Accelerating Zooms and Regens with Qtext

If you need to edit a drawing that contains a lot of text, but you don't need to edit the text, you can use the Qtext command to help accelerate redraws and regenerations when you are working on the drawing. Qtext turns lines of text into rectangular boxes, saving AutoCAD from having to form every letter. This enables you to see the note locations so you don't accidentally draw over them.

Manipulating Text Beyond Labels

This chapter concentrates on methods for adding labels to your drawing, but you also use text in other ways with AutoCAD. Many of the inquiry tools in AutoCAD, such as Dist and List, produce text data. You can use the Windows Clipboard to manipulate such data to your benefit.

For example, you can duplicate the exact length of a line by first using the List command to get a listing of its properties. After you have the property list in the AutoCAD Text window, you can highlight its length listing and then press Ctrl+C to copy it to the Windows Clipboard. Next , you can start the Line command and then pick the start point for the new line. Click the Command window and press Ctrl+V to paste the line- length data into the Command window; then add the angle data or use the Direct Distance method to draw the line.

You can copy any text data from dialog box input boxes or from the AutoCAD Text window to the Clipboard by using the Ctrl+C keyboard shortcut. You can likewise import that data into any part of AutoCAD that accepts text.

Consider using the Clipboard the next time you need to transfer data within AutoCAD or even when you need to import text from some other application.

 

Tip  

Selecting a large set of text objects for editing can be annoyingly slow. To improve the speed of text selection (and object selection in general), turn off the Highlight and Dragmode system variables . This disables certain convenience features but can improve overall performance, especially on large drawings. See Appendix C for more information on these system variables.

The following steps tell you how to turn on Qtext:

1. Enter Qtext at the command prompt.

2. At the ON/OFF <OFF>: prompt, enter ON .

3. To display the results of Qtext, issue the Regen command from the prompt.

   Tip  

   You can also open the Options dialog box (choose Tools   Options), click the Display tab, and then click the Show Text Boundary Frame Only option to display text as rectangular regions .

When Qtext is off, text is generated normally. When Qtext is on, rectangles show the approximate size and length of text.