your change process by predefining colour, style and size preferences.