AutoCAD & AutoCAD LT All-In-One Desk Reference For Dummies (2006)

182 Name That View

5. Set the Current display radio button active.

If you want to define the area of your view within the current view, set the Define window radio button active. Ignore the other settings for now.

6.Click OK to close the New View dialog box.

The View or View Manager dialog box shows the newly created view in its list box.

7.Click OK to close the View or View Manager dialog box.

The location and magnification of the named view are now stored as part of the drawing file. You can restore the view at any time. Try it with these next three steps.

8.Do a ZOOM Extents to restore the overall view of your drawing.

9.Choose View Named views.

The View or View Manager dialog box opens.

10.Select the view you just created from the list box and click Set Current. Then click OK.

When you close the dialog box, the selected named view is displayed in the drawing area.

Other view options

In AutoCAD 2005 and later, you can associate layer settings with a named view. For example, you may want to restore a view of part of a complex assembly, but only see the objects drawn on certain layers. The following steps explain how:

1.Zoom in to the area you want to save as a named view.

2.Turn on (or thaw) the layers you want to see, and turn off (or freeze) the ones you don’t.

Set the appropriate layer visibility states before you save the named view.

3.Follow Steps 2 through 5 from the preceding section.

Open the View or View Manager dialog box, and then the New View dialog box. Give the view a name and make sure the Current display radio button is selected.

4.Check the box beside Store Current Layer Settings with View (AutoCAD 2005 & 2006) or Save Layer Snapshot with View (AutoCAD 2007).

Checking this box means that when you restore this view, the current layer visibility states will also be restored.

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Storing layer settings (2006 and earlier) or saving a layer snapshot (2007) are the default settings. Make sure you really want to save the layer settings before clicking OK, because your previous layer settings are not restored when you change views.

5.Click OK.

The New View dialog box closes and your newly created view shows in the View or View Manager list.

6.Click OK again.

View or View Manager closes and you return to the drawing.

You can easily change the boundaries of a view in the View Manager dialog box (or in the View dialog box in AutoCAD 2005 and 2006). Just select the view in the list and choose Edit Boundaries. AutoCAD shows you a grayedout view of your drawing with the currently defined view highlighted in white. Then pick two corners to define a new view area.

AutoCAD 2007 replaces the two-tab version of the View dialog box with the Explorer-style View Manager (see Figure 3-7).

The View Manager lists sheet views as well as regular model views. Sheet views are named views associated with viewports in drawing layouts as part of AutoCAD’s sheet set feature.

The third category of view, after model views and sheet views, is preset views. These are intended for 3D use and serve no purpose in 2D drafting. We’ll have more to say about these preset views in Book V.

Book II

Chapter 3

Views Managing

184 Book II: 2D Drafting

Book III

Annotating Drawings

Contents at a Glance
Chapter 1: Text: When Pictures Just Won’t Do	................................................................187
Chapter 2: Dimensioning....................................................................................................	213
Chapter 3: Hatching Your Drawings..................................................................................	241

Chapter 1: Text: When Pictures

Just Won’t Do

In This Chapter

Types of text in AutoCAD

Controlling text appearance

Creating and using text styles

Using single-line and multiline text

Editing text

Creating tables

You know the old saying about a picture being worth a thousand words? We’ve done some digging and discovered that with inflation and cost of

living increases, a picture is now worth 3,712 words!

That’s a roundabout way of saying that text is important, too. It’s a lot simpler — and more precise — to specify a manufacturer and part number in numbers and letters than it is to try to draw the darned thing from every angle. And until you can teach your drawings to talk, adding text is a necessary part of drafting in AutoCAD.

In this chapter, we look at creating and editing text in AutoCAD drawings.

Text in AutoCAD

In AutoCAD, very little is as simple as it could be. Take drawing text, for instance. AutoCAD has not one but two different kinds. You use one if you want to enter single characters or short lines of text, and the other if you want to write a novel — or at least some general notes. The first type is called single-line text, and the second (wait for it . . .) is called multiline text (Autodesk also refers to the latter as paragraph text.)

188 Text in AutoCAD

Of course, there are other kinds of text in an AutoCAD drawing as well. These other kinds include

Leader notes: Leaders are drawing notes that include a line with an arrow at one end that points to a drawing object. You create leaders with one of the Dimensioning commands.

Dimension text: Dimension values appear as text and are formatted according to a text style, but they’re not text objects — they’re an integral part of dimension objects. (We cover text styles later in this chapter, and dimensions in the next chapter.)

Attributes: Attributes are pieces of text attached to block insertions. What makes them different from regular text is that the text is variable and can be changed for each instance of the block insertion. We cover blocks and attributes in Book VI.

Tables: Tables are another type of text-like object. Prior to AutoCAD 2005, you had to construct tables (for example, for bills of material, drawing lists, and so on) by drawing lines and then carefully filling in the spaces between them with regular drawing text. Table objects automate the process; the text part is defined with text styles, just like regular text.

Fields: Fields are placeholders for textual data. You can place fields in tables or in multiline text objects. Fields contain changeable data such as filename, date last saved, drafter, and so forth.

We describe each of these different types of text or text-like objects in the sections that follow.

Getting familiar with text terminology

Before we go on, we need to define some terms:

Text: Text usually refers to an AutoCAD object, either a single line of text (also called a text string) or a paragraph (called multiline text or mtext in AutoCAD). TEXT is also an alternate command name for DTEXT, the command used to enter single-line text.

