Managing Fonts Used in Tables Linked to a Spreadsheet (AutoCAD 2008)

Posted July 22, 2009 * Comments(7)

I love that you can link an Excel spreadsheet to an AutoCAD table. This is a very powerful tool, but I quickly discovered a problem: you can’t use .shx fonts an Excel spreadsheet.

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. Read more »

Rename Things the Lazy Way

Posted November 26, 2008 * Comments(6)

Want to know a quick way to rename something in your drawing? Read more »

Rotate Text in a Table Cell

Posted October 15, 2008 * Comments(4)

Rotating text inside a table cell is easy, but not exactly how you might think. I searched and searched (right-clicking, double-clicking, text formatting, etc.) for a way to rotate text inside a table cell but nothing turned up. That is until I asked a coworker. Read more »

Table Wrapping – Part 2

Posted October 6, 2008 * Comments(1)

Earlier I wrote about table wrapping but I have a few more tips and tricks to add. Read more »

Right-Click Editing: Tables

Posted August 19, 2008 * Comments(1)

One of the things about AutoCAD that I learned early on was to right-click on everything to see what options are available to me. Right-clicking reveals more information about the tools I want to use. Instead of learning to recognize a picture on a button, I can quickly see the name of the command I want.

Here are a few right-click tips that I would like to share. Read more »

Table Wrapping – Part 1

Posted August 17, 2008 * Comments(2)

In AutoCAD 2008 they introduced “table wrapping” (AKA table breaks), as I call it. Read more »

Table Styles

Posted August 14, 2008 * Comments(0)

I’ve been using tables (command: TABLE) ever since we upgraded to AutoCAD 2007 (we went from AutoCAD 2002 to 2007). After we upgraded I saw how useful they were and immediately setup standard table styles in our AutoCAD template.

In the coming days I will post more about using Tables. Stay tuned…

Paste Excel Data into AutoCAD 2008

Posted July 9, 2008 * Comments(1)

Previously I talked about Linking Excel Spreadsheets to AutoCAD Tables but this time I am going to show you an even simpler way to get Excel data into an AutoCAD table. Read more »

Linking Excel Spreadsheets to AutoCAD Tables (AutoCAD 2008+)

Posted June 30, 2008 * Comments(26)

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 »