By Dennis Collin
Recently I wrote a post on how, when creating handed versions of entities in AutoCAD, the behaviour of text can be controlled with the MIRRTEXT system variable.
Setting MIRRTEXT to ‘1’ will allow mirrored text entities, whereas setting it to ‘0’ (Zero) will maintain the text as right reading.
Unfortunately, this does not include text elements residing within Blocks or External References. The text elements will mirror regardless of the MIRRTEXT setting, although they will display correctly if the block is exploded. However this is not always desirable.
A useful workaround to this is to create the text as ATTRIBUTES. These elements will stay right reading provided the attribute type is NOT set to constant. The attributes also provide several benefits as the string value can be adjusted to suit individual circumstances and be extracted out to AutoCAD tables or MS Excel if schedules are required.
NB. If the block is nested then the attributes will become wrong reading if mirrored. To avoid this, consider using Dynamic Blocks instead. I will discuss this process in another post.
If Dynamic Blocks or Block Attributes within AutoCAD are of interest, consider attending one of our training courses. The AutoCAD Intermediate Course covers Blocks, Attributes and Dynamic Blocks in some detail, but also other topics like templates, XRefs and Layer management. We also offer ½ day sessions on certain areas like blocks. Details of which can be found here: