Drawing « AutoCAD Tips Blog

Quickly find out how many insertions of a block are in your drawing

Do you sometimes want to know how many times you inserted the widget block in your drawing? Here’s a quick way:

Display the Properties palette (Ctrl+1).
Click the Quick Select button at the upper-right corner of the Properties palette.
In the Quick Select dialog box, from the Object Type drop-down list, choose Block Reference. If you choose one [...]

Marking revisions with a revision cloud

A revision cloud is an often-used means to indicate that certain areas of a drawing contain revisions. The cloud draws attention to the revision. It’s similar to using Track Changes in Microsoft Word, or highlighting text. The revision cloud circles the revised objects.

A revision cloud

To add a revision cloud, choose Home tab> Draw [...]

Working with Blocks: The BASE command, the Basepoint option, and the Basepoint parameter

Blocks and basepoints go hand-in-hand. Knowing how to work with basepoints can make your life much easier. It’s so frustrating to insert a block and have it disappear into outer space because the basepoint is in the wrong location!

The Basepoint option of the INSERT command

When you insert a block, a Basepoint option appears with the [...]

Tips for working with layers

Everyone works with layers. Most of the time, you set up your layers in a template and that’s that. But when you need to make changes, a few tips can help make the process easier. Here are some of mine:

When you create a new layer, often you want its properties to be similar to that [...]

AutoCAD Tutorial: Use parametric constraints to constrain models

AutoCAD 2010 introduced a great new feature, parametric constraints. You can constraint objects in two ways:

Geometrically: You can constrain objects to meet at a point, be horizontal, be vertical, be perpendicular, be concentric, and more
Dimensionally: You can constrain the dimensions of objects. For example, a you can constraint a line to be 4 units long, [...]

Create a rectangle with an adjustable corner, Part 2: Using a dynamic block

In a previous post, “Create a rectangle with a flexible corner,” I showed how to create a rectangle whose upper-right corner is strechable, creating a flexible rectangle that doesn’t lose its shape. In this post, I show how to do the same with a dynamic block.

Thanks to Joel, whose comment to the earlier post helped [...]

Tips on viewing your drawing

The faster you can display the section of your drawing where you need to work, the faster you can get started drawing and editing. With that in mind, here are some tips for viewing your drawing:

Use the mouse wheel

The mouse wheel is the key to fast view changes:

You can zoom in and out by rolling [...]

AutoCAD Tutorial: Create a rectangle with an adjustable corner

Have you noticed how grip-editing a viewport is different from grip-editing a rectangle?

When you grip-edit the upper-right corner of a viewport to stretch it, the viewport keeps its rectangular shape. You can freely choose your new corner location, so you’re not just scaling. You can change the proportion between the width and height, all without [...]

AutoCAD Tutorial: Create regions for mix-it-up, 2D/3D flexibility

A region is an interesting type of AutoCAD object. You can think of it as a 2D surface. Regions are always closed and they look like polylines, but AutoCAD can do some interesting things with regions, such as:

Calculate centroid, moments of inertia, and products of inertia
Extrude them to create 3D solids
Combine (UNION command), subtract, and [...]

Create a polyline from the boundary of existing objects

Sometimes you need to create a closed polyline from several existing objects that don’t meet end to end.For example, let’s say that you want to draw a polyline from the inside border created by the rectangle and two circles.

The BOUNDARY command is a very easy way to do this.

Start the BOUNDARY command to open the [...]

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