Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 9
Adding Text to Drawings
One of the most tedious drafting tasks is applying notes to your drawing. AutoCAD makes this
job faster by enabling you to type your notes, insert text from other sources, and copy notes that
repeat throughout a drawing, and it helps you to create notes that are more professional looking
using a variety of fonts, type sizes, and type styles.
In this chapter, you'll add notes to your apartment building plan. In the process, you'll explore
some of AutoCAD's text-creation and text-editing features. You'll learn how to control the size,
slant, type style, and orientation of text and how to import text files. You'll start by working
through some exercises that show you the process of preparing a drawing for text. You'll then add
a few lines of text to the drawing and learn how text size and drawing scale interrelate. The rest of
the chapter shows you the tools available for formatting text to fit your application.
In this chapter, you'll learn to do the following:
Prepare a drawing for text
•u
Set the annotation scale and add text
•u
Explore text formatting in AutoCAD
•u
•u
Add simple single-line text objects
Use the Check Spelling feature
•u
Find and replace text
•u
Preparing a Drawing for Text
In these first sections, you'll go through the process of adding text to a drawing that currently
has no text. By doing this, you'll gain firsthand experience in using all the tools you'll need for
adding text to a drawing. Start by setting up a drawing to prepare it for the addition of text:
1.
Start AutoCAD, and open the Unit file. If you haven't created the Unit file, you can use
the file called 9a-unit.dwg found on www.sybex.com/go/masteringautocadmac. Metric
users should use 9a-unit-metric.dwg. After the file is open, use the Saveas command to
save the Unit drawing to a file called Unit.dwg.
2.
Create a layer called Notes, and make it the current layer. Notes is the layer on which
you'll keep all your text information.
3.
If it is on, turn off the Flr-pat layer. Otherwise, the floor pattern you added previously
will obscure the text you enter during the exercises in this chapter.
