Chapter 13: Text with Character 283

It slices; it dices . . .

Two more useful options on the multiline text right-click menu are

Background Mask and Insert Field.

Mtext dons a mask

When you turn on background masking, AutoCAD hides the portions of any objects that lie underneath the multiline text. This feature is used primarily when adding text to an area that has already been cross-hatched. (We cover hatching in Chapter 15.) Use these steps to turn on and control this feature:

1.Right-click in the In-Place Text Editor and choose Background Mask from the menu.

The Background Mask dialog box appears.

2.Click the Use Background Mask check box so that this option is turned on.

3.Either click Use Drawing Background Color (to make the mask the same color as the drawing area’s background color) or choose a color from the drop-down list (to make the text appear in a solid rectangle of the specified color).

4.Click OK to return to the In-Place Text Editor.

If you’ve turned on background masking but it isn’t having the desired effect, use the TEXTTOFRONT command to move the text on top of other objects. Click the Bring to Front drop-down button on the Home tab’s Modify panel slideout and choose Bring Text to Front. Mtext plays the field.

The Insert Field option on the In-Line Text Editor’s right-click menu creates a text field that updates automatically every time you open, save, plot, or regenerate the drawing. Fields can contain data such as the date, filename, or author. Fields draw information from the operating-system settings, Drawing Properties dialog box, sheet sets feature (not covered in this book), AutoCAD system variables (for more information about system variables, see Chapter 26), and information about specific drawing objects such as the circumference of a circle or the area enclosed by a closed polyline. Use the following procedure to add a field while you’re creating multiline text:

1.Right-click in the In-Place Text Editor and choose Insert Field from the menu.

The Field dialog box appears.

2.Choose a Field Name in the left column.

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284 Part III: If Drawings Could Talk

3.Choose a Format in the right column, or for date fields, type a format in the Date Format box.

4.Click OK.

AutoCAD adds the field to the Mtext object that you’re creating or editing.

Doing a number on your Mtext lists

Mtext supports bulleted and numbered lists. This feature is especially useful for creating general drawing notes, as shown in Figure 13-6. AutoCAD automates the process of creating numbered lists almost completely. Here’s how:

1.Follow Steps 1 through 8 in the earlier section, “Making it with Mtext,” to open the In-Place Text Editor.

2.Type a title — for example, DESIGN CRITERIA.

If you want your title underlined, click Underline on the Formatting panel (or the Text Formatting toolbar) before you type the title; click Underline again to turn it off. Press Enter to go to the next line, and press Enter again to leave a little more space.

3.On the Paragraph panel of the Text Editor tab, click the Bullets and Numbering drop-down button; verify that Allow Auto-List, Use Tab Delimiter Only, and Allow Bullets and Lists are selected; then click Numbered, as shown in Figure 13-6.

The number 1 followed by a period appears on the current line, and the cursor jumps to the tab stop visible in the ruler at the top of the In-Place Text Editor window.

Enabling the Numbered option places numerals followed by periods in front of items in a list. (Bulleted places bullet characters in front of items in a list.) Allow Auto-List enables automatic numbering — each time you press Enter to move to a new line, AutoCAD increments the number.

4.Type the text corresponding to the current number or bullet.

As AutoCAD wraps the text, the second and subsequent lines align with the tab stop, and the text is indented automatically.

5.Press Enter at the end of the paragraph to move to the next line.

Just like creating numbered lists in your favorite word processor, AutoCAD automatically inserts the next number at the beginning of the new paragraph, with everything perfectly aligned.

To create nested numbered or bulleted items as shown in Figure 13-6, simply press Tab at the start of the line. If you change your mind, you can bump a nested text item up a level by selecting the item in the In-Place Text Editor and pressing Shift+Tab.

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Chapter 13: Text with Character 285

Indentation of second and subsequent lines

Indentation of rst line

Tab

In-Place Text Editor right-click

Figure 13-6: Tabs, indents, and automatic numbering are set to create numbered lists.

