By Martin Phelps
Following on from my previous blog relating to AutoCAD’s “Command Line”, this blog looks at the user customisable features.
Selecting the “Spanner” icon on the left side of the “Command Line” as shown in Figure 1, will allow the user to customise the “Command Line”.
After selecting the icon, the menu is displayed as shown in Figure 2.
Selecting “Input Settings” will display the flyout menu as shown in Figure 3.
As an alternative, these functions can also be accessed by right clicking on the “Command Line” and from the displayed menu, select “Input Settings”, as shown in Figure 4.
From the displayed six options, five are turned on by default.
“AutoComplete”, as the user types in the command, AutoCAD will automatically display all the commands with that typed in sequence of letters. Typing the characters “D”, “I”, “M”, in the “Command Line”, the expansion menu displays the commands that begin with the typed letters, as shown in Figure 5.
“AutoCorrect”, when turned on, AutoCAD suggests a list of commands based on misspellings made by the user over passed sessions.
“Search System Variables”, with this option turned on, AutoCAD will not only search the command list but also the list of AutoCAD “System Variables”. “System variables” are displayed in the “Command Line” in bold text, with the “System Variable” icon to the left of the function, as shown in Figure 6.
“Search Content”, allows the “Command Line” search to include names of AutoCAD objects which can be “Blocks”, “Layers”, “Hatch Patterns”, “Text Styles”, “Dimension Styles and “Visual Styles”, currently the “Search Content” does not search for “Multileader” or Table Styles”.
Note: - “Visual Styles” are not included in AutoCAD LT.
Figure 6 shows the AutoCAD objects, “Layers” and “Blocks” located in the current drawing that are displayed when typing the word “Door”.
The required “Block” can be selected from the “Command Line” expansion list and added to the drawing.
If the word “Layer” is typed, not only are the “Layer” commands displayed, but also “Layer 0”, which has an arrow on the right side of the expansion list, as shown in Figure 8.
Selecting the arrow will display the list of “Layers” currently available within the drawing, as shown in Figure 9.
Selecting a “Layer” from the list will make that “Layer” current. This could be an alternative to using either the “Layer Dropdown List” or the “Layer Properties Manager” pallet.
“Mid-String Search”, allows the “Command Line” search list, not only to search for commands that start with the typed characters, but will also search for commands that have the typed letters within the commands. If this function is turned off, only commands that start with the typed letters will be displayed in the list.
“Delay Time”, selecting this option activates the “Inputsearchdelay” system variable, which is displayed at the “Command Line”. This controls the time delay before the suggestion list is displayed. The default value is set to 300 milliseconds, but the value can be set between 100 to 10000 milliseconds.