Russell Koenig reminds us of the power of the Command line in AutoCAD.

“Most CAD users keep one hand on the mouse all the time, and may keep the other near the keyboard to occasionally execute a command or press the Escape key. But virtually every AutoCAD command can also be performed by typing in the Command line. For example, to draw a closed 10' x 10' polyline through a series of x,y coordinates, you would manually type:

     PLINE<enter>0,0<enter>0,10<enter>10,10<enter>10,0<enter>CLOSE<enter>

pressing the Enter key where indicated.

“A benefit of this is that, if you have a command with a lot of follow-up text, or if you have a series of commands to run, you can enter all necessary text in a basic text program, copy it, and paste it into the Command line. In some cases, a space is also treated as a Return/Enter command. To create the same polyline shown above, copy and paste the following text into the Command line, and watch the lines appear (make sure your view is near coordinate 0,0):

     PLINE 0,0 0,10 10,10 10,0 CLOSE

“Notice that there are no spaces after the commas, but there are spaces separating the coordinate pairs and the commands. There is also a final space after Close to execute that closing command.

“Some commands also allow you to enter various settings as you go through them if you enter a hyphen at the beginning. For example, if you just enter Layer in the Command line, the layer manager will appear. But if you enter -Layer, you will receive another series of prompts that can also be answered in the Command line in the same manner. These next six lines of text (between the <> lines) when copied all together and pasted into the Command line will create a new layer called 'this is a new layer' with a cyan color and a dashed linetype. Note that some commands allow you to use a space to act as a Return/Enter command (like after -Layer), but sometimes you actually need to have a Return/Enter because a space is an allowable entry (such as in a layer name) which appears below as a new line. Sometimes you need multiple returns, which appear below as a blank line.

     <>

     -LAYER M this is a new layer

     C cyan

     L dashed

     < >

“You may need to test the various uses of this, but if you have a lot of repeated processes, this will save lots of time. As a surveyor, most of my commands are coordinate-based, and I use spreadsheets and various macro processes to create the pasteable commands from a list of survey point coordinates. Some of my more common uses of this procedure are to draw polylines, edit a series of blocks, draw circles at specific coordinates, set up layouts, and convert CAD standards."

Notes from Cadalyst tip reviewer Brian Benton: The Command line is the most powerful user interface tool in AutoCAD and AutoCAD verticals. You can do everything in AutoCAD through it. You can’t say that about any other interface tool in AutoCAD. AutoCAD 2014 has also increased the Command line’s abilities. You can search for blocks through it, search the Internet, find blocks, search system variables, click commands inside it, and more.