Style: Style refers to a named definition of the way your text appears when you place it on your drawing. Included in a style definition are the font, height, width factor, obliquing angle, and whether it will be drawn backwards, upside-down, or vertically. STYLE is also the name of the command used to create text styles. Text justification and rotation are not defined in a style; they are applied when you start the DTEXT or MTEXT command.

Justification: Justification refers to the direction that text flows from the start point, and how subsequent lines of text align below the first line.

Text in AutoCAD 189

Left-aligned or left-justified text is the default in AutoCAD. We explain more about the many different justification options later in this chapter.

Font: Font refers to the actual appearance of the letters, numbers, and symbols. AutoCAD supports two types of font:

•AutoCAD vector fonts

•Windows TrueType fonts

We go into more detail on both font types later in the chapter. For now, understand that you must use a font file to define a style, and you must have a style before you can create text objects.

If AutoCAD can’t find the font files used to create text, the drawing won’t load or display properly. A large number of add-on fonts are available for AutoCAD; however, you should use only the font files that come with AutoCAD or Windows, in case you ever need to send your drawings to other offices.

Will that be one line or two?

Every version of AutoCAD from the very first right up to (and hopefully, beyond) AutoCAD 2007 has provided single-line text. The idea is that you type a line of text and press Enter, and then press Enter again to end the command. You end up with a single object — the single line of text.

You can create multiple lines of text by simply typing another line after each press of the Enter key; you end the sequence by pressing Enter on a blank line.

But picture this scenario. You’ve carefully laid out your drawing sheet, and you’ve allowed a four-inch wide space along the right side of the sheet for your general notes. You add forty or fifty lines of general notes as single-line text, which means you have forty or fifty individual text objects.

Now your boss comes along and tells you you’re going to have to squeeze those notes into a three-inch wide column so you can add some more details. Your mission — should you choose to accept it — is to edit each and every line, removing a word or two from the end of the first line and adding it to the second, and then removing two or three words from the second and adding them to the third . . . and on, and on, and on.

There ought to be a better way, and there is, although it didn’t show up until the aptly numbered AutoCAD release 13. When you create multiline (or paragraph) text, you define a width for your text block by specifying a value or picking two points on screen. Multiline text wraps from one line to the next, just like your friendly word processor.

Book III

Chapter 1

When Text:Won’t Just

PicturesDo

190 Text in AutoCAD

There are plenty of differences between single-line and multiline text:

Single-line text has fewer formatting options, so it’s simpler to create and edit.

Multiline text has many, many formatting options, so it’s much more complicated to create and edit.

To place single-line text in a drawing, you simply pick a start point and type.

To place multiline text, you specify two diagonal corners of a temporary bounding box; the lines of text are placed inside.

Single-line text appears character-by-character as you type. To type a second line of text below the first, press Enter and continue typing. Press Enter on a blank line to exit the command.

You enter multiline text in a special dialog box called the in-place text editor. AutoCAD automatically wraps lines of text based on the width of the bounding box you specify when you start the command.

You create multiline text with the MTEXT command.

You create single-line text with the DTEXT or TEXT commands.

Why are there two commands for creating single-line text? Remember that this is AutoCAD, where nothing is simple. By default, single-line text is created with the DTEXT command. “TEXT” is now an alias for the DTEXT command; typing either at the command line runs DTEXT. But the folks at Autodesk hate to throw anything away, so the old TEXT command is still there in the latest versions. To run it, put a hyphen in front: -TEXT. Go ahead and try it, and see why nobody uses it any more!

Single-line text is much more limited than multiline text in its formatting possibilities. You can define a few properties such as a single font or a preset height in a text style, but that’s about it. You can go crazy in formatting multiline text, changing things like font, size, color, and numerous other properties. Later in this chapter, we explain how to add both types of text, and how to change the appearance of each.

So how do you choose which type to use? The usual advice is to use singleline text for things like letters or numbers inside grid bubbles or keynotes, and for short one-liners such as view titles and scales. Use multiline text for anything longer — certainly for anything longer than a couple of lines.

Justification

Justification (or alignment) refers to the look of a block of text on a drawing or page. If you’re used to a word processor, you’re probably pretty familiar with the standard text justification options. Most text is left justified, like in

Text in AutoCAD 191

this book. You may prefer center-justified text for headings and titles. (Not us, we keep to the left!) Rarely, you even see right-justified text, which means the right margin of a block of text is neatly lined up, and the left margin is ragged. Many books (although very few drawings) use fully justified text, where both right and left margins line up tidily.

All of these word processor options have their counterpart in AutoCAD. But because AutoCAD is AutoCAD, it can’t leave well enough alone. We have six justification options that you can apply to single-line text, and nine different options that you can use with multiline text. Figures 1-1 and 1-2 show you the choices.

Figure 1-1:

Justifying single-line text.

Justifying single-line text

The single-line justification options probably make more sense to most people because the line of text starts (or at least is based on) the insertion point you pick. Leftand right-justified are plain enough, but the other options need a bit of explanation:

Center: The point you pick is the middle point of the text’s baseline; the text flows equally to left and right from this point. Use this option for a title that you want centered under a drawing view.

Middle: The text you enter is centered both horizontally and vertically about the point you pick. Use this option if you want to locate a letter or number in the center of a keynote or grid bubble.

Align: You specify two points for this option, and the text you enter starts at the first point and ends at the second point. Aligned text maintains

Book III

Chapter 1

When Text:Won’t Just

PicturesDo