Datasheet

changes. You can change any of the properties of the entire group. You could do the same
for all the circles in a drawing or within a selection set, and change their diameters.
CHAMFER and FILLET
You can use either of these commands to clean up sharp corners or extend two uncon-
nected lines into sharp corners by setting their values to 0. As of AutoCAD 2006, you have
the following option: Hold down the Shift key while selecting the second line to create a
sharp corner.
If you’re having trouble snapping to what you think is an intersection between two
lines, use FILLLET with a radius of 0, select the two lines, and then try again. If that works,
you don’t have to take the time to zoom into the intersection to see if there’s a gap.
DIVIDE and MEASURE
These commands behave similarly. The difference is that DIVIDE results in an entity
divided into a specified number of segments, all the same length. MEASURE divides the
entity into segments of a given length, with one shorter segment (usually) at the end. Enti-
ties aren’t actually segmented; instead, a point is placed at each division.
It’s also possible with either DIVIDE or MEASURE to have a block inserted at each
division instead of a point, which is a useful and often overlooked feature. You can quickly
approximate a complex linetype, for example, by placing any block along a line, pline, or
spline object. This works well for placing arrows on an egress map (see Figure 1.17).
Figure 1.17
Using MEASURE
to place blocks
The appearance of all the points in a drawing (except those on the Defpoints layer) is con-
trolled by the variable PDMODE. You can set this variable using the Point Style dialog box.
You can quickly create a slot by selecting two parallel lines when prompted by the FILLET
command.
26 ■ chapter 1: AutoCAD Productivity
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