Engineering Technician Hayden Clarke sent a tip that helps users of AutoCAD and its verticals to find commands quickly through keyboard entry.

"I recently discovered tabbing to find that command that you've been thinking about, but can’t quite remember. Quite often, you may remember the first couple of letters for a command but cannot remember the rest for the life of you. The trick is to type the first few letters you know, then press the Tab button. This will cycle through all the commands beginning with the letters you inputted. When you find the one you're looking for, simply press Enter.

"For example, if I type REG in the Command line and start pushing Tab, the following will appear: REG…REGEN…REGEN3…REGENALL…REGENAUTO…REGENMODE…REGION…etc. It makes remembering commands that much easier — but only if you remember this one."

Notes from Cadalyst Tip Patrol: Using the keyboard to input commands can save time. Using the keyboard to use the keyboard less is even better! Many commands have command aliases controlled by the PGP file. For example, typing in the letter L will start the Line command. But several commands do not have command aliases. What is the alias for DataExtraction? I don’t know, but if I type in DATAE, then press the Tab key, I get the full command.

AutoCAD 2012 and the AutoCAD 2012 verticals take this a step further with a new feature called Command Complete. If Dynamic Input is turned on, it will automatically populate a list of commands that start with what you are typing. It won’t list everything, but it can reduce keyboard input time by quite a bit.