Faster ways to select your objects and clean up your drawings in AutoCAD!

KATIE KING: Well, I think it's time. So we'll go ahead and get started. Welcome to Faster Ways to Select Your Objects and Clean Your Drawing in AutoCAD. Long topic, but I felt like the title suited what I wanted to talk about.

I may actually be a little ambitious in this session. I probably-- there's probably a little bit more stuff than I probably have given time for, but it's all good. It's all in the handout. If anybody has any trouble accessing the handout, let me know. I know one of my sessions- Printing Like a Pro-- Autodesk kind of didn't publish what I had sent them, and it didn't finish out.

But it's there now, if anybody was in my Printing Like a Pro session, the handout is available now. But it should be up there. I have detailed workflows inside the handout. So you're more than welcome to use that in whatever you need.

I have included partial handout here. So what you have at your computer is just the exercises from the handout. This is not the whole handout, the handout is 32 pages. OK, these are just the exercises. Due to some time constraints in my over excitedness in this session, everything that's in exercise one is really pretty simple.

I'm going to present that at the beginning, and then we'll jump into the harder stuff in two, three, and four. Excuse me. I think I've been talking too much today already I guess. All right.

So my name is Katie King, and I am a Senior Technical Specialist at US CAD. What I do, a little bit of everything. I've been there for 16 years. I teach/ train AutoCAD. I'm a corporate trainer.

I go to companies, and I train them on whatever they need. I do custom modular training, whatever. I'm also a migration specialist. So I help people migrate their software customization forward from different versions. And I'm also a network licensed specialist.

So I also-- I will admit my deep dark secret that I love to set up license servers. I knew that's really weird, but that's OK I like doing it. So now you guys know I'm a true dork at heart. I love this stuff. And that's what I do.

I've been using AutoCAD since 1987. This is my 30th year using AutoCAD. So my 30th year anniversary when AutoCAD is having its 35th anniversary. But I really do love this stuff. Just to tell you-- my badge, I took it off to avoid conflict with the microphone. But if I can make anything, my make is relationships. That's what I do. That's what I'm good at.

I'll probably never be a builder, but I love to make relationships. I love to help people out. So that's what we're going to do. In this session we want to learn something specific. We want to learn how to make our files better.

One of the biggest things that you guys will find that you're dealing with every day is when you get files-- whether you have them in-house or whether you get them from external consultants-- one of the problems you have is dealing with files that have problems. Like, particularly when you attach files as xrefs and you try to change the layer color to gray, and you've got red and blue popping out everywhere. Something like that, right?

There's all kinds of issues with files. We have issues with corruption in files. We have issues with things on the wrong layers. We have-- we could go on and on about what problems we have with files. Is there anybody in this room that's never had a problem with an AutoCAD file? Right, no? Nobody, right?

There's always issues. Why? AutoCAD has been around since 1982. We have files-- some of you might have files that you haven't opened that you may be pulled out of storage. And that file now is 15/ 20 years old, and now it's bringing it forward. There's bound to be some issues.

Additionally, people use all different flavors of AutoCAD. People use AutoCAD Architecture. And then we transfer drawings from Revit. And we bring files from Civil 3D. And they're all different. And we bring files from Microstation. We bring files from-- pick a CAD program.

All of those variables make our files unstable. So the whole point of this class is to kind of-- two-fold-- teach you faster ways to select objects in AutoCAD. So that when you need to clean your files, it doesn't take you two days to select all the objects to fix them.

And the other half of that is learning how to fix those files that are bloated. OK, clean up your drawings in AutoCAD. How do I make my file size get smaller? If you have a huge 3D model there's not a heck of a lot you can do about that. But there's other things that we can do.

Sometimes files just open slow. They're not necessarily a big file, but they might open slow. So those are all things we're going to try to address in this lab.

So we're going to start off-- first of all we'll just jump in. And I just want to-- I forgot to show you this. So if you need to connect with me, you're more than welcome to. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm happy to connect with pretty much anybody. You can reach out to me on my email address. That's my company's website.

So this is a four-fold agenda. Number one, we're going to review some basics. Now, due to constraints in time that is exercise one in the handout. I'm going to present that.

I found that it was pretty simple. This is actually my second time doing this session. And the first session I thought, it's kind of simple stuff. We can-- I'll just show it, and then we can kind of go through the exercise later if they want.

