Multileaders (command: MLEADER) are so nice to work with. If you haven’t used them, you should play with them to get a feel for how they work. The AutoCAD User’s Guide has a lot of good information on them including pictures and animations.

You may have heard about how you can link Microsoft Excel spreadsheets to a table in AutoCAD 2008 and have them stay in sync with each other. It is easy to do but it’s not as straight-forward as you might imagine. Here is how to do it in a few easy steps. Read more »

I used to use Quick Leaders (command: QLEADER) in past versions of AutoCAD. In AutoCAD 2007/2008 they introduced annotative scaling for text, leaders, etc. I was excited about the possibilities of annotative scaling but was disappointed when I applied annotative scaling to Quick Leaders. When I would change the annotative scale in a drawing the text would either seperate from or overlap the leader. This was a problem! Read more »

You may have noticed Sheet Set Manager (SSM) doesn’t like characters such as:

Of course many of these symbols are often used in title blocks and detail view titles. SSM won’t even accept a simple inch mark (”). I found a way around it. Read more »

Sadly most of us have experienced this kind of frustration. A drawing becomes so corrupted that RECOVER can’t even fix it. Never fear! Autodesk has workarounds. These tips are good to know because it seems things like this tend to happen when a deadline is right around the corner.

I like using the INSPECT (or AECINSPECT) command in Civil 3D 2008 instead of Express Tools XLIST. Read more »

The AutoCAD 2008 Command Reference brought to you by kxcad looks similar to the AutoCAD help file. I found it useful because it’s searchable using Google. For example…

I’ve noticed a bug in AutoCAD 2008 that causes annotative text to disappear or become unselectable. This is very annoying, but there is a temporary fix. Read more »

There are some useful inquiry commands in Civil 3D 2008 & 2009. Similar commands used to be available in Map 3D, but from what I hear (and in my experience) they have stopped working. Read more »

I like the NOTES command in Civil 3D. I found out about it from Map 3D and Murphs Law. Read more »

One of my favorite commands is TORIENT (text orient). You can automatically orient a bunch of TEXT, MTEXT, ATTDEF, or BLOCKs w/attributes at an absolute angle or at a “most readable” angle (flips it 180 degrees if it’s upside-down). Very lazy!