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Custom Rotate and Cleanup Commands
Tip# 3556 By Michael Chilson On 03-Jan-2011
1
Rated By 1 users
Categories : CUI (Customize User Interface)
Software type : AutoCAD 2011
Rename File To : No Files to download.
Make command macros to save time.

Tipster Michael Chilson sends us some command macros that he uses to reduce the number of clicks in his day-to-day AutoCAD work.
 
"These tips help to reduce to the number of clicks needed to get to the commands for cleaning up drawings and rotating them more quickly. You will need to know how to create new commands and toolbars.

"The old method for accurately speeding up the rotation of drawings is to select Rotate > Select All, then type 0,0,0 and type in the angle. I created a button on my toolbar that uses the Rotate command to select everything located on the screen and rotates it at a user-entered angle around the coordinates 0,0,0 on the UCS. The following code is in the Macro location on the button:
 
^C^Crotate;all;;0,0,0;
 
"One-click drawing cleanup! This is another button creation, and it speeds up the process of drawing cleanup and maintenance. Prior to this button, you had to click File Drawing Utilities > Audit > Yes (for Fix the Errors), and then the same setups for the drawing purge feature. The following code combines these two commands into a single click. (I used a recycling bin image for this button.)
 
^C^C_audit;Y;-purge;all;;no;
 
"The icons you use for the buttons described above can be anything, just remember that AutoCAD will need both a 32 x 32 bit and a 16 x 16 bit image. Use your favorite image-editing software to reduce them to that size. The images should be placed in a working folder (usually the icon folder located on a local hard drive). These can be incorporated into an enterprise CUI file to ease office-wide distribution."
 
Notes from Cadalyst Tip Patrol: Anything that can reduce the number of your daily clicks and picks is a good thing! Making custom commands isn't that tricky, and these are two good examples. A command macro (like those described here) isn't really a new command. They are actually a series of entries made after a command has been entered. If you know what your entries are going to be, then a macro can do the work for you. If you perform the same command with the same entries many times over the life of a project, the amount of time you save can add up.

Commands are simple enough to make: open the CUI and go to the Command List area. Click the Create a New Command Icon (a star) to open a window on the right. There you will assign an icon and the macro features.
 

 

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User comments
Comment by Hubbell,William
Posted on 2011-01-04 00:03:52
I to have been using very simple commands for sometime. I like the rotate all command.