So we're going to-- I'm going to do object selection cycling, select similar, draw order, and understanding the lasso. Now, anybody here never used select similar? Got a few, OK. Anybody never used object selection cycling? OK, got a couple.

OK, so they're very basic. So I'm going to show those, and then we'll jump into exercises for the others. Our second topic is quick select and filter. These are tools to speed up the selection of objects as well. But they're more advanced or a little more complex tools. We will start, and do hands on exercises directly on those.

The third section is using layer translator and scripts. These are also more advanced techniques that are kind of fun to get your hands on and do. And then the last one is kind of getting into that cleaning of those files, or kind of the nitty gritty of fixing these files. All right.

Now, I'm actually going to start off really quick here, and let everybody know that I have giveaways. Anybody who was already on the list for this class-- sorry anybody who came in late, I can't do anything about it. I had-- OK, hold on. It is not showing my screen, and I don't know why.

That's not good. Let's see. well, I even hit escape in slideshow. OK, you got the slide. Let's see if we can get to-- it is really not going to-- where is our visual guy?

OK, so I'm just going to move on. I'm not going to wait around on this. What's on the screen here is this really great website called Name Pick Ninja. Name Pick Ninja allows me to pick somebody to win a prize.

OK, all of your names that were already pre-registered for this class are in there, and I'm going to pick one. It's kind of fun to watch it, but I'm not sure why it's not showing on the screen. So it's plugged in.

Are you seeing a web page that says Name Pick-- Name Picker Ninja on it? No. All right. Right I'll just run it, and then tell you the name. I'm not cheating. The name is going. I don't want to wait around on this, so I'm going to hit go.

And there's bunches and bunches of names scrolling by. Is there a Nathan Worthington in the room? No Nathan. So Nathan does not get a prize. You see-- No.

Well, that is my computer, but it's the wrong screen. It's probably showing it's the first screen instead of the second screen. It's just showing the second screen, it's not showing the first screen. That's the problem. Hold on. Function--

There we go. Sweet. All right. Sorry you guys for the delay. The second name is Morgan. Is Morgan here? I won't butcher the last name. No Morgan? Oh, we have Morgan. All right. You've got five seconds to raise your hand before-- this is a power bank and mouse pads.

And I have a few more of those to give out. I also have some homemade candy to give out. It's peanut brittle and English toffee I homemade made myself. So all right.

So I'm going to jump into AutoCAD right here, and we're going to get going. So the first thing that I want to show you how to do is object selection cycling. I know some of you have used object selection cycling.

But one of the things that-- just to give you a quick explanation on it-- objects large cycling is useful when you have objects underneath other objects. And you don't want to have to freeze layers or send things under or whatever to get to them. So how do you turn on object selection cycling?

The first thing to note is it is not on by default in the list. So if I come in and look for selection cycling in the status bar list, by default when you install AutoCAD it is not selected. It won't be on in the status bar. So you've got to turn it on.

And then the button at the bottom-- we'll find the icon here-- there's this little tiny icon down here at the bottom. And that is the selection cycling. How many people here are keyboard people? Control W also turns it off and on. So control W is easier to use sometimes than the status bar. So if you're a keyboard person, you'll want to use control W.

Now mine is on right now, so let's see how it works. I've got a file open here, and I'm going to move my cursor over the top of this object. And you will see two little squares next to the crosshair. Those squares indicate that there is more than one object on top of each other.

So if I were to take my cursor right now and just click, it has a pop up. It's going to say, oh, you've got a line and a polyline there. Which one do you want? All you have to do is take your mouse and pick the one that you want off the list.

So if I say, I want the polyline, now the polyline has been selected. And then I can go, oh, I want to get rid of that. So I can just hit my delete key, and it's gone. So that's the object selection cycling for-- I think it was a couple of people hadn't used that before. I think you'll find it extremely useful.

You may not want to leave it on all the time, because it can be kind of annoying when you have it on constantly and it's always, like, picking multiple objects. So that's why that control W really comes into play. It's really easy to use.

So the second thing that I want to show you in here is a quick way to manage your draw order. I'm sure most of you have probably used draw order before, but I want to give you a couple of tips. So I have this object here that needs to go underneath. It's just a solid fill.

I'm going to select this. And say, hey, make sure you get the hatch. And then I'm going to right click. And I can say draw order, and I can send it to the back.

