In addition to decimal separators, you can also use a comma or space as a separator.įigure 7 is an example using the decimal tab stop. This way, all the decimal points will line up vertically in the list.
Right Tab – All text entered appears BEFORE the tab stop.ĭecimal Tab – All numerical text with a decimal value (e.g., 500.00) appears from the tab stop centered from the decimal point. Left Tab – All text entered appears AFTER the tab stop.Ĭenter Tab – All text entered appears CENTERED from the tab stop. Looking at the radio buttons from left to right, they are: In addition to manually assigning tab stops, you can predefine them within an MText object as well simply by right-clicking on the ruler and selecting Paragraph from the pop-up menu.Īs you can see in Figure 6, there are four different types of tab stops. You can then add bullets to the list the same way you can add a number list. Then it is only a matter of placing your cursor in front of the text, and pressing the Tab key on your keyboard to shift the text accordingly. To insert and set up different tab stops while in the MText Editor, simply click repeatedly on the tab-style box until you get the desired tab stop style, and then click on the ruler bar where you want the tab style to be located. We can even use a tab stop style that allows all the numbers to be right-justified. Instead of having the text within the list all left-justified, or pressing the spacebar to get the justification to look “good enough,” we can use indents and tab stops to make the format more appealing and easier to read. It is a materials list for a typical road cross-section (note the values listed are in millimeters). To insert a tab-stop, simply click your cursor where you need a tab stop. To control which text is to have indents and tab stops, simply highlight the desired text, and then drag the indents (i.e., top line left indent, second line left indent, and paragraph right indent) on the ruler bar to the desired location.
You can control the location and width of text within the documents with indents and tab stops just as you can in any word processor. While in the text editor, to restart a numbering sequence, place your cursor at the beginning of the text to be renumbered, click on the pull-down button for Numbering Lists and Bullets and select Restart. Note: If you no longer wish for an item to be indented as a sub-list, simply put your cursor at the beginning of the text and hold down the Shift key on your keyboard followed by pressing the Tab key. Do this for item 3 as well, and you will see how items 2 and 3 become sub-set items 1.1 and 1.2, respectively. While in the text editor, place your cursor at the beginning of item 2 and press the Tab key on your keyboard. Then, you can simply change the new item 3 to restart as a separate item 1.
With a simple keyboard function, we can easily change items 2 and 3 to become sub-items 1.1 and 1.2, and in turn, items 4 and 5 will automatically renumber themselves as items 2 and 3. It is a listing of some general notes, numbered 1 through 5 that you would see on a design drawing. But did you know that you could create sub-listings? The purpose of this article is to go beyond the basics.Īs you probably know, MText has the ability to create number lists of selected paragraphs within the editor. Since then, it has become an intuitive and intelligent in-place document editor. Multi-line text objects were introduced way back in AutoCAD Release 13 (1994), and had some very basic features such as word wrapping and “By-Entity” formatting. If you take away just one trick from this article, I will have done my job.
In this article, I will share a series of tips and tricks for creating MText objects. That’s why I am presenting as many helpful tricks as possible on a particular topic to make things easier for future reference. The only real problem when discovering new tricks is that you can actually go years before you come across a real gem that could have such a major impact on how you do things. When I discover those hidden gems, I instantly realize that when it comes to creating AutoCAD drawings, my life just became a little easier. Back May 14th, 2012 AutoCAD Tricks for MText: Beyond the BasicsĪs an AutoCAD® user for nearly 25 years, I still get a sense of excitement-and dare I say I become “giddy”-whenever I discover a new AutoCAD trick.