Strengthened Modifiers
At the end of your day, one obvious thing is that you have done some editing in AutoCAD. No matter your field of work, you can always use better tools and methods for changing objects. The faster you make the change the faster you get back to creating more designs.
Double-Click Editing
Sometimes enhancements are evolutionary, sometimes they are revolutionary, and sometimes you just hit your head and wonder why you didn’t think of that earlier! An invaluable addition in AutoCAD 2002 is Double-Click editing. It has no dialog, but if you use this you can open the appropriate dialog for any object you double-click.
Most objects you choose will use the Object Properties Manager for modification. As for some specific objects listed here, you get a focused editor instead.
Attributes. Opens the Edit Attribute Definition dialog box (DDEDIT command)
Attribute in a block. Opens the Enhanced Attribute Editor (EATTEDIT command)
Block. Opens the Reference Edit dialog box (REFEDIT command)
Leader text. Opens the Multiline Text Editor dialog box (DDEDIT command)
Mline. Displays the Multiline Edit Tools dialog box (MLEDIT command)
Mtext. Displays the Multiline Text Editor dialog box (DDEDIT command)
Xref. Displays the Reference Edit dialog box (REFEDIT command)
The system variable that controls this functionality is DBLCLKEDIT and can be entered at the command prompt. This is just an on/off switch you can use in case it gets in your way.
Multiple PEDIT
Polylines are a great asset to AutoCAD; having one “line” that can bend and curve as needed makes editing so much easier. What has not been easy is making changes to them. Odds are if you have one pline, you have many plines, and giving them the same visual properties can take up some time. With AutoCAD 2002 the PEDIT command has been extended to enable you to select multiple polylines and then apply changes to that selection in the editing process.
When you start the PEDIT command, you get the Select polyline or [Multiple]: prompt. Here you can type M , and then press Enter and then select as many plines as required. All the same edit modifiers exist except one—Edit vertex—as editing segments in multiple polylines would be difficult at best.
Another added benefit to using the Multiple PEDIT method is found in the Join modifier. When you select multiple objects for PEDIT editing you can then use a “Fuzz” factor to join non-touching endpoints. When this command is used, you’re prompted to Enter fuzz distance or [Jointype] <0.000>:. You can specify a distance that ends must be closer than to join, or you can type J and press Enter. This then shows the Jointype options: Extend/Add/Both. If you choose Extend, the segments will fillet themselves to meet. Choose Add and a pline segment will be added to connect the ends. And if you choose Both and if the fuzz value is less than the distance to connect the ends, a segment is added; otherwise, the segments are filleted. See Figure 1.19 for an example of the Both option.
Figure 1.19. This shows the possible effects of the multiple PEDIT used with Jointype of Both.
There is extensive coverage about the PEDIT command in Chapter 8, “Creating Polylines and Splines.”
Extend and Trim
If you could draw precisely all the time you would never need to extend and trim. As for the rest of us, these features are used most of the time in AutoCAD to shorten and lengthen objects to meet other objects. The biggest hassle with EXTEND and TRIM is that often you will need one modifier while using the other. At that point you would have to exit the current TRIM or EXTEND command and start up its counterpart. With AutoCAD 2002 comes the capability to temporarily invoke the complementary command.
While inside the TRIM command, for example, if you need to extend object(s) just press the Shift key as you select objects to trim. This is seen in the Select object to trim or shift-select to extend or [Project/Edge/Undo]: prompt. The EXTEND command works the same way and invokes the TRIM command when you Shift+Select.
Tip
Don’t forget that you can trim and extend to objects contained in blocks or xrefs. No need to create objects before editing, just select objects within the block and AutoCAD creates temporary objects you can trim/extend against and then removes them when complete.
The TRIM and EXTEND commands are covered in Chapter 10, “Basic Object Editing.”
Fillet and Chamfer Plines
You might remember the first time you tried to fillet two plines. The FILLET program wasn’t very helpful at doing that. You wanted to connect these objects and AutoCAD simply states that you cannot fillet multiple pline objects. However with AutoCAD 2002, now you can fillet and chamfer plines together with no limitations. The process is fairly simple; just start the FILLET command and select two plines to join. An issue does exist though—if you select a middle segment of a pline the rest of the pline will be removed so that the other pline can meet it. And this result differs for things like a line/pline fillet. Refer to Figure 1.20 for an example.
Figure 1.20. You can see some unexpected results when filleting/chamfering polylines.
Chapter 11, “Advanced Geometry Editing,” explains the use of the FILLET and CHAMFER commands.