Now, something that I actually just remembered today in my-- I was helping on another session. How many of you have blocks with, like, wipe outs in them that you put the draw orders in there? Do you know that if you-- instead of using send to back inside the block, if you sit you say, send under objects and you pick the other objects, it works better, instead of using send to back.

If you're going to put wipe outs in a block, don't use the send to back. Use the send under objects, and pick the other objects. It works better. Just a tip.

But I'm going to send it to the back here. Now, what I really want to show everyone is do you guys know there's a whole utility of draw order tools? If you go to modify, and then you go to the dropdown here, there's actually, like, a whole set of tools for draw order.

There's actually a command called text to front that has all the rest of these tools in it. Bring text to front, bring dimensions to front, bring leaders to front, and so on. It's kind of hidden in the menu. If you've never seen that before, that's where you get it. Or you can type in text to front to get to it.

Anybody used those before? A few. OK, so something new for us few of you. All right.

So another thing that I want to show you is select similar. Who said they haven't used select similar? Who hasn't used select similar? Just a couple. OK, so I'm going to show you a couple tips with select similar.

If you select an object and then right click, select similar is on the right click menu. Basically it picks up everything like it. Pretty easy to use, right? Did you know you can then pick up another object, right click, and select similar again, and it'll do that one? You could keep going on. I could, you know, grab this one, right click, select similar.

You can keep building on your select similar. So that's a nice tip to know. The other thing that's good to know with select similar, if you type it at the command line, select similar-- I'm going to type the whole thing, there it is. Let's see.

I don't like when my command line does that. There it is. Settings. There's a settings menu. Anybody use the settings menu for select similar? All you have to do to get to it is type select similar at the command line. Pop it up. SE for settings, or click on the screen, and there you go.

You can tell it which settings it's looking for. By default, it checks for the layer and the kind of object type stuff. But if you want it to look for color or other properties, you can do that. All right.

Now-- last but not least-- let's say, for example, I would like to select objects. And in 2016 and above-- who here is using a higher than '16, 2016 or higher? Probably most everyone has at least 2016 or higher.

In 2016 AutoCAD they introduced a new selection tool called the lasso. Now, everybody here in this room is one of two types of people. You are either a pick and clicker or you are a press and dragger.

Who is a press and dragger? That means when you make a window, you hold down your mouse button while you're dragging. OK, so you're press and dragger. If you are a press and dragger you probably don't like the lasso.

If you're a pick and clicker you probably don't even care, because you don't even notice it. But I'm going to demonstrate that. And, you know, let me change the background really quick on my screen so that you guys can see this a little easier. I'm just going to change the background color of AutoCAD.

I kind of like my background color to be black, but it's a little harder to see. And I know I'm going to offend you with the white, but it's a little easier to see on the projector. All right. Right I don't like the white either, trust me. I would never work this way, but it's easier to see. All right.

So here's how the lasso works. If you press down with your left mouse button like you're going to make a window, instead of a window you're going to get the lasso. The lasso is a free form selector. If you go in counterclockwise, it's a blue lasso.

The blue means everything inside of it is what's going to get selected. It's going to pick up everything. Makes it easy to get stuff like this. OK, so what I mean by press and draggers are going to hate it, because it's going to start the lasso every time, instead of their window. And you can either retrain yourself to be a pick and clicker, or you can turn the lasso function off.

Now, with the lasso-- something kind of cool to know-- if you go counterclockwise it will give you a crossing lasso. And if you tap your space bar while you're using the lasso, it'll switch between three modes. What's called a fence mode, which is kind of like a little, you know, line. The green one, which is the crossing. And the blue one, which is the window.

So it's kind of cool. Anyway, so there are just a few basic tips for everyone, and-- on those few components. Now, for those of you who still aren't going to use the lasso, do you guys know how to turn it off? So right click on your command line, and go to options. Let's have everybody do this.

Right click on the command line in AutoCAD, and go to options. And then go to the selection tab. And there is an option that says, allow press and drag for lasso. If you uncheck that, it will not do lassos. So if you are you are a press and dragger, you might want to just turn it off.

There was no press and drag in AutoCAD 2.5 when I started, so I was born and bred a pick and clicker. So that's kind of-- I use both the lasso and the other. The lasso works when you press. So that's where it goes.

Any questions on those kind of basic techniques? Everybody good to go? All right.

So we're going to move into next-- we're going to learn about the filter command. And what I'm going to do is demonstrate the technique, and then you guys are going to get to do the exercise. All right. And we'll be starting with exercise two in the handout.

