One problem AutoCAD users frequently face is how to get text to read clearly when it's placed over a hatch pattern or other graphic. The Hatch command hatches around existing text, leaving a clear space behind it. But what about those situations in which you need to mask behind text that is placed over a non-hatch object, such as a dimension leader or raster image?

The Text Mask tool addresses this problem by masking the area behind text with a special masking object called a Wipeout.

If you want to remove the effects of the Express Text Mask tool, choose Unmask Text from the Express Tools tab's expanded Text panel. This option prompts you to select an object. Select the masked text, and press

One of the more frustrating and time-consuming aspects of drafting is editing lengthy notes. General notes and specifications change frequently in the life of a project, so editing notes can be a large part of what you do in AutoCAD. Frequently, notes are written by someone else, perhaps a specifications writer who doesn't work directly with the drawings.

To help make note-editing easier, AutoCAD supplies the Remote Text object. This special object is linked to an external text document. Remote Text objects automatically update their contents when the source document changes.

Using Remote Text is fairly straightforward. Click the Remote Text tool from the Express Tools tab's expanded Text panel, or type Rtext

Besides the text tools already described, several others can help to simplify some common text-related operations. Table 26.l offers a description of these other tools.

In the earlier part of this chapter, you saw the tools on the Block panel. There are two more block-related tools that have a more general use, so they've been placed in the Modify panel.

In Chapter 7, you saw how you can clip an Xref or a raster image so that only a portion is visible. One limitation to the Raster Clip option is that you can clip only areas defined by straight lines. You can't, for example, clip an area defined by a circle or an ellipse.

Extended Clip is designed for those instances when you absolutely need to clip a raster image to a curved area. The following steps show you how it works:

Extended Clip doesn't really clip to the boundary you created but instead approximates that boundary by creating a true clip boundary with a series of very short line segments. The prompt in step 5 lets you specify the maximum allowable distance between the straight-line segments it generates and the curve of the boundary you create (see Figure 26.3).

Figure 26.3. Extended Clip enables you to set the maximum distance from your clip boundary and the one it generates.

If you've ever tried to align an object in a layout with objects in a Model Space viewport, you know how difficult it can be. This situation often arises when you accidentally pan or zoom a Model Space viewport, and objects drawn in Paper Space (such as break lines or dimensional notations) become misaligned with the underlying view.

The Align Space tool helps you quickly align objects in a Model Space viewport with objects in the layout Paper Space. Align Space can even rotate a viewport view to align objects that are at an angle. To see how it works, try the following exercise. You'll align a plan view of a set of survey data points to a north arrow in Paper Space:

In this exercise, the two north arrows were aligned in both scale and direction. The object you're aligning to in Paper Space doesn't have to be in the area of the viewport, either.

If you prefer, you can align a single point without changing the scale or rotation of the viewport by pressing

The Align Space tool lets you align a Model Space object to a Paper Space object—but what if you want to align two Model Space views? For example, suppose you want to overlap two viewports of the same view, with one viewport displaying graphics while the other displays just the power and signal symbols for a small region of the plan.

The Synchronize Viewports tool lets you do just that. It aligns one or more viewports to another master viewport. The Synchronize Viewports tool aligns the coordinates in one viewport with the coordinates and scale of another so the views are matched like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. To get a better idea of what this means, try the following exercise. Suppose you have an enlarged plan showing a portion of a building. You want to include the grid lines in your plan, but you don't want to have to include other portions of the plan or redraw the grids. Synchronize Viewports makes easy work of this project:

The three views of the layout combine to show a contiguous Plan view instead of three random views (Figure 26.5).

Figure 26.5. Synchronizing three viewports

You could use Synchronize Viewports this way to piece together parts of a floor plan in a nonrectangular shape.

To finish adding the grid lines, do the following:

Figure 26.6. Pan to see the grid lines.

If you've ever tried to do this operation without the aid of the Synchronize Viewports tool, you can see how helpful a tool it is.

The Layout panel includes two more fairly simple tools: List Viewport Scale and Merge Layout. List Viewport Scale does just what its name says. Choose List Viewport Scale from the expanded Layout panel, and then click a viewport border to display the viewport scale. Merge Layout combines the contents of one layout with another. This tool is handy if you're exporting files to earlier versions of AutoCAD in which only one layout is possible. Choosing Merge Layouts from the Layout panel opens the LAYOUTMERGE dialog box. This dialog box is a list showing the layouts in the current drawing.

