Frequent contributor Kent Cooper is back this month with another new and improved routine. Kent’s inspiration for this function is a 2008 Cadalyst CAD Tip from Mosad H. Elewa, titled "Make More Of The Same." The purpose of this routine is to allow you to create a new object in AutoCAD that's based on the properties of a selected object. For example, if you select a text entity, the Text command will be initiated with the properties of the selected text object (layer, style, etc.) set current so you can start drawing a new line of text with the same properties as the selected string. This routine is very similar to the built-in AutoCAD command named AddSelected, except that this routine has more options for certain objects. If you select a linear dimension, for example, you have the option to create a new dimension, a continued one, or a series of baseline dimensions. To get started, load the LISP file and type in the command MM. Pick any drawing object, and the command to draw that object will be launched. Kent authored this routine using AutoCAD 2004, so entity types newer than that are not supported; however, the properties of the selected object are still set current. This is a fairly complex routine, but as always, Kent’s code contains plenty of helpful comments and other tips.

Update, July 2012: The author provided an updated version of the tip; see comments as follows:

The noteworthy change is that it now works in noun-verb operation. If one object is pre-selected when the command name MM is typed in, it uses that object without asking the user to select something. If multiple objects are selected, it un-selects them and then asks the user to select one object as it did before (and of course still does when nothing is pre-selected).