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The AutoCAD Workbench, Final Edition

Fourteen year's worth of Michael's Corner has been completely updated for AutoCAD 2018 and is now available in the form of the AutoCAD Workbench, Final Edition. The book is available in spiral-bound paper or as a PDF. To find out more or to order a copy, visit Michael's CAD Trainer Guy site.

Michael’s Corner - October/November 2016

One-derful!!!

This month's Corner marks the end of an era. I've been running the CADTutor website for 20 years and for the last 14 of those I've been ably assisted in that endeavour by Michael Beall who has consistently provided content of the highest quality. Michael has written almost 600 articles for CADTutor in close to 150 monthly columns. If Autodesk are listening, they should probably give him a medal for services to AutoCAD. I'm constantly surprised and delighted by how generous people are when sharing information, wisdom and experience on the Web and Michael is a prime example of how Tim Berners-Lee hoped people would share their knowledge. Thank you Michael for all you've done for the CADTutor community.

So, for Michael's final corner we have articles on modifying the action of the F1 key, no less than 3 Power Tool articles, including tips on zooming with your mouse, background hatch colours and text frames for Mtext. As always, these articles are designed to help you work smarter, not harder. I hope you find them useful.

CADTutor itself is staying put and we have a few new things planned for 2017, so stay tuned. And don't forget that all of Michael's Corners are still available at CADTutor for your future reference.

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Tip of the Day

Repeat for Efficiency

Sometimes, you may find yourself having to use the same command repeatedly. This can be a pain, unless you are aware that the previous command can always be repeated by hitting the Enter key on the keyboard or by using the right-click mouse button and selecting the name of the command you just used. Both these methods are more efficient than repeatedly finding a command on a toolbar or from a pull-down menu.

What's more annoying than having to repeat a single command (and more common) is having to repeat a sequence of maybe two or three commands. Obviously, you can't use the "Enter to repeat" trick. However, the right-click menu has another option that can help in these situations. Below the name of the last command used, is a menu option that says Recent Input. If you select this option, you will see a list of all the commands used in the current drawing session, with the most recently used at the top.

Using this method, you can repeat any sequence of commands without having to return to a toolbar or pull-down menu.

Note: This function is controlled by the INPUTHISTORYMODE variable.

Today's tip is by Lazer

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