The UCS in AutoCAD is a powerful tool. Typically the UCS is moved and rotated independently of the view. To make the view orientation match the UCS you can use the PLAN command. But there is a way to keep the plan orientation in sync with the UCS automatically. Read more »

Have you ever had trouble making the display order of objects stay the way you want? Sadly the DRAWORDER command isn’t always as reliable as I would like it to be. Here is how I force the draw order to stick: Read more »

Have you ever experienced a problem when you try to fillet a polyline only to have it fillet the wrong way? A tipster posted the answer to Cadalyst…

All you need to do is reverse the direction of the offending polyline (type PEDIT, select the polyline and type R for “reverse”) and try the fillet command again.

Autodesk introduced something called geometric constraints in AutoCAD 2010. They are very powerful and can help speed up drafting by saving keystrokes, picks and clicks. Check out this link from Lynn Allen to see what I mean.

Do you use geometric constraints in your day-to-day work?

Hope, one of my readers, asked me how to draw a line tangent to two circles. This is a great question because it isn’t very obvious at first. Here’s how you do it. Read more »

I’m lazy so I like less keystrokes. For example when I am running the PEDIT command on an object that isn’t a polyline, I don’t want to be prompted with this every time:

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

Read more »

Erhan Toker from the DailyAutoCAD.com website posted an excellent tutorial on using the command LENGTHEN. He said, “Most of the time; we use TRIM and EXTEND for editing the lengths of objects. However, we may wish to define the length of an object to a certain value. This is when the LENGTHEN command comes in handy.” Check it out…

I am on my way to the airport to fly to Las Vegas for Autodesk University. This morning I thought I would share a simple command that can save you from a lot of embarrassment.

There is nothing worse than having someone else point out a spelling mistake on your drawing. That is why I am thankful for AutoCAD’s built-in spell checker. Read more »

Here are a few tips to speed up drafting. Read more »

Here are a few things you can do to help speed up AutoCAD. Read more »

A relatively unknown command modifier is Mid Between Two Points. What it does is prompts you to select two points and then it will find the middle of those two points. You can use this command modifier along with other OSNAPs as well. Read more »