By Dennis Collin
Recently I posted about how the Trace overlay environment can be used to place comments and markup elements within all AutoCAD products whether it be Desktop, Mobile or Web App platforms. Introduced a few versions ago AutoCAD 2023 has improved this environment even further.
The trace overlay can be turned on or off as desired and markup notes can be acted upon rather than having to decipher cryptic instructions from post-it notes and highlighter marker pens.
Markup documents also can be imported into a drawing via PDF, PNG or JPG formats and are overlaid on top of your drawing in the Trace workspace. Markups in the imported file are automatically identified as multi-line text, multi-leaders and revision clouds. With the Markup Assist command it is now possible to convert identified markup objects into physical AutoCAD elements.
This is achieved via the Markup Import command which overlays a marked-up version of your drawing on the original file. This makes it easier to view and perform edits to the drawing. Alternatively, if the markup is in a hard-copy format containing hand-written revision notes, scan or take a photograph of it as a JPG or PNG and import it into a Trace.
The Markup Assist command automatically identifies markups as text, leaders and revision clouds. Click an identified markup, then insert it as an mtext, mleader or revcould object. It is possible to amend the text before inserting it, or alternatively copy the text to the clipboard and paste into another application.
The Markup Assist command is only currently available via the command line (MARKUPASSIST) on the Windows or Mac Desktop Application.
The drawing Trace and Markup tools are useful additions to AutoCAD’s set of collaborative tools. They nicely compliment AutoCAD’s powerful DWG Compare tool which was introduced in AutoCAD 2019 and much improved for the 2022 release. An overview of the function along with the improvements, including comparing changes within Xrefs can be found here.
Other functions like Share Drawing, Push to Autodesk Docs and Shared Views tools can also be accessed on the Collaborate tab. I will discuss these features in more detail in a future post.
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