You can select the layout that you want merged with the current layout. After you make your selection and click OK, another dialog box appears that looks identical to the first LAYOUTMERGE dialog box. This time, you select the destination layout for the merged layouts.

That covers the Express layout tools. As with many of the other Express tools, you may find yourself using these tools more than the other standard AutoCAD commands; keep them in mind as you work on the layout of your next set of drawings.

You can access a number of hatch patterns from AutoCAD's Hatch And Gradient dialog box, but at times none of those patterns will fulfill your needs. This is where the Super Hatch tool comes in. With Super Hatch, you can create virtually any hatch pattern you want. You can use objects in your drawing as a basis for a hatch pattern, or you can import bitmap images and use them to form a hatch pattern, such as tiled wallpaper in the Windows Desktop background.

The following exercise shows you how to use Super Hatch:

The object you select by using the Select Existing option in the SuperHatch dialog box must be a block. You can modify that block by using the techniques described in Chapter 7 and the changes will appear in the hatch pattern, as shown in Figure 26.10.

Figure 26.10. The custom hatch pattern after the arrow block has been modified to include the diagonal hatch pattern

As you can see from the SuperHatch dialog box, you can incorporate Xrefs, blocks, and even image files into your custom hatch pattern. Each of these options prompts you to insert the object before you convert it into a hatch pattern. You use the usual insertion method for the type of object you select. For example, if you choose the Block option, you're prompted for an insertion point, the X and Y scale factors, and a rotation angle. For image files, you see the same dialog box that you see when you insert an image file, offering the options for insertion point, scale, and rotation. Figure 26.11 shows a sample hatch pattern with an image file used instead of an AutoCAD block.

Figure 26.11. A custom hatch pattern using a bitmap image

Most AutoCAD users need to set up their dimension styles only once and then make minor alterations for drawing scale. You can set up your dimension styles in a template file and then use that template whenever you create new drawings. That way, your dimension styles will already be set up the way you want them.

But frequently, you'll receive files created by someone else, and they may not have the same ideas about dimension styles as you do. Normally, this would mean you'd have to re-create your favorite settings in a new dimension style. With the Express tools Dimstyle Export and Dimstyle Import options, you can export and import dimension styles at any time, saving you the effort of re-creating them.

Throughout this book, I've been showing you the keyboard shortcuts to the AutoCAD commands. In Windows, all these shortcuts are stored in a file called Acad.pgp in the C:Documents and SettingsUsernameApplication DataAutodeskAutoCAD 2010R18.0enuSupport folder. (Check the Working Support File Search Path option in the Files tab in the Options dialog box to find the exact location for the support files on your system.) In the past, you had to edit this file with a text editor to modify these command shortcuts (otherwise known as command aliases). But to make our lives simpler, Autodesk has supplied the Command Alias Editor, which automates the process of editing, adding, or removing command aliases in AutoCAD.

In addition, the Command Alias Editor lets you store your own alias definitions in a separate file. You can then recall your file to load your own command aliases. Here's how the Command Alias Editor works:

If you're a veteran AutoCAD user, you may be accustomed to your own set of command aliases. If so, you may want to create your own PGP file containing just your custom aliases. Then, whenever you use AutoCAD, you can open the AutoCAD Alias Editor, choose File

Most of the time, the linetypes provided by AutoCAD are adequate. But if you're looking for that perfect linetype, you can use the Make Linetype tool to create your own. Here's how it works:

If you send your file to someone else, you need to make sure you include your custom linetype files with the drawing file. Otherwise, anything drawn using your custom linetype will appear as a continuous line, and your recipient will get an error message saying that AutoCAD can't find a linetype resource.

The Make Linetype tool creates a single linetype file for each linetype you create. The linetype file is a simple ASCII text file. If you end up making several linetypes, you can combine your linetype files into one file by using a simple text editor such as Windows Notepad. Don't use WordPad or Word because these programs will introduce special codes to the linetype file.

Shapes are special types of AutoCAD objects that are similar to blocks. They're usually simple symbols made up of lines and arcs. Shapes take up less memory and can be displayed faster, but they're much less flexible than blocks, and they aren't very accurate. You can't use object snaps to snap to specific parts of a shape, nor can you explode shapes. They're best suited for symbols or as components in complex linetypes.

Shapes have always been difficult to create. In the past, you couldn't create a shape by drawing it. You had to create something called a shape definition by using a special code. A shape definition is an ASCII file that contains a description of the geometry of the shape. Creating such a file was a tedious, arcane process and few users bothered to do it.

With the introduction of complex linetypes in recent versions of AutoCAD, interest in shapes has revived. To make it easier for users to create shapes, AutoCAD 2010 provides a tool that creates a shape definition file for you based on a line drawing. Try this simple exercise to learn how to create and use a shape:

Use the SHAPE command to place shapes in your drawing.

To see how your shape came out, try the following. Here you'll learn how to load and insert a shape:

In many ways, a shape acts like a block, but you can't snap to any of its points. It's also less accurate than a block in its representation, although for some applications this may not be a great concern. Finally, you can't use complex shapes such as 3D objects for your shape; you can use only lines and arcs.

Still, you may find shapes useful in your application. As mentioned earlier, you can include shapes in linetype definitions. See "Creating Complex Linetypes" in Chapter 28 for a description of how to create a linetype that includes shapes as part of the line.

This set of options is less likely to get as much use as the others you've looked at so far, so I've included a brief description of them here without going into too much detail. They're fairly easy to use, and you shouldn't have any trouble trying them. You can access both tools from the Tools panel:

AutoCAD has always made extensive use of external files for its operation. Everything from fonts to keyboard shortcuts depends on external files. The Express File tools offer options to simplify a few file-related operations. You may find some of these tools, such as Save All Drawings and Close All Drawings, helpful on a daily basis. Others may be useful to know about, such as Edit Image when you need to edit an image. The following is a list of these tools:

Sometimes it seems that there aren't enough selection tools available in AutoCAD. In Chapter 2, you learned about the various methods you can use to select groups of objects (thereby building a selection set, which is a set of objects selected for an operation such as a move or copy). The Express tools offer a few more ways to select objects.

The Get Selection Set tool (Getsel) sets up a selection set based on layers or types of objects. When you type Getsel

Another selection tool is Fast Select (Fastsel). When you type Fastsel

When you create a program at the Command prompt, as you did with the Breakat macro, AutoCAD remembers it only until you exit the current file. Unless you want to re-create this macro the next time you use AutoCAD, save it by copying it into an ASCII text file with an .lsp filename extension using the Windows Notepad application. Figure 26.21 shows a file named Keycad.lsp, which contains the saved Breakat macro along with some other macros I use often.

Figure 26.21. The contents of Keycad.lsp

The other macros are commands that include optional responses. For example, the third item, defun c:frz, causes AutoCAD to start the Fillet command, enter an R

After the file is loaded, you can use any of the macros in it by entering the macro name. For example, entering ptx

Macros loaded in this manner are available to you until you exit AutoCAD. Of course, you can have these macros loaded automatically every time you start AutoCAD by including the Keycad.lsp file in the Startup Suite of the Load/Unload Applications dialog box. That way, you don't have to remember to load it in order to use the macros.

Now that you have some firsthand experience with AutoLISP, I hope these examples will encourage you to try learning more about this powerful tool.

Record and Play Back Actions

If AutoLISP seems a bit too intimidating but you still need a way to automate certain tasks, the Action Recorder is a feature you'll want to explore. The Action Recorder enables you to record a series of actions in AutoCAD and store them as action macros. You can play back your action macros at any time. This is a great time-saver when you are performing repetitive tasks, something that you may find yourself doing frequently in AutoCAD.

An entire panel is devoted to the Action Recorder in the Tools tab.

To use the Action Recorder, click the Record button. The Record button changes to a Stop button, and a red dot appears next to the cursor to remind you that you are recording your activity. You'll also see the Action Tree appear just below the recorder.

Proceed to work as you normally would in AutoCAD. As you work, your activity is displayed in the Action Tree. When you've completed the activity that you want to record, press the Stop button. The Action Macro dialog box appears, enabling you to give the recorded activity a name and description.

Once you've closed the Action Macro dialog box, you can play back your recorded action macro at any time. From the Action Recorder panel, select the macro name from the Available Action Macro drop-down list and then click Play.

The Action Tree enables you to include some interactivity in your macro. You can right-click on an individual action in the Action Tree to modify its behavior to allow user input. Perhaps the most common modification you'll want to make is to allow different selections or to change coordinate input and point selections. To do this, right-click on an action and select Request User Input.

Upon selecting this option, you will be prompted for input when this particular action comes up in the macro. You can also use the Insert User Message option to have a message display while the macro is running. Messages can be helpful for users unfamiliar with your macro.