Chapter 9: Creating Text

Overview

Even though AutoCAD is primarily a drawing program, you may find that you're actually adding more text than graphics to some of your drawings. In fact, annotation can often consume nearly half the time you spend on an AutoCAD drawing.

Fortunately, AutoCAD provides some familiar tools for creating and editing text. AutoCAD's Mtext command lets you place blocks of text in your drawing as short as a single sentence or as long as several paragraphs. Mtext also contains many familiar text-formatting tools, so if you've used a word processor, you should feel at home.

This chapter starts by showing you how to create new text and then discusses text formatting. You'll also learn how to use text styles and what to do when you need to add only a short, single-word note. Since you're drawing to a precise scale most of the time, you'll have to size your text appropriately for your drawing's scale. If you're creating a new drawing, be sure to check out the section on text scaling, "Understanding Text and Scale."

Finally, since tables are a prominent feature in CAD drawings, you'll learn about AutoCAD's Table command, which helps automate table creation. You'll learn how to create a table with spreadsheet-like features and how to import spreadsheets as AutoCAD tables.