You're more than welcome to turn to art right now, so you have it ready to go when I'm done with the demonstration. It's the back side of page one, the backside of page one. Exercise-- it says exercise two, learn more complex tools.

So what I want to do here is in this drawing I have a layer, and it's called sports. And it contains all the elements for the sports fields that are in this drawing. There are some tennis courts, there's a baseball field, a football field. There's a bunch of different things.

But I want to tell my computer to select all the objects that are polylines, lines, or arcs. And I want it to select those for me, and they have to be on the sports layer. So I want to have the computer do that for me, instead of me manually going, OK, that one and that one.

Anybody ever gone through and selected a bunch of objects, and then you accidentally picked the wrong one? And then you hit escape really quick without thinking. And then you're swearing at your computer going, dang it. Shoot, now I've got to start over.

OK, so the point of this class is to make it so that you don't have to go, shoot, I don't want to start over. All right. All right. Oh, somebody asked me in the last session something relatively straightforward, and I wanted to make sure that everybody here knew about it. And maybe somebody can even answer it.

If you were to select some objects, and you accidentally picked up something you don't want, what do you do? Shift to de-select. Don't hit escape and start over, right?

OK, so if you hold the shift key down, and then you pick the object that you don't want. When you're using that, it will automatically de-select as long as you hold your shift key down. So if anybody who hadn't seen that before, in the old days we used to remove at the command line. But now shift is much easier. Question?

AUDIENCE: Do [INAUDIBLE] window [INAUDIBLE]?

KATIE KING: Absolutely. That's a really good point. While you're-- you're asking, or did you want to say it?

AUDIENCE: Yeah, I can.

KATIE KING: Yes.

AUDIENCE: So [INAUDIBLE].

KATIE KING: So what she's saying is this, is if you got a little over excited when you're doing your lasso here, and you've got too many to hand pick. If you hold your shift key down, you can do a window, another lasso, you can pretty much do anything while you're holding your shift key down. So it's pretty flexible. Anyway-- All right.

So filter. There's two commands that I use in AutoCAD besides select similar to tell AutoCAD to power up objects, to give me lots of objects. The first one is filter. Filter is really, really old. Filter was created in AutoCAD R12, not 2012. And that was the first version of AutoCAD had dialog boxes. Well, 11 had some, but not too many. So mostly 12.

And that was back in '92 I want to say. So this command is really old. I'm going to type it. To be perfectly honest, I don't know there's any other way to get to this command. I'm just going to type filter.

So the way the filter command works is a little bit interesting. Who's used filter before? A hand full. OK, probably because it's a little bit trick to use. So I want you to watch carefully while I'm doing this.

The first task is I want to tell it to pick up all my polylines, lines, and arcs. And then I'm going to tell it which layer to get them from. In order to tell it to pick up more than one type of object, I have to use a special or statement that says get polylines, or lines, or they can be any of those three types.

So I have to use a special or statement. It works like this. I'm going to come in, and I'm going to scroll all the way to the bottom of my filter list here. And I'm going to choose begin or. So this little list is a list of everything in AutoCAD that you can filter on. You have a criteria of what you're looking for.

So I'm going to put in that begin or. And every time you put something in this filter, you're going to click add to list. Then I'm going to come in and say, OK, now for the good stuff. I want to get an arc, and I want to add that to the list. And I want lines, and I want to add those to the list.

And I want to do a poly-- I want poly lines, and I want to add those to the list. So I've got all three object types that I'm interested in picking up. It does not matter which order you put those in at all. So no particular reason for any one of those being. I just went in alphabetical order.

Now that I'm done with the objects, I'm going to come in and add an end or statement. To say, hey, I'm done collecting the objects here. And I'm going to insert that add-- I'm going to add that to the list.

Now, the last part of this filter is to tell it which layer to look for those on. And I want them on that sports layer. So I'm going to come in, and for the filter I'm going to choose layer. Layer, right there it is. And then there's a select button right next to it that lets you pick the layer name so you don't misspell it.

OK, so you don't want to have to type it manually, because chances are you'll misspell it. I know at least I do. I always fat finger and get something in there wrong. So there's my layer. And then I click add to list. So now it's ready to go.

So I'm going to hit apply. And it's going to say, what objects do you want me to look through? I'm just going to make a window around the whole thing.

