Author Archives: AutoCAD Tips

About AutoCAD Tips

This blog serves as a knowledge base for myself (and anyone else) so that I can reference tips & tricks that I have learned and also refer others to it as well. I hope that this blog helps you learn at least one tip to make your drafting/design experience better.

Purge the Legend Text style from your drawings

Posted on April 3, 2021 by AutoCAD Tips

From what I have read, the “Legend” text style comes from AutoCAD Map. But this style has made its way into so many other drawings and is frustrating for those who simply don’t want it in their drawings. What makes … Continue reading →

Posted in Civil 3D, Civil 3D Tips, Manage, Modifying, Tables, Text, Trouble Shooting | Leave a comment

Civil 3D Selection Issues Over Images

Posted on August 18, 2020 by AutoCAD Tips

This is a setting that I always change when I set up my Civil 3D. Have you ever had an image in your drawing and if you have linework crossing or on top of the image and then you go … Continue reading →

Posted in Civil 3D, Civil 3D Tips, Images | Leave a comment

Create New Objects with AddSelected

Posted on August 25, 2018 by AutoCAD Tips

The tool ADDSELECTED has been in AutoCAD since ACAD 2011 and It has saved me a lot of time. Regardless of your current settings, such as Layer, Dim Style, Text Style… You can easily recreate an existing object by simply … Continue reading →

Posted in AutoLISP: Creating, BASICS, New in 2011, TIPS | Tagged | 2 Comments

Change XREF Layer Colors to One Color

Posted on March 7, 2018 by AutoCAD Tips

Here is a great lisp routine that lets you simply select an XREF and change all of the XREF’s layers to a specific color (color 253 in this case). This is useful in some of my work’s drawings because we … Continue reading →

Posted in AutoLISP, AutoLISP XREFs, XREFs | 20 Comments

Fixing Your Broken Concrete Hatch Pattern

Posted on July 24, 2017 by AutoCAD Tips

I hope that you noticed something in my previous blog post about fixing holes in hatches that didn’t have anything to do with that topic. In fact, this is a very common issue that plagues AutoCAD Civil 3D users. As … Continue reading →

Posted in BASICS, Civil 3D, Civil 3D Tips, Hatch, Modifying, TIPS, Uncategorized | 9 Comments

Fix Your AutoCAD Hatch Holes

Posted on July 17, 2017 by AutoCAD Tips

Does your drawing have holy hatches? Some of the drawings I work on have these annoying outline/remnants of objects that have been moved or deleted. And now I have to clean them up. Some of these objects could have been … Continue reading →

Posted in Hatch, Modifying, TIPS | 3 Comments

LISP version of Closest Distance Between Two Objects

Posted on March 13, 2017 by AutoCAD Tips

The previous tip showcased a command that is available in Civil 3D that lets you find the closest distance between 2 objects and even draws a line at the closest points. Here is a LISP routine that lets you do … Continue reading →

Posted in AutoLISP, AutoLISP: Creating, AutoLISP: Dimensions, Uncategorized | 7 Comments

Civil 3D: Closest Distance Between Two Objects

Posted on September 20, 2016 by AutoCAD Tips

There are so many useful drafting tools within Civil 3D, many of which could be great additions to “vanilla” AutoCAD. Today’s post will be the first of many helpful tools found in Civil 3D and if possible, I will post … Continue reading →

Posted in Civil 3D, Civil 3D Tips, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Civil 3D 2017: Restore Missing Style Drop-Down Lists

Posted on August 10, 2016 by AutoCAD Tips

Well, I am currently a (novice) Civil 3D user, and I do a lot of annotating. But I noticed that when I need to change styles for Multileaders and Tables, the drop-down list in the ribbon is missing. The obvious … Continue reading →

Posted in Civil 3D, User Interface | Leave a comment

Lisp: Delete Extra Annotative Scales from Objects

Posted on July 9, 2016 by AutoCAD Tips

This routine has helped me many times when receiving drawings from others that include annotative blocks and text, you may not need as many scales that are applied to these annotative objects. Everything looks fine with the received file shown … Continue reading →

Posted in AutoLISP, AutoLISP: Text, Modifying | 5 Comments