Overview

Even though AutoCAD is primarily a drawing program, you may find that you are actually adding more text than graphics to some of your drawings. In fact, annotation can often consume nearly half the time you spend on an AutoCAD drawing.

Fortunately, AutoCAD provides some familiar tools for creating and editing text. AutoCAD s Mtext command lets you place blocks of text in your drawing as short as a single sentence or as long as several paragraphs. Mtext also contains many familiar text-formatting tools, so if you ve used a word processor, you should feel at home.

This chapter starts by showing you how to create new text and then goes on to discuss text formatting. You ll also learn how to use text styles and what to do when you only need to add a short, single-word note. Since you are drawing to a precise scale most of the time, you will have to size your text appropriately for your drawing s scale. If you are creating a new drawing, be sure to check out the section on text scaling.

Finally, since tables are a prominent feature in CAD drawings, you ll learn about AutoCAD s Table command that helps to automate table creation. You ll learn how to can create a table with spreadsheet-like features and how to import spreadsheets as AutoCAD tables.

Topics in this chapter include the following:

• Adding and Formatting Text in AutoCAD

• Understanding Text and Scale

• Using Styles to Organize Your Fonts

• Adding Single Words with...