Start the LINE command and type TAN to start the tangent object snap. Click on the first circle near where you expect the line to be tangent to.

Then type TAN again and click on the second circle.

AutoCAD will draw a line between the two circles perfectly tangent to both of them.

Great question Hope!

Ever wonder how to properly explode a block that contains attributes without having the text revert to the attribute tag? Try the BURST command. It a special “explode” command made for blocks with attributes.

See, I told you this was short.

How? I learned that it was simple: there are barcode fonts. So I asked around and found out that they use a “3 of 9″ barcode. After a quick search I found a free one here: http://www.dafont.com/3of9-barcode.font

Of course the next question was what information went into the barcode. I found out that each barcode that goes on our drawing sheets is made up of a combination of something we call a “Vault Plan Number” and the sheet number surrounded by asterisks. Since we already have this infomation on our sheets, I thought, this should be easy!

Here’s how I set it up:

STEP 1
Download and install the 3 of 9 barcode font (this is what we use but your system may use a different kind of barcode).

STEP 2
Create a barcode text style in AutoCAD.

STEP 3
Start the MTEXT command and type an asterisk (*) because this is one of the barcode requirements. Then insert an “object” field, select the “Vault Plan Number” text object, choose the “contents” property and hit OK.

After that field I added a hyphen, then inserted another field for the sheet number. Finally I added another asterisk at the end.

Make sure you set the barcode text style.

STEP 4
Place the barcode in an appropriate place in the sheet template.

This just saved us a couple of tedious steps in printing and placing barcode labels on each sheet!

Then right-click and hold anywhere you want the base point to be until you see a cursor that looks like this:

You could right-click and hold on a grip or anywhere else – it doesn’t matter.

Move your cursor while holding down the right button on your mouse and you will see that AutoCAD copies the linework.

Let go of the right mouse button and AutoCAD will present you with a short menu.

Simply select “paste as block” and your new block will be created. The base point is the place you selected with your mouse.

UPDATE: Then, as one of my subscribers pointed out, use the RENAME command to give the block a logical name. Thank you for pointing this out Tommy!

So lazy!

Click the Match Properties button (or type the MATCHPROP command) and select the source text. Then before you select anything, type S on the command line and uncheck the “Text” checkbox in the Property Settings dialog box.

Then select other text objects and only the layer name will be matched.

This is frustrating! Yes, it is possible to address the problem by purging the drawings to get rid of the extra unnecessary layers, but that didn’t fix the problem in all cases. Then I discovered the MAXSORT variable. It was set to 1000 in my drawing, so I increased it to 2000 and it worked! The layers were instantly sorted in alphabetical order.

The tip says:

“One of my all-time favorite techniques that I still use today is placing text below a dimension line so that it is part of the dimension object itself. Enter either the DDEdit or TEdit command and select the dimension object. While in the text editor, place your cursor at the end of the dimension value and enter the code switch X followed by the desired text string. For example, if you want the word TYPICAL to appear below the dimension line, the code should read: XTYPICAL (note: the letter X must be uppercase).

The trick to make this work is that you must add a back slash (\) before the uppercase X.

Have a good weekend!

The Macro:

^C^Cscript;P:/GIS/XREF-CITY-MAP.scr;(alert "Pick two diagonal points to define the import area.");(setq firstp (getpoint "Pick first point: "));\(setq secondp (getpoint "Pick second point: "));\script;P:/GIS/IMPORT-STREETNAMES.scr;

I’ll break it down for you.

The first part of the macro…

script;P:/GIS/XREF-CITY-MAP.scr;

…XREFs a map into the drawing so you can visually pan and zoom to your location. Here is the contents of “XREF-CITY-MAP.scr”:

-layer
n
X-BASE
s
X-BASE

-xref
a
P:\GIS\City-Map.dwg
0,0,0
1
1
0

The middle part of the macro…

(alert "Pick two diagonal points to define the import area.");(setq firstp (getpoint "Pick first point: "));\(setq secondp (getpoint "Pick second point: "));\

…creates an alert box telling the user to pick two diagonal points to define a rectangular area which will be used in the query. Notice that I am defining the coordinates for “firstp” and “secondp” and using back slashes (\) to pause for user input.

The last part of the macro…

script;P:/GIS/IMPORT-STREETNAMES.scr;

…defines and executes the Map 3D query. Here is the contents of “IMPORT-STREETNAMES.scr”:

-xref
d
*
ADEDRAWINGS
al
d
P
a
P
P:
x
at
P:\GIS\Street_Names.dwg
x
adequery
c
p
c
x
d
l
w
c
!firstp
!secondp
p
and
la
*
x
e
d
ADEDRAWINGS
de
Street_Names.dwg
x

Notice that I used “!firstp” and “!secondp” in the script to input the coordinates defined earlier in the macro.

I hope this helps you see the power of macros and scripts. If this is foreign to you, take some time to learn the basics of creating macros.