Audit is a good maintenance tool to run on your drawings to keep them clean of most errors. When you get drawings from outside firms, this is a must-do step. How many times have you worked on a drawing where you were just looking to get just line work or just text isolated on a layer?
You try to freeze or isolate text or dims only to find out that half the drawing disappeared. This is a common issue with various trades where everything associated with a specific topic is on a single layer. For example, an architectural drawing has a ceiling plan layer: "A-CLG" that includes the grid, the lights, the diffusers, the notes, and the dimensions all on one layer—in different colors ugh!
Sometimes you just need the lights or grid or supply grille locations, but doing layer isolate another handy tool gives you everything.
Selectsimilar to the rescue! Selectsimilar provides you with a way to select objects based on similar characteristics. Objects based on properties such as layer, color, or lineweight can be grabbed quickly with this command. Note Only objects of the same type lines, circles, polylines, etc. The Settings dialog box controls which properties must match for an object of the same type to be selected. As with many AutoCAD commands, each combination of options has a bit code numerical value.
Some examples:. I use "" most often. This allows me to isolate named objects like "Text" on the same layer. Using Selectsimilar to select a piece of text on a layer would select all text on that layer - no matter what style or color it is. Selecting a polyline with the setting would select all polylines on that layer - no matter what color. Selecting a block would only select other blocks with the same name on that layer.
Each of these is useful when selecting items that you may wish to delete or move to another layer. Probably the most common method of drawing extraction is to type WBLOCK and follow select the options in the dialog to save parts of a drawing to a specific drive and folder. When selecting objects, you select a base point, select the desired objects, and then select a new name and path where your file is to be saved.
You also have the option to access the quickselect dialog to select items via a properties filter. It will then prompt you to enter a name of an existing block or define a new drawing.
You have three options here. When cleaning up client drawings or your own from rogue data that has been inserted often through copy-paste operations , this is a very powerful tool. This handy method writes the entire drawing to the new output file, except for unreferenced symbols.
Model space objects are written to model space, and paper space objects are written to paper space. The second option removes all those unused and unpurgeable items that the first would not. See how much faster your drawings open, save, and close. By combining a mixture of the tools above along with some other AutoCAD commands, you can reduce the cleanup time dramatically with Macros, Scripts and Scriptpro. CloseOpens - This script looks for lines that are supposed to touch and don't, and then draws a line connecting the open segments.
Open line segments keeps faces from being created. ExtendCloseLines - This script will find lines that fall short of touching their intended target and extends them in a straight line to touch their intended target.
DeleteShortLines - This script will remove those annoying little lines that overshot their target. MakeFaces - This script will create faces where it is possible to create faces. A critical time saver for transferring Cad files to Sketchup.
I can guarantee that you will save more time and money purchasing and using these scripts than doing all that work by hand. In order to run most of these scripts you need to add another basic one. It is called ProgressBar and is free. This will display a progress bar on the status line while a script is running to let you know how long it will take to complete the script.
By clicking on any one of these links above it will take you to the Smustard website link directly to that script. In later blogs I will make some video tutorials that show how to use these scripts and show the benefits of them.
Posted by Jason at PM. They are only a few of the methods available when cleaning up drawings; I would love to hear about any of your favorite clean up tips, trick, and workflows in the comments below. Do you have any favorite AutoCAD tips? Tell us in the comments! While teaching a beginners AutoCAD class a while back, I was demonstrating the various navigation methods we perform with the wheel The clipboard can be a convenient It's also the best way for you to connect with the makers of AutoCAD.
Subscribe to keep up with AutoCAD. Autodesk knows this well, yet only provides the civil batch converter, which explodes the aec objects if told to in Civil 3D. Cleaning those items by hand is not practical, so I tell all companies to have at least one C3D network seat on subscription just for conversions and cleaning incoming files. Otherwise you must wblock from incoming drawings to clean ones by hand, which is way too slow for multiple files. Hope you have the money for the C3D seat
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