From the course: AutoCAD: Tips & Tricks

335 ANNOTATION - Modifying text using the AutoCAD Express Tools - AutoCAD Tutorial

From the course: AutoCAD: Tips & Tricks

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335 ANNOTATION - Modifying text using the AutoCAD Express Tools

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- [Instructor] Welcome to another AutoCAD Tip and Trick. We're going to be taking a look at annotation in AutoCAD, and we're going to be utilizing the Express Tools in AutoCAD. So if you're running AutoCAD LT, you won't be able to use the Express Tools. They're not available in AutoCAD LT. So you will need a full version of AutoCAD for this particular Tip and Trick. Now, we do have a drawing for you to download from the exercise files. It's 335 Annotation-MODIFY.dwg. So download the file and open it up in AutoCAD. You should open up in the Model tab, and you should see some kind of weird bits of text, as you can see on the screen at the moment. Now, they are both pieces of single-line text. Now, what you've got is a piece of lowercase text, as you can see, upside down, and a piece of uppercase text with a rectangle around the words "upper case." Now, the reason they're looking a bit weird is we are going to utilize some of the Express Tools to make them look a bit more normal. Now, remember, like I said, you can't do this in AutoCAD LT, you do need a full version of AutoCAD. So we're going to jump up to the Express Tools tab here on the ribbon. And then we're going to go to the Text panel here and click on the Modify Text flyout. Now, in a previous Tip and Trick, we covered Explode, Change Case, and Justify. We're going to be taking a look now at Rotate and Fit. So select Rotate first. Now, what I love about this is it's not a rotate in the traditional way that rotate works. What it is, is a rotate kind of back to normal. And if you've got texts like that lowercase text that's upside down in a drawing, it does happen. I've worked on many drawings and texts that come in many different orientations, angles, etcetera. Now, I want that text the right way around. I want it non-upside down. So I just select the text, click on it, and then I press Enter to confirm that selection. Now, you'll get this option here, New absolute rotation. Now, you've got a choice here, you can put an angle in. Now, obviously, you could put zero in and you then would obviously rotate it to zero. Now, I know that that text is exactly at 180° because it's been rotated. It's kind of been flipped, mirrored. So I don't need to worry about putting zero in. What you can do is go for most readable. And this particular Express tool will actually make sure that it's in the most readable angle it can get to. So if I just press Enter now. Bingo. It's now the right way up. Now, if I select that text and do a right-click and pop to the Properties palette, you'll see now: justification left, height 25, rotation is zero. So it's put it back to the absolute rotation of zero for the properties of that particular piece of text. Doesn't matter what angle it was at before, it's put it back to zero for me. I'll just hit Escape there to deselect the text now. So that's that Rotate tool on the Express Tools. Isn't it neat? It's really helpful. Now the other one that's really cool on the Text panel here when I click on Modify Text flyout is Fit. Now, sometimes, fitting and aligning text can be one of those tasks that can be really fiddly. And sometimes, you have to really mess around. So if I select Fit now, I can select the text to stretch or shrink, as it says on the dynamic input in the command line. So I come down to my text, hover over it, make sure I've got it highlighted, and click on it, like that. And then you'll see the usual little kind of dashed line that you get in AutoCAD when you're doing things like rotate, move, copy, etcetera. And it's asking you for a point. Now, the start point has already been specified. Can you see that? It's there. Can you see? As I move around, it's using the default left justification off of that "upper case text" piece of text. Now, if I drag that dashed line, to say, the end of the E here. I'm not going to go exact, I could use an object snap if I wanted to. I'm just going to drag it roughly to the end of the E and click once. And it literally puts that text in and fits it into that space. So it now fits neatly in my rectangle. Now, like I said, I haven't used object snaps or anything, I've just showed you the workflow there. But isn't that great? I can just fit it to any space I want to. So for text labeling, signage, and so on, look at how quick and easy that is when you're using that little tool. So that's on the Modify Text flyout here, and you've got Fit and Rotate. They're the two we've looked at in this particular AutoCAD Tip and Trick. And the one thing I will say is: If you've got AutoCAD LT, you obviously can't use these tools. It might be worth considering at least having one license of full AutoCAD in the office to have access to these Express Tools. They're massive time savers, especially when it comes to things like editing, annotation, and text, like we've just done in this particular AutoCAD Tip and Trick.

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