As a Civil 3D enthusiast, I often forget about the wonderful and wacky breadth of AutoCAD commands that I used to frequently use. Here's some of my favourites:
ID
This command will display the coordinates (X, Y, and Z) at the point that the user specifies. This is especially useful for civil engineers and architects who want to review the precise locations of model objects. A neat trick of this command is that the point that is ID'd will be saved a last point and can be referenced with the @ sign at the next command that requires a point.
TXT2MTEXT
Converts single line text objects to multiline text. Good gravy is that useful!
TEXTTOFRONT
This one is easy to figure out! This command helps users move Text, Dimensions, Leader, or all the above to the front of other objects.
HATCHTOBACK
Another freebie. Puts hatches in their place.
-PURGE
AutoCAD users should be familiar with the purge command - it is an important tool for streamlining our project files and removing information that is not referenced or required. However by using the hyphen "-" it is possible to invoke a command in command line mode. The command line purge command has additional options that are not present in the typical purge dialog. For example, this is the method for removing registered apps from the drawing.
BATTMAN
Opens the Block Attribute Manager. This command is just fun to say.
BURST
Speaking of blocks with attributes, this command will explode a block and importantly will preserve the block attribute values.
OOPS
This is a funky command. This command is a fancy Undo button. Instead of undoing any work that you have performed, this command will undo the last Erase command performed. This can be especially helpful when creating hatches in areas with overlapping geometry.
INSERT
Unveiled back in 2020, AutoCAD has changed the method for inserting blocks into drawings. The dialog box has been replaced with a all-new Block Palette. This new palette has four tabs providing users with the ability to access blocks in the current drawing, favorited blocks, block libraries, and recently used blocks. Configuring the insertion point, rotation, auto-placement, and more has never been easier than with this palette.
LAYWALK
One of my favorites! This command will display a dialog box and allows you to scroll (walk) through every layer in the project drawing and isolate it in the view. This is a handy command for drawing validation and review.
FS
Fast Select is an interesting command that will create a selection set of all objects that touch a selected objects. This command has two settings: one mode will only select the objects that are touching the selected object, the other mode will selected all objects touching the selected object as well as any objects touching any of those object, cascading down selecting everything in contact in the chain.
TIME
Our time is up here, but let's leave with one last command... TIME. This command will display the statistics of the current file including the date of creation, total editing time, and current time. If you want the most inconvenient way to check what time it is, boot up AutoCAD.
