Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
Standards — as in
drafting standards
— are important things to maintain in design of-
fices. With standards checking, you configure a DWS file (that is, a DWG file set up with
your standard layers, text and dimension styles, layouts, and so forth), and then com-
pare your current drawing, or drawings done by outside consultants, with that DWS file
to ensure they conform to your office standards.
Data Extraction
As I explain in Chapter 17, attributes are variable text strings that you create as part of a
block definition. The data in the attributes can be edited or extracted easily in regular
AutoCAD, and nearly as easily in AutoCAD LT (AutoCAD LT lacks the full version's Data
Extraction Wizard, which extracts information from objects and from attributed or non-
attributed blocks.) If being able to use
all
the data in your AutoCAD drawings, choosing
the full version would be a better bet.
MLINE versus DLINE
Here's a case where AutoCAD LT beats its big sibling! AutoCAD (full version) includes an
extremely unwieldy command called MLINE for drawing multiple parallel lines. You can
draw such lines in the same way you pick points for the LINE command, but multilines
are unintuitive to configure and pretty darned difficult to edit.
AutoCAD LT doesn't have MLINE, but it does have a different command called DLINE.
DLINE (as in Double LINE) may not draw more than two parallel lines, and it can't add
colored fills, but it's logical to use and much easier to edit. And sorry, AutoCAD users
(I've been waiting to write that for the whole topic!), but you don't have DLINE.
Profiles
Throughout the topic I make reference to the Options dialog box. This is the place where
you make both drawing-specific and system-wide settings so you can configure the pro-
gram to work the way that
you
want. In the full version of AutoCAD, you can save these
settings as named profiles, and switch between them on the Profiles tab of the Options
dialog box. For example, you can have one profile with a white drawing background, and
another with a dark background. Or you can have different profiles that point to differ-
ent client support files. If more than one person shares a computer, each person can
have his or her own profile.