And if you look closely at the command line right here, it says 232 objects found. And if I zoom in you can see that it's highlighted all the polylines, lines, and arcs that are on that layer. Pretty cool, right? So now I'm just going to hit enter-- because I'm done with the filter-- and it leaves those objects selected for me. Why do I want to do that? Well, we're going to-- in the exercise we're just going to go to the copy command in AutoCAD. We're just going to make a copy over here to the right side. Pretty easy. All right.

So let's go ahead and do this exercise. So jump in exercise two part one. And it's called part one filter. You can start on step two because-- or wait, do we have the files open? Thank you.

I think the file-- you are you should already have the file already opened, you can just start right on step two. I totally forgot to introduce my lab aids. You guys should have said something.

Real quick at the back, we have Tracy Chadwick from Hutchinson Community College. We have Steve Bennett from Taylor-- are you at Taylor, Taylor Architects? And we have James Lord, who also works with me at US CAD. Please raise your hand if you need help.

OK, so the first thing you might notice is I'm back in the filter box. Did it get rid of my last filter? No, it keeps it for you, which is kind of nice. OK, so I'm going to go ahead and save this filter.

What I'm going to do is just give it a name. I'm going to call this sports objects, just to keep it simple. And I'm going to hit save as, and it's going to save it to the list. The list is right above there, right here. You can create as many as you want. They're going to save there. No, this list is not exportable, before somebody asked me that.

AUDIENCE: So this is?

KATIE KING: So I've seen it stick, but it's pretty much drawing specific. It's kind of-- it does stay in the registry while you're in the file, that's how it comes back up. But-- so there is probably a way to capture it with LISP. But it is drawing specific, as far as what saves with the file.

Because we're talking about layers that are in that drawing, right? And that layer may not be in another drawing or whatever. OK, so I'm going to give away one of my things of candy here really quick. OK, I'm pressing go. Let's hope for somebody who's actually here so I don't have to run it a couple times. Lee Dexter? All right. You are not allergic to peanuts are you? OK.

AUDIENCE: Can you take me to the casino?

KATIE KING: With the candy?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

KATIE KING: OK. That's funny. All right. Yeah, there's no guarantee this is going to make you any luckier in the casino, but hey-- All right.

OK, so the next thing we're going to do is we're going to use Quick Select. First thing I'm going to do is show you all the places you can get Quick Select, because there are multiple places you can open Quick Select from. Real quick, who has never used Quick Select? A few? OK, you're going to love Quick Select.

My husband uses AutoCAD. I taught him AutoCAD years ago. And about a year and a half ago he got a new job using AutoCAD. He also does document management. The other day I was showing him my handout, and I was having him do the exercises to make sure that a newbie could handle it.

And he goes, what is Quick Select? And I'm like, oh, my gosh. We're in trouble. I got-- now he tells me it is his favorite thing in AutoCAD. So he's pretty excited about Quick Select. So hopefully those of you who've never used it, you'll be excited as well. All right.

So what I want to do in this particular one, Quick Select is a tool that works similar to filter, but it is simpler. OK, I use it when I want to say look through the entire drawing for all the text that has a height less than 10. Or look through the entire drawing for all the text that has a particular style. Or I want to look through the entire drawing for all the objects that are leaders.

And the point is when I am done selecting them, I want to do something to them. I want to change the arrow size. I want to change the text height. I want to change the layer they're on. I want to change the text style. Anything that you can think of that you want to change, Quick Select basically selects the objects for you-- just like filter would-- but it's a little bit simpler to use.

Would you guys agree who have used Quick Select, it's a little simpler to use? What do you think? Yeah, it's a little simpler. So I'm going to show you, first of all, where to find it.

Number one, the properties box. Who-- is there anybody here who doesn't use properties? Anybody not use properties? Everybody uses properties, right? How many of you have more than one monitor? Most everybody nowadays. Anybody have three, four? Everybody's going three? I want three.

A lot of times we keep our properties window open all the time. We put it on another one of our monitors, right? We put it to the side or something like that. So properties, why do you think I'm going to properties? Well, Quick Select is available on the properties box. It's in the upper right corner of the properties.

How do you open properties? PR for properties, that's one. I know Tracy uses CH to get to it. You can do-- who knows the keyboard keystroke? Control-- so close-- control one. Control two is actually the design center. Control three is the tool palette. We could go on and on.

OK, so control one is the keyboard. Now, one other place you can get it, from the ribbon. This is actually one ribbon panel I use quite a bit, because it has the measurement tools on it. In the utilities panel on the ribbon in the upper right hand corner is also the Quick Select button. So you can get that from there as well.

