The H-Factor

Managing DefLine Polyline Widths

Customer X called today to ask if he could reduce the width of the polylines that are part of our DefLines (Drop Windows, System Boundaries, AFF/BTS, etc).

There is no setting in our programs to do so, but there is an easy way to change them after the fact. After some chatting back and forth the answer is to use Select Similar and the Properties box to change these to the width he wanted.

Select Similar is a great tool added to AutoCAD a few years ago. You select an object like a line, a polyline, a block or text or whatever. You then right-click and pick Select Similar from the right-click dialog box. All objects that match that object will be highlighted. If you pick a line, then all lines in the same layer as the one picked will be selected. You can change the things Sel Sim considers similar by using the SE option inside the command.

So, to change the widths of our DefLine polylines, pick one such defline and right-click. Pick Select Similar

You will notice all such items will be selected (highlighted). Now, pick Properties:

Locate the constantWidth specification in the Geometry section and type in what you would like the new value to be. Close the Properties dialog and you are all set.

You can do the same with Ceiling Height boundaries, System Boundaries, and the like.

Converting Text to MText

So, my co-worker (who shall remain nameless) sent me an annotated drawing with notes on how to properly model trapeze hangers for coordination. The notes were written as individual lines of text. This annoys me:

I like working with MTEXT so much more. MTEXT allows for formatting, fonts, underlining, numbering and more.

I thought I remembered that there was an Express Tool in AutoCAD that will convert TEXT to MTEXT - and, there was!

It is here:

It lets you grab any number of lines - these will be converted into one MTEXT object.

After some editing: