AutoCAD® 2009 & AutoCAD LT® 2009 All-in-One Desk Reference for Dummies®

Chapter 1. Text: When Pictures Just Won't Do

You know the old saying about a picture being worth a thousand words? I've done some digging and discovered that with the current exchange rate and cost of living increases, a picture is now worth 3,712 words!

However, text is important, too. It's a lot simpler — and more precise — to specify a manufacturer and part number in numbers and letters than it is to try to draw the darned thing from every angle. And until you can teach your drawings to talk, adding text is a necessary part of drafting in AutoCAD.

In this chapter, I look at creating and editing text in AutoCAD drawings.

Text in AutoCAD

In AutoCAD, little is as simple as it can be. Take drawing text, for instance. AutoCAD has not one but two kinds. You use one if you want to enter single characters or short lines of text, and the other if you want to write a novel — or at least some general notes. The first type is called single-line text, and the second (wait for it . . .) is called multiline text (Autodesk also refers to the latter as paragraph text).

An AutoCAD drawing has other kinds of text as well:

• Leaders: Leaders are drawing notes that include a line with an arrow at one end that points to a drawing object. You create leaders by using a few dimensioning commands. I cover leaders in Chapter 2 of this minibook.

• Dimension values: Dimension values appear as text and are formatted according to a text style, but they're not text objects — they're an integral part of dimension objects. ...