And of course you could just type in QSE. QS is Quick Save. And there is no actual alias for it. But if you type QSE, it's the only thing that starts with QSE, and it'll pop up for you.

And last but not least, if you right click on the desktop, and you right click is not set to do enter, it will pop up right now-- the menu. And then Quick Select is on that menu as well. If you cannot find Quick Select, you are in trouble. OK, it's easy to find. It's everywhere.

So I'm going to do Quick Select. My favorite is the properties. I use that one the most. So here is the Quick Select dialog box. If you've never used this box before, you just start at the top and work your way down. It's that easy. All right.

The first thing it's going to do is say, apply to what? That means what do you want me to search through? What do you want me to look through to find it? By default, it says entire drawing. Now, one of the things that people do accidentally is they'll have selected an object accidentally when they started Quick Select. And it'll say current selection, instead of entire drawing.

Anybody ever done that before? It's an easy to mistake to make, unless you hit escape all the time, right? So if that happens to you, all you have to do is change it to entire drawing right there in the box. And then you can tell it to look through the entire drawing instead of just the pieces you selected accidentally ahead of time.

Now, if you actually did want to select a specific group of objects to look through, this button right here on the right will let you make a window around your drawing to look through. Up to you. I'm just going to tell it entire drawing.

And the next thing he says is, what kind of objects are we looking for? And I want to look for all the leaders. And I actually just want to get every leader in the drawing, I don't even care what layer they're on. And this drawing actually has three or four different layers for the leaders.

So how do I do that? Well, we got properties here. And because I don't care about the properties-- I just want everything-- I'm going to come down to the operator and tell it to select all. So there's a select all option in that operator there.

Now, normally what that operator is used for-- let's say you were looking for text. You could say find me all the text that has the property of height, and then set that height lesser than, greater than, equal to and so on. Really handy for blocks, too.

Because you could say I want to find-- who does-- who has architectural drawings? You ever want to try to find every single block that's a door, and then tell all those doors to go on the door layer because half of them are on the wall layer or some other type layer. Think of a block-- you guys probably have an example where they're on the wrong layer and it's mixed-- but how many different door blocks you people have?

There's probably like a door 28, a door 32, a door 30, a door 36. So one thing that's kind of cool with this-- in this operator-- instead of saying equal or not equal or whatever-- let me click this back to equal here. So if I said some value, I can actually use-- I may have to do it with block. I'll show you really quick with block, and then I'll come back to my leader.

So if I said, go in, look for a block name. Instead of saying equal, I can use a wild-card match. Anybody ever use the wild-card match in there? That wild card match is genius. So, like, if your block name starts with the word door, you could put door asterisk and it would pick up every single door in the entire drawing. Because the asterisk replaces the rest of the characters in the block name.

Who here are familiar with wild card matches? Anybody? OK, if you had been around like since Dos-- like me-- we used to use those in Dos days. There are some advantages to being old. Yeah, I am actually almost 50. I have five grandkids, five. They are all under five years old, but--

So that's how you would do that. I'm going to come back. I'll get my leader, and I'm going to just tell it I want to select all. I'm going to include those in a new selection set. Any idea what would happen if I didn't exclude? It would get everything but my leaders. So it would get everything in the drawing except for my leaders.

I'm going to go ahead and pick OK. And you can see-- you look now, it's picked up every single one of my leaders. And what I want to do is look at the arrow size.

Yuck, half of my leaders have different arrow sizes. It says varies. What does varies mean? Varies means it is not good. I mean so my arrow heads are bigger or smaller than the other ones. And you probably don't want that in the drawing.

So I'm going to change it to what I want them to be. I want them all to be 0.18 arrow size. So I'm going to click on varies, and then change it to 0.18. Hit enter. Now that I've changed them all, I can hit escape and I'm done.

So go ahead-- on the exercise-- go to part two, and start on step 14 there. You're going to get to do both a block and the leader. There's two pieces you're going to Quick Select. How's everybody doing? Anybody need more time? Looks like eveybody's done? All right.

So let's pick another winner. I'm going to give away another power bank and a mouse pad. And let's see-- who likes my Name Picker Ninja. Isn't it cool. Yeah, it's really cool. Denise? Is Denise here? Denise? Denise? Going once, going twice.

