Thursday, July 31, 2008

Add the SRS custom tool palette

Tool palettes are an extremely useful part of AutoCAD 2008. They can be easily created and loaded up with the tools that you use most often.

A custom palette has been created and saved at S:\2008_CAD\Tool Palettes. It currently includes 3 tools for inserting Multileaders and notes into your drawing. To add this palette to your set of palettes, simply browse to the palette on the server, then drag and drop the icon into your open session of AutoCAD.

You can now access these tools just by clicking them or by dragging and dropping them into your drawing. Try them out!

Note: the tools on the SRS palette make use of the custom Multileader style. Make sure you have this style present in your drawing to use this tool. Drag and drop the Multileader Style.dwg file into your drawing from S:\2008_CAD\Styles.

Using Multileaders


A great new feature of AutoCAD 2008 is the Multileader tool. It is a fast and extremely flexible way to create leaders and text, even text with multiple leaders attached. It is smart enough to keep the leader connected to the text when the text is moved, even switching from the right to left side of the text if it is moved dramatically.


To access the Multileader, turn on your Dashboard. (Type 'dashboard' at the command prompt.) If you don't have the Multileader control panel turned on, right-click the bar at the top of the Dashboard, select 'Control Panels' and check the 'Multileader' panel.

A style has been set up to conform to the SRS graphic standard. It is an 'Annotative' style, meaning that it will size itself according to the annotation scale set on your status bar. If your drawing does not have the multileader style in it, add it by inserting the 'Multileader Style' drawing located at S:\2008_CAD\Styles.