AutoCAD Tips & Tricks

Today's Tip

Selecting multiple grips

Did you know that you can move more than one grip at a time? Select an object to display the grips. Hold down the SHIFT key and select as many grips as you wish. Release the SHIFT key, click again on any one of the highlighted grips and then click it's new position. All the selected grips will follow.

Today's tip is by fuccaro

Yesterday's Tip

Cycling through grip modes

When you have a grip selected, the normal mode is to stretch the selected object and AutoCAD displays ** STRETCH ** on the command line to let you know. But did you know that by hitting <Enter> you can cycle through the other grip modes - move, rotate, scale and mirror?

This is a really efficient way of working and means you can spend less time clicking the buttons on the Modify toolbar and more time editing.

Yesterday's tip was by dbroada

Monday's Tip

Fillet solid objects

The Fillet command can be used to fillet solid objects as well as just the usual 2D stuff. Not only does the Fillet command fillet edges but it also correctly mitres the corners where two filleted edges meet.

Monday's tip was by David Watson

Sunday's Tip

Convert to solid

You may still have some old 3D drawings where objects have been constructed from rectangles, circles or closed polylines which have been given a thickness. Well, you'll be glad to know that you can now convert these objects to solids with one simple command. You'll find the Convert to Solid command at Modify3D OperationsConvert to solid or simply type convtosolid at the keyboard.

Sunday's tip was by David Watson

Saturday's Tip

Lock your viewports!

The zoom factor of your viewports is crucial because it affects the plotted scale of your drawing. So, once you have set your viewport scale, it's a good idea to lock your viewport so that you don't inadvertently change it. To lock a viewport, select it in paper space by picking on its boundary and then right-click anywhere within the viewport. Select "Properties" from the right-click menu and the Properties panel will appear. In the "Misc" section, click on "Display locked" to activate the pull-down and set the value to "Yes".

Saturday's tip was by David Watson

Friday's Tip

2D Drawings from your 3D Models

Over the years, there have been various methods of creating 2D drawings from 3D models in AutoCAD. In the early days, we used export to DXB, a file format that is no longer supported. Then came the FLATTEN command. Now, there's a new command that's better than previous methods.

The FLATSHOT command creates a 2D block object of any view that includes 3D solid objects. There are a number of options including show/hide obscured lines and independent control over the colour and linetype of foreground and obscured lines. Flatshot works by projecting the lines of your current view, not UCS, onto a plane. This is a little more versatile than Flatten and doesn't seem to skew the dimension of the object, which Flatten is notorious for. It also has the advantage of leaving the original object as is. The only downside is that it seems to have problems with perspective views. Parallel projection views work perfectly.

Friday's tip was by CromCruithne

Thursday's Tip

Maximize your work area

You can use Ctrl+0, or go to ToolsClean Screen, or click the faint blue square icon at the very bottom right of the AutoCAD program window to maximize your entire work area. The only thing that will show is your top Pull-down Menu, your Command Line, and/or your Layout Tabs, maximizing the drawing area as much as possible. Of course, you could also turn off the command line and just work with Dynamic Input if you wanted to be even more minimal. These command options work as a toggle, so simply repeat the action to restore the full interface.

If you are a customized keyboard command type of person, the command is CLEANSCREENON and CLEANSCREENOFF so you can easily add it into your ACAD.PGP file complete with your personal Command Alias.

Thursday's tip was by StykFacE