OK. Michael. Is Michael Marc-- I'm going to obliterate that name. Is he here? No, no Michael. OK. They don't know what they're missing. Kevin Potter. All right. You-- take it Kevin's here.

Last year I made up questions, and I had people answer questions. But it got sketchy, because there was one instance where I was like, who raised their hand first? So I thought this might be a little funner. I only can get names from somebody who's actually assigned, but it's all good. All right.

So moving into topic three, which is two things-- layer-- what we call layer translator, or standards tools, and scripts. So who here uses CAD's standards, or the layered translator tools? Either, and, or both? A few of you.

OK, I'm going to show you kind of just-- and explain a little bit about what CAD standards tools are. Under the manage tab on the ribbon, AutoCAD has three tools. They have a layer translator, they have a check standards, and they have a configure standards tool.

The standards tools allow you to take a file that has, like, all of your master stuff-- like your layers that are on there with the right colors and the right line types and line weights and all of that-- and your styles-- like text styles, dimension styles, and so on. And then it allows you to assign that standard to your template file, or to any drawing.

And then the check button will check the current final against your standard. So if you have never used this tool before, it's a way to check a file to make sure it meets your criteria. Now, that's a great little tool.

A lot of-- some companies even actually assign it to their core template. So that every time you start a new drawing with your template, and then you change something on purpose-- like maybe you change the color of your layer-- it slaps your hand. It says, hey, you're using the wrong color for that layer, or you made a layer that's not allowed.

Anybody ever worked at a company that uses the standards checker? All built in. You like those little notifications that tell you you were bad? All right.

In addition to that CAD standards configuration tool and that checker tool-- just a little shout out-- there is also a batch standards checker. Windows 7 I used to go to start, all programs, and show you. Windows 10 I'm a search girl now. It just gets searched. It's easier.

So if you're using Windows 7, it's in the start menu. If you're using Windows 10, just type batch standards checker. That one doesn't fix issues. But if-- anybody here work with consultants and they have to deliver a drawing package to you? Anybody?

If you use the back standards checker, it will create a report that tells you what is wrong. And you can send the report to your client, and say fix it. OK. In a nice way, of course. So that's just a little heads up on that tool that's available to you. Anybody use that batch standards checker already? Some of you are already using it. OK, awesome.

So what I want to focus on-- because it's something that I think more people will use in addition to the standards-- is the layer translator. We're going to do a little exercise on this layer translator. So the translator's purpose is to take the list of layers that you have and tell it, OK, this is the list of layers, and I really want you to be these layers.

So let's say, once again, you get a drawing from somebody else. Maybe you have somebody that does some work for you on the side, and they use their layer standard instead of yours. And now you have to say, OK, this one should be that one, and this one should be that one, and you have to go through.

If they only have one drawing, no big deal. What if it's a set of 50 drawings? Yuck, right? OK, so that's what this tool is for.

I'm going to demonstrate the process for creating the layered translation list. Now, we're not going to match every layer because there's too many. I would take way too much time. All right.

We're going to do-- I think I have five layers I have pre-set. They're in the handout. It's going to show which ones.

What I'm going to do is look for-- first of all I've got this list. Where's the list of ones I want to translate to? Well, what you're going to do is you're going to click this load button. And then you're going to go and pick your template file or a drawing file that has a good list in it, right?

So I'm going to come in and I'm going to click load. And I'm going to load up. I've got a DWG here in this folder called template layers. And I'm going to load that list up. It's going to load it in here for me.

And first layer I'm going to locate in my list is called P7EPL. I have no idea what that means, but I figured it out ahead of time. I actually think it's edge of pavement lines. That's that guy right there. And I want to put that-- it's for parking. And I want that one to go to that one.

So I pick the one I want. I pick the one I want it to go to, and then I hit map. Easy enough? Pick, pick, map. Now, if any of these layers matched your list already, the maps same button will automatically map all of those and remove them from the list so you don't have to deal with the ones that are already right.

So if you have any that are good, you can run the map save first. It'll put on the map-- put those in, get them out of your way. And then you can do all the ones left over. I'm going to do a couple more just to show you.

So let's say P6-- let's see P6CUL. Where is that little guy? There he is, P6CUL. And that one is parking curb. And I'm going to click map. and it's going to add it to my list.

Now, obviously this could take a few minutes, right? But if you have 50 drawings that need to be done, once you're done with this you save it, and then you can use it on every file. So you only have to do this once if you're going to have this list of files that you want to run it with.