After asking around, someone in our office figured out that “Implied Windowing” was turned off.

If you ever run unto this, here is how you fix it:

Type PICKAUTO into the commandline and change it to 1.

Do you want to turn it into one? <Y>

Almost every time I use PEDIT it is because I want to convert the object to a polyline so the extra prompt is pretty useless. To stop the time-wasting prompt simply set PEDITACCEPT to 1 and the PEDIT command will then automatically convert the object to a polyline without asking you first.

Our CAD standards dictate that we use a .shx font but since it cannot be used inside Excel the AutoCAD table takes on the same non-standard font used in the spreadsheet. All of my AutoCAD tables linked to a spreadsheet were coming in with a non-standard font and it was a pain reformatting each and every cell. That’s when I discovered this little secret.

I could expand this dialog box and uncheck “Use Excel formatting”:

Problem solved. With this checkbox unchecked, the fonts take on the current text style in my drawing. Granted, I still need to do some formatting on the AutoCAD table, but this is much easier than reformatting each and every cell, one-by-one.

Remember, when reformatting an AutoCAD Table linked to an Excel spreadsheet, you need to unlock the cells.

It’s actually very simple. Let’s get started.

Type BEDIT to create a block:

Give your block a name and hit OK. Type ATTDEF to define the bearing attribute:

Click the Insert Field button to create a field:

Notice that I selected the BlockPlaceHolder field name, the Rotation block reference property, and the Deg/min/sec format.

Or you can select the Surveyor’s units format:

Set the precision and hit OK. Back in the Attribute Definition box the result will look like this:

Set your text settings and hit OK to insert the attribute at 0,0,0. In the Block Authoring Palette in the Parameters tab, click “Alignment Parameter”.

Insert it at 0,0,0. Drag left with Ortho (shortcut key: F8) on and click anywhere.

Close the block editor:

…and click Yes to save it. The NEAREST OSNAP will automatically appear when you hover near a line and you will see the word “Rotation” align with the same line:

Click and your label will appear:

WBLOCK this block out and reuse it over and over again.

If you have Civil 3D, the point-style method works the best but today I am going to show you how to use fields to make this happen.

This is our goal:

This block contains a point, an X position field, and a Y position field.

THE POINT

First type POINT on the command line and place the point anywhere in your drawing. Type DDPTYPE to modify the size and style of the point if you’d like. I set mine to a plus sign and set the size to 0.125 in absolute units.

THE NORTHING

Next we are going to create the Northing field. To do this, type ATTDEF. Take a look at the picture to see how I setup the attribute definition.

Your standard text settings may look different than mine, but you get the idea. Make sure “Annotative” is unchecked.

Click the Field button to add a field to the Default attribute:

In the Field dialog box, click the “Select Object” button:

…and select the point object. You will then get something like this:

Select the “Position” property. Set the Format and Precision properties and uncheck the X and Z check-boxes. We are choosing only the Y coordinate because Y equals Northing. Hit OK.

This is the final result in the Attribute Definition dialog box for the Northing attribute.

Hit OK.

THE EASTING

Then follow the same steps for the Easting field by typing ATTDEF…

When creating the Easting field, be sure to check the X check-box and uncheck the Y check-box.

The Attribute Definition dialog box should look something like this:

Notice I checked the box that says, “Align below previous attribute definition”. This will place the EASTING directly under the NORTHING attribute:

FINAL STEPS

Finally WBLOCK the point and attribute definitions. Make sure your insertion point is set to the NODE of the point.

Insert your newly-created block and it should display the Northing and Easting wherever you insert it. Copy it around if you like or array it on a grid.

If you have more time, add even more functionality to your block by turning it into a dynamic block.

There is, however, an easy way to delete layers that are being used by entities.

The command is LAYDEL. Type the command and you will be prompted with this:

Select object on layer to delete or [Name]:

You can select objects on the layer that you want to delete or you can type N to select a layer from a dialog box.

Be ware that if you delete the layer, the entities on that layer will also be deleted.

The wishes have been submitted and now it’s time to vote. If you are a user of Autodesk products, this is your chance for your voice to be heard.

Cast your vote…

A quick search for “civil” turned up this video called “AutoCAD Civil 3D 2009 New Features”:

This video is pretty cool but I really hope they use this channel to feature tutorials instead of just marketing videos. We shall see.

I can see how this would be a really great tool but I haven’t fully adopted it because I would need to setup the template to contain all our standard layers (most of our layers are created on the fly through macros) and thus I would be getting notifications constantly as new layers are created. But we might consider setting up our template for this in the future.

Here is how layer reconciliation works: Setting LAYEREVAL to 0 turns the layer reconciliation feature off. Set it to 1 and it will detect new xref layers. Set it to 2 and it will detect new layers added in the drawing and xrefs.

When you open a drawing that contains unreconciled layers, you will see this (AutoCAD 2008):

When you plot a drawing that contains unreconciled layers, you will see this:

I think layer reconciliation is worth taking a look at, especially for companies that want tighter control over layers that are being used.

Have you ever been frustrated that your hatch patterns always cover other objects no matter how many times you set the draw order to send it to back?

Type HPDRAWORDER on the command line and set it to 1.

You can also set this in the BHATCH dialog box: