AutoCAD has many productivity tools that you might not know of. They are not just the lisp routines and add-ins that you might find floating around the internet.
Subcommands are a very powerful feature in AutoCAD and if you are not using them you need to start immediately.
Let’s look at the copy command. This is one of my favorites as it does both a copy and an array. Once you select the copy command you will select your objects and the base point you will be copying from. Before placing the copy look in the command line. What do you see?
There is an option to Array. Select Array in the command line or type in A and press enter. This then will take you to the following options.
- Select the number of copies
- select the distance between each object or select the distance between the first and last object
So an amalgamation of 2 different commands straight out of AutoCAD!
One subcommand that might be underutilized is the close command on the Line command. You have been drawing lines or polylines and instead of trying to find the start point to close up your profile why not just type in C and press enter. Closes your profile easily without having to struggle to get your mouse pointer to that beginning point.
Do you know what that CTRL key can do in AutoCAD? Select an individual segment of a group or whole. ie. sub filter selection. If you have drawn a polyline normally you would only be able to select the entire line. Holding down the CTRL key allows you to select the individual lines of that polyline.
Productivity gain!