6. Repeat Steps 4 and 5 for each subsequent numbered or bulleted item.

For legibility, you sometimes want to add spaces between the notes. If you press Enter twice to give yourself a blank line, AutoCAD — like

every good word processor — thinks you’re finished with your list and turns numbering off. AutoCAD is smart, so you need to be smarter.

If you put the cursor at the end of the first note and press Enter, you get a blank line. The problem is, the blank line is now numbered, and your intended Note 2 is now Note 3. Just press the Backspace key. The number on the blank line disappears, and Note 2 is back to being Note 2 again. When you delete a numbered item, the remaining numbers adjust automatically.

If you don’t like the horizontal spacing of the numbers or the alignment of subsequent lines, you can adjust them easily by manipulating the tab and indent markers in the In-Place Text Editor’s ruler.

7.In the ruler, drag the upper slider (the triangle pointing down) to the right a short distance. Drag the lower slider (the triangle pointing up) a slightly greater distance to the right.

The upper slider controls the indentation of the first line in each paragraph. The lower slider controls the indentation of the second and subsequent lines. An indent of one to two of the short, vertical tick marks usually works well for the first line. An indent of two to four tick marks works well for the second and subsequent lines.

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286 Part III: If Drawings Could Talk

8.Click in the ruler just above the lower slider.

A small L appears above the lower slider. The L shows the tab stop.

Make sure that the corner of the L aligns horizontally with the point of the lower slider triangle. If not, click and drag the L until it aligns.

If you prefer to type tab and indent distances, not adjust them with the cursor, open the Paragraph dialog box by either

Clicking the little arrow at the right end of the Paragraph panel label (in AutoCADese, it’s called a Panel Dialog Box Launcher).

Right-clicking inside the In-Place Text Editor and choosing Paragraph.

Whichever way you do it, if you select text first, the tab and indent changes apply to the selected text. If you don’t select text first, the changes apply to new text from that point forward in the multiline text object.

Line up in columns — now!

The text functionality of AutoCAD is getting more and more word processor– like. A few releases back, it was simple indents; then came numbered and bulleted lists. The most recent addition is columns in multiline text.

Columns come in two flavors: static and dynamic.

Static: You specify the number of columns into which you want to flow your text. Columns are always the same height, and text is allowed to overflow the final column if there’s too much of it.

Dynamic: As you might expect, these columns are friendlier, more flexible, and the life of any party. You can individually adjust column heights, and new columns are added automatically to accommodate the text.

Selecting either column type also offers you a Column Settings dialog box where you can specify values numerically instead of by dragging grips.

Figure 13-7 shows a block of multiline text imported as an RTF file from a word processor and then formatted in dynamic columns with the Manual Height option.

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Chapter 13: Text with Character 287

Figure 13-7: Dynamically columnizing your text.

Setting up columns is pretty straightforward — the following steps explain how:

1.Open a drawing that contains a large multiline text object or create a large multiline text object in a new drawing.

If you already have drawing specifications or general notes in a wordprocessor document, or even a text file, you can right-click inside the MTEXT command’s In-Place Text Editor and choose Import Text. The Select File dialog box opens, giving you the choice of Rich Text Format (RTF) or ASCII text (TXT) files.

2.If the In-Place Text Editor isn’t already open, double-click the text, or select it, and then right-click and choose Mtext Edit.

3.Click Columns in the Insert panel and choose either Dynamic Columns or Static Columns.

If you choose Dynamic Columns, select either Auto Height or Manual Height. Selecting Manual Height puts grips on each column so you can adjust their height individually (refer to Figure 13-7). Auto Height displays a single grip — so the heights of all columns remain the same, but new columns are still added as required by the amount of text.

If you choose Static Columns, select the number of columns you want from the menu. Clicking 2, for example, creates two columns regardless of the length of your text — you may end up with overflowing text or empty columns.

4.Click Close Text Editor (or OK in the Text Formatting toolbar) when you’re satisfied with the column arrangement.

You can revert to a noncolumnar arrangement by clicking the Columns button in the Insert panel and choosing No Columns.

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