Kevin D. Stober shares a time-saving tip about using AutoCAD's Design Center.

"I think the best time-saver that AutoCAD has built in is the AutoCAD Design Center (to access it, type _adcenter on the Command line). Design Center is where you can transfer blocks, dimstyles, layers, layouts, linetypes, multileaderstyles, tablestyles, textstyles, and xrefs.

"One of the most useful tools is the layout function; it is so efficient to transfer the layout from one drawing to another in seconds. Being able to see blocks in other drawings and import them is also a big help.
 
"I think of all the tools in AutoCAD, this one has to be a huge time-saver on a daily basis, as well as one of the lesser-known tools that can help CAD operators easily transfer information between drawings. Just pick, right-click, and choose Add — it's as simple as that."

Notes from Cadalyst Tip Patrol: AutoCAD's Design Center is very easy to use. Open it and browse to a file; there you can extract styles, layers, blocks, layouts, and more. Expand the list to see what is in the file for you to "borrow", select the items you want, and drag them to your current file.