Favorite AutoCAD 2005 Feature #1

Fields... though you may not know what this is yet, you will soon enough and you will wonder how you ever worked without them.

It took me a short period of time to understand exactly how fields were going to work for AutoCAD. 10 minutes later I was a superstar. OK, well maybe not a superstar, but if you have ever used RTEXT and wished for more power such as justification and more than plain diesel can give you then you will love this. Fields can be used to show data such as current date, title block information, sheet numbers, sheet names, labels, system variables and of course diesel expressions. If the information changes, regenerate the drawing to automatically update the fields.

5 things interesting about Fields:

1. Fields can be inserted into any string of text (except tolerances) and used in conjunction with text that is manually input. When the referenced field value is changed/modified the value of the field is updated and displayed.

2. Fields allow you to use any justification available for text.

3. Fields offer a few new variables (fielddisplay, fieldeval). These control the background visibility of the fields (similar to Microsoft Word) and when the referenced field information is updated. The Fieldeval is controlled by a bitcode variable (o, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16).

4. Fields can be associated with hyperlinks and views.

5. When used in conjunction with ADT you have access to AEC Project Information and AEC Keynotes.

Okay, well that's enough for now. When you get your copy of ACAD/ADT 2005 be sure to look at the fields and see just how powerful they can be.

happy cadding...