If you’ve gone to school for CAD or ever dealt with a good manager then you’ve undoubtedly heard them remind the CAD users to “Look at your options in the command line…” Today’s tip is a good example of this. If you have needed MTEXT to be aligned with an object, you may have depended upon a lisp routine or some other custom tool to do this. After today you may not need these custom tools. However, This tip is good for creating new text that needs to be aligned. It doesn’t work for aligning existing text.

(DTEXT already has an option to rotate)

Here’s how:

• Start the MTEXT command T <enter>
• Place the starting point for the MTEXT (note: if you are aligning the text to a straight object, snap to a point on that object.)
• Before placing the second point that defines the text box width notice the options that you have in the command line. We will use the “Rotation” option.
• R <enter>
• Define the angle of the rotated text by either typing in an angle or snapping to an object.
• Then define the width of the text box
• Type the text
• Exit the MTEXT editor by either CTRL + <enter> or by clicking outside of the text.

If you would like some more robust text alignment programs – check these out from Lee-Mac. They are free but feel free to drop him a donation if you can. He makes some sweet routines for free.

Dynamic Text Align even curves

Another Dynamic Text Align. Note: this routine will make your text objects “stick” to an object…