Michael’s Corner

Michael's Corner is a monthly publication written by Michael E. Beall, Autodesk Authorized Author and peripatetic AutoCAD trainer. Michael travels all over the USA, bringing his fantastic experience and great understanding of AutoCAD to his clients. Michael's Corner brings together many of the tips, tricks and methods developed during these training sessions for the benefit of all users.

Michael's Corner provides something for every AutoCAD user. Every month, a number of articles cover a wide range of topics, suitable for users at all levels, including "The Basics" for those just starting out. Essentially, the aim of Michael's Corner is to help all AutoCAD users work smarter and faster.

This month…

From the Vault

Originally published October 2007

Drawing Properties to a Field

Here's what we know: Fields are text objects that are associated with information associated with the current drawing or objects in the current drawing. Information such as the Filename and Create Date, just two of the Field names in the extensive list of available bits of information.

But what if you need to link a Field to something that's not in that list, but is pertinent to the drawing, such as the Designer's Name? Many of my customers have attributed title blocks with a common attribute such as DESIGNER. That attribute occurs on all the title block sizes from A to E. Here's how to get the Designer's name (or the Project Name or any other attribute that's consistent in all the title blocks) to automatically populate that field.

To do this, we will implement the little-used Drawing Properties feature and create a Custom property, then access the value for that custom property for the Field.

Instructions to Associate User-Defined Drawing Properties to a Field

1. Click FileDrawing Properties to open the Drawing Properties dialog box.

Note: On the Summary tab you will find several areas in which you can add information regarding the current drawing. All of these areas - Title, Author, Subject, Keywords, Comments, and Hyperlink Base - are listed under Field names in the Field dialog box.

2. Click the Custom tab, then click the Add button.
3. In this exercise, I'll use DESIGNER as the Custom Property Name and M. E. Beall as the Value. Then click OK to add that custom value to the list.
4. Click OK to close the Drawing Properties dialog box.
5. On your attributed title block, double-click one of the attributes to open the Enhanced Attribute Editor.

6. Click the attribute to which you want to assign the custom property, then right-click in the Value text box, and click Insert Field to open the Field dialog box.
7. Now scroll to find the custom property name in the Field list, then click OK.

Job done!

Idea: When creating your title blocks (or editing your existing ones) accommodate the default Summary values listed above by using them as the attribute definitions in each title block size. This way, when you enter the project name in, say, the Subject field, the project name will appear in all the title blocks where you have used "SUBJECT" as the attribute definition.

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