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AutoCAD 2015 and AutoCAD LT 2015 Bible

The most comprehensive AutoCAD book around!

Tutorial: Create a custom workspace in AutoCAD 2006 and later

A workspace defines your user interface — which toolbars, menus, and palettes (including the command window) appear, and where. Workspaces are a great feature because you can save multiple workspaces to reduce the time you spend fussing with these objects — opening them, closing them, and moving them around.

AutoCAD comes with default workspaces and […]

Tutorial: Create a custom command

If you find yourself using the same combination of commands and options over and over, you can easily create a custom command that executes the combination with a click of a button or a menu item. In this tutorial, I explain the basics of AutoCAD’s menu syntax so that you can create your own commands. […]

How to stay up to date with AutoCAD

AutoCAD is a complex program and it’s crucial for your work. Obviously, the better you know how to use the program, the quicker and more accurate your drawings will be. This is where the importance of education comes in.

Education has two parts:

Learning more about the base AutoCAD features that you use, or could […]

Select all instances of a block

If you would like to see where all the instances of your comp2b block are, you can select them all using the Quick Select feature from the Properties palette. This is a great technique for troubleshooting your blocks.

Follow these steps:

Open the Properties palette. Click the Quick Select button to open the Quick Select […]

Search for templates in multiple folders

AutoCAD wants you to keep your templates in the Template folder, but you may have different ideas. For example, you may have custom templates that you want to keep in a separate location.

However, in the Files tab of the Options dialog box (Tools > Options), you find that you can’t add an additional location […]

Quickly Find Files in Support File Search Path

AutoCAD places your support files in all sorts of hard to find places, such as:

C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2008\R17.1\enu\support\

Moreover, you can have many folders in your support file search path, including those that you add yourself. (To add a folder to the search path, choose Tools>Options and click the File tab of the […]

Tutorial: Create a custom simple linetype

AutoCAD comes with a number of linetypes: continuous, dashed (various lengths), dotted, dash-dot, border, center, and so on. But you can make your own. A simple linetype is just a pattern of dashes, dots, and spaces. (A complex linetype can include text and shapes, but that’s another tutorial.)

To create your own simple linetype, follow […]

Get lots of information about your drawing–all in one place–with this command

How many objects are in your drawing?

What are the limits and the extents of your drawing?

What are the running object snaps?

What’s the current elevation setting?

Is FILL on or off?

What’s the current linetype?

How much free space does your hard drive have?

How much memory is free?

How many places do […]

Tutorial: Create attributes

Attributes are tags, or labels, for blocks. You can use attributes to add any text to a block. For example, attributes are often used to fill in the text in a title block.

By placing the attributes where you want them in the title block, you can facilitate the entering of the text. […]

Find all named objects in a drawing

For troubleshooting or collaborative purposes, you may need to know the named objects in your drawings, that is:

Blocks Dimension styles Layers Linetypes Materials Table styles Text styles UCSs Viewports (really viewport configurations) Views Plot styles (which you see only if you’re using named plot styles)

You can see all your named objects by using […]