Michael’s Corner

Michael's Corner is a monthly publication written by Michael E. Beall, Autodesk Authorized Author and peripatetic AutoCAD trainer. Michael travels all over the USA, bringing his fantastic experience and great understanding of AutoCAD to his clients. Michael's Corner brings together many of the tips, tricks and methods developed during these training sessions for the benefit of all users.

Michael's Corner provides something for every AutoCAD user. Every month, a number of articles cover a wide range of topics, suitable for users at all levels, including "The Basics" for those just starting out. Essentially, the aim of Michael's Corner is to help all AutoCAD users work smarter and faster.

This month…

From the Vault

Originally published October 2014

The A2015 Text Align Command

One of the productivity tools that you can download from my website is OBJNO2.LSP. It's a simple sequential numbering routine where you enter the first number, the text height, then start picking points… but you can't line the numbers up by turning on Ortho.

So, after numbering several items, let's look at the Text Align command, recently introduced in A2015.

Insights

Alignment. The alignment option—available only when the command begins—enables you to specify the alignment of the selected text. These are identical to the justification options seen in Single Line and Multiline text. An alignment of MC is shown in the figure.

[Left/Center/Right/TL/TC/TR/ML/MC/MR/BL/BC/BR]

‘Text object to align to’ [Point]. The ‘baseline’ text object can either be part of the selection set, or remain unselected. You may also pick a non-text location for the alignment of the selected text.

Result Options. Once the text has been selected and you have established a position for the alignment, you can choose how that text is spread out or aligned.

Enter an option [Distribute/Set spacing/current Vertical/current Horizontal] <current Horizontal>:

The Distribute option is the most immediately gratifying (and shown in the MC example, above) and is similar to the result when you dynamically edit an associated array. The Set spacing option is pretty straightforward, but the ‘current’ options—Vertical and Horizontal—are initially counter-intuitive. The following exercise will help.

How to Align Existing Text Horizontally

1. Launch Text Align [TA], then select all the text to be aligned and press [Enter].

2. Select a ‘text object to align to’, or use the [Point] option. In the figure, I picked the point indicated by the arrow.

3. Click Options. To maintain the current horizontal spacing/position of the selected text, I used the option for current Horizontal.

4. Turn on Ortho, then pick the second point of the alignment line.

   

It takes a couple tries to get used to it, but I think it's a very welcome addition to the text collection.

Note: If you have downloaded my productivity .LSP files to a folder that is not on the default Support File Search Path, when you open AutoCAD, you may get a File Loading—Security Concern notice regarding ‘trusted locations’, see the July 2013 Odd Spot to configure your system to allow for loading of these routines.

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