Being an engineer inevitably means being a designer. All engineers are designers and they use specific tools to come up with various designs of engineering elements, ranging from structural, civil to electrical. One of the most popular engineering tools for design is AutoCAD. In order to be able to complete design projects quickly and without compromising quality, you need to make use of special shortcuts. We have prepared a list of 52 must-know shortcuts for users who want to streamline the execution of commands in AutoCAD. These shortcuts are for any engineer who uses AutoCAD for design, and the list is useful for both beginners and advanced users, as well as junior and senior engineers.
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BURST
This is the command to use if you want to explode a block object while maintaining all its attributes.
NCOPY
This shortcut is for copying objects or line work into your current drawing from an object in nested form.
CHSPACE
This shortcut lets you choose a specific viewport to view texts or objects, in order to transfer objects in a drawing from a layout to model space.
OOPS
It works better than CTRL-Z in that it undoes the previous erase command without affecting any work done since the erase.
FILEDIA
Simply set this value to 1 or 0 if you want to be able to open dialogue boxes in AutoCAD, or do everything in the command line, respectively.
R/REDRAW
You can use this command if you want to refresh the drawing in the viewport you've created.
APPLOAD
This command allows you to set the application to load each time you open AutoCAD.
ID
This command enables you to display point coordinates throughout the worksheet, thus letting you easily track the location of various objects within your worksheet.
Worth with images
You can avoid scaling and rotating images by inserting the image of your choice into a blank drawing and setting its scale, rotation, and position. Once your image appears the way you want it, save it. You can insert the image as a drawing rather than an image while maintaining all your settings. This trick is especially useful for the design of images, such as company logos.
DIMBASELINE
Type this command if you want to create a dimension whose starting point is the baseline of an earlier dimension. This trick is applicable to all kinds of dimensions including linear, coordinate and angular.
Autoscale setting
Quickly adjust the default scale factor by setting the Aux scale factor to either the DIM or Plot Scale.
RECOVER
This is for recovering damaged files quickly.
QDIM
This is for quickly dimensioning objects that have been selected.
CHANGE CASE
This is for quickly changing the case of your letters without retyping MText.
Default NO Plot Layer
This is perfect for adding notes. It creates a layer called DEFPOINTS; the contents will appear in model and paper space, but will not be plotted.
RULESURF
Create a surface between two curves which have been defined earlier.
MATLIB
Matlib lets you quickly import and export materials to a library.
LIGHT
This command is for modifying all lighting effects in 3D models.
SKETCH
Create freehand drawing lines seamlessly and conveniently.
TORIENT
Use this to orient text to a specific angle, depending on your preferences.
U
Undo your previous entries quicker than using CTRL Z.
PFACE
This is a command to use if you want to create a 3D mesh from one vertex to another.
OVERKILL
This command deletes any duplicates or items that are overlapping with each other.
PREVIEW
You can use this command to see how your paper space drawing will appear when printed.
SAVEALL & CLOSEALL
This combination of commands is best for saving your work - a good practice all engineers should practice.
MLEDIT
If you want to edit many parallel lines at once, this is the command to use.
WIPEOUT
This is the best shortcut command for wiping out unwanted lines. Simply set boundaries and wipe out everything behind the lines. It works like a reverse hatch.
PAGESETUP
This command is used to set up your paper in the paper space. It is a quick way to modify page settings to your desire.
TIME
Display information such as last update, creation date, edit times and other statistics pertaining to your current drawing.
3DSOUT
This is for users who want to export files that are compatible with the 3D studio. The file will be exported with .3ds extension.
SPELL
This is for checking whether your spellings are correct or not.
Importing block definitions
Keep definitions in your drawing for later referencing. Simply enter the INSERT command, select a file and press the ESC button when the first prompt appears.
Stop REGEN After PAN
If you are not the person who created the object, you can use this command to prevent AutoCAD from entering into the auto green mode after panning. Use the VIEWRES command along with YES, followed by setting the zoom to 200 %.
BOX
This is a perfect command for creating a 3D box and defining its height, depth, and width.
XCLIP
Used for trimming the visible area of a block by means of a boundary line.
DIMROTATED
Align dimensions to staggered objects in cases where DIMALIGNED cannot work.
BATTMAN
This is for changing the properties and order of block definitions.
COLOR
If you do not want to waste time when changing the color layer for future objects, lines or blocks, try this.
Ctrl + R
This is for changing paper space viewports.
QLATTACH
This is for attaching leader line to Mtext.
MENUBAR
Use this if you want toggle yourself back to the old style menu bar
PFACE
This is for creating a 3D mesh from one vertex to another
XDWGFADECTL
This is somewhat difficult to remember, but it is a perfect command for changing XREF settings by setting the XREF value to 0, an entry that fixes your drawing’s “faded” XREFS.
BO/BOUNDARY
Lets you split an object into two by drawing a line through it. Use the BOUNDARY command to come up with correct sizes of polylines in each half, and erasing all original objects.
FACETRES
Quickly adjust curve smoothness of solid objects using this command.
IMAGECLIP
This is one of the quickest ways to crop any image in your drawing.
QSELECT
Filter your selection to specific objects depending on the type of objects, and other attributes.
CLASSICXREF
Switching back to the old style of XREFs.
M
Move objects within a specific distance in an instant.
O
Offsetting lines with one touch of a button.
L
Quickly draw line segments.
P
This is a perfect way to pan open objects without having to drag the mouse.
These 52 shortcuts for AutoCAD users are effective for reducing the time your AutoCAD projects take. They are easy to execute and make using AutoCAD simple and straightforward.
If you have more shortcuts to add, leave them in the comments section below.
