Last month, I ran a couple posts with keyboard shortcuts for editing text in AutoCAD LT (and other programs).

This week, I got another tip in my e-mail regarding mouse-based editing instead. It's another feature I use all the time, especially when writing blog posts, but it hadn't occurred to me to make it a tip. (Thanks, Murray.)

If you want to move some letters or words from one place in the text object to another, simply highlight them, left-click (holding the button down), and drag-and-drop it to the new location.

Like many of the earlier keyboard shortcuts, this mouse trick works in all kinds of text-editing programs -- AutoCAD LT, Notepad, Word, even fields in web browsers.

And if you're using the old Attribute Editor, you can even drag-and-drop values between attribute fields, as I posted about a while ago. (It doesn't work in the Enhanced Attribute Editor in LT 2010, but that editor has other advantages. And of course there's always cut-and-paste.)

If you have a favorite tip, trick, or hidden feature you'd like to share, send it on in! I'm always interested in how other people are getting the most out of AutoCAD LT.

So after yesterday's post on purging zero-length geometry and empty text objects, I was rightly taken to task for hinting that Quick Select can be used to accomplish the same thing and then not telling you how.

Mea culpa -- here you go.

In this drawing, I have a line, a rectangle, a text object, and an mtext object.

What's that? You only see a circle? Well, that's because the other objects are zero-length or empty. Let me press Ctrl+A now...

Ah, THERE they are. Let's fix that.

I'll launch Quick Select (from the Tools menu, Properties palette, or by typing QSELECT), set the object type to Line, the property to Length, and the value to 0.

Got it!

Now I can press Delete and get rid of it. Then I can repeat the process for the polyline, text, and mtext objects, except that the property for the text objects is Contents and the value is a space.

So that's how you'd get rid of empty objects prior to AutoCAD LT 2010 -- you can see why the new Purge option would be a real timesaver!

I love all the easy-but-cool features that found their way into AutoCAD LT 2010. Like editing non-associative hatch objects.

Another feature that I can just tell you about (instead of having to "teach" it) is the ability to purge zero-length geometry and empty text objects. It's a new box at the bottom of the Purge dialog.

Zero-length geometry can happen when you draw a line and put two points on top of each other, or when you draw a rectangle and put the first and second corner at the same point -- in other words, it's usually an accident. Same thing with empty text: maybe you erased the contents of a text object instead of deleting the object, or you typed a space and saved the object instead of undoing it.

These objects can be hard to find, because they're either tiny points or completely invisible. There are ways to track them down (Quick Select is one), but it's a lot easier to just check the box and make them all go away.

Another new feature in AutoCAD LT 2010 that falls into the small-but-potentially-very-significant category is the ability to use sub-units in dimension styles. This means that you can show different magnitudes of dimensions with different units.

(This is not the same thing as Alternate Units, which is designed to show two different families of measurement at the same time, i.e. inches and millimeters. More on those another time.)

For example, check out these two walls, currently dimensioned in meters.

But let's say I want to show the shorter wall in centimeters instead. In the Dimension Style Manager, under the Primary Units tab, there's an option to suppress leading zeros.

Check the box, and the Sub-units options become available. Now, I can enter a sub-units factor of 100 (the conversion factor between meters and centimeters) and a suffix of "cm" (with or without a space). This helps to distinguish between the regular dimensions and sub-unit ones.

When I close out of the Dimension Style Manager and go back to the drawing, the shorter wall now shows up as 45.72 cm instead of 0.46 like it did before.

A while back, I posted a video tip on the benefits of associative dimensioning in AutoCAD LT -- where if you modify a dimensioned object, the dimension updates.

But what if, for whatever reason, your dimension loses its association? You can either recreate the dimension, or you can use the command DIMREASSOCIATE to fix it.

This is another easier-done-than-said tip, so here's a video to show you how it works. But my microphone is broken today, so it's the silent-film type.

I recorded it in an HD resolution, so it's too wide to put on the blog.

YouTube (note: watch in HD mode for best view)

Non-YouTube: Download dimreassociate.mp4 (2015.5K)