Finding and Replacing Text

Finding and Replacing Text
One of the most time-consuming tasks in drafting is replacing text that appears repeatedly throughout
a drawing. Fortunately, you have a Find And Replace tool to help simplify this task. AutoCAD’s
Find And Replace works like any other find-and-replace tool in a word-processing program. A few
options work specifically with AutoCAD. Here’s how it works:
1. Click the Find tool in the Text control panel. You can also choose Edit  Find from the menu
bar or enter Find↵ at the Command prompt to open the Find And Replace dialog box.



2. Enter the text you want to locate in the Find Text String input box.
3. Enter the replacement text in the Replace With input box.
4. Click Find. When AutoCAD finds the word, it appears in the Context window, along with
any other text next to the word.
5. If you have any doubts, click the Zoom To button to display the text in the AutoCAD
drawing area.
6. When you’ve made certain that this is the text you want to change, click Replace.
If you want to replace all occurrences of a word in the drawing, click Replace All. You can also
limit your find-and-replace operation to a specific area of your drawing by clicking the Select
Objects button in the upper-right corner of the Find And Replace dialog box.



When you click the Select Objects button, the Find And Replace dialog box closes temporarily
to enable you to select a set of objects or a region of your drawing. Find And Replace then limits itssearch to those objects or the region you select.

You can further control the types of objects that Find And Replace looks for by clicking the
Options button to open the Find And Replace Options dialog box.



With this dialog box, you can refine your search by limiting it to blocks, dimension text, standard
text, or hyperlink text. You can also specify whether to match case or find whole words only.
NOTE If you need to edit a large 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’re
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. To use it, enter qtext↵ at the command prompt, and enter On or select the On
option from the dynamic input display.

Manipulating Text beyond Labels
This chapter concentrates on methods for adding labels to your drawing, but you also use text in otherways with AutoCAD. Many of the inquiry tools in AutoCAD, such as Dist and List, produce text data. Youcan 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 list of its properties. After you have the property list in the AutoCAD Text window, you can highlight its lengthlisting and then press Ctrl+C to copy it to the Windows Clipboard. Next, start the Line command, andpick the start point for the new line. Click the Command window, and press Ctrl+V to paste the linelengthdata into the Command window; then, add the angle data, or use the Direct Distance method todraw the line.
You can copy any text data from dialog box input boxes or from the AutoCAD Text Window to the Clipboardby using the Ctrl+C keyboard shortcut. You can likewise import that data into any part ofAutoCAD that accepts text.
Consider using the Clipboard the next time you need to transfer data in AutoCAD or even when you needto import text from some other application.

The Bottom Line
Preparing a Drawing for Text AutoCAD offers an extensive set of features for adding text to
a drawing, but you need to do a little prep work before you dive in.
Master It Name two things you need to do to prepare a drawing for text.
Solution Set up a layer for your text. Create a text style for your drawing.

Setting the Annotation Scale and Adding Text Before you start to add text, you should set
the annotation scale for your drawing. Once this is done, you can begin to add text.
Master It In a sentence or two, briefly describe the purpose of the Annotation Scale feature.
Name the tool you use to add text to a drawing.
Solution The Annotation Scale feature converts your text size to the proper height for the
scale of your drawing. To add text to a drawing, use the Mtext tool.
Exploring Text Formatting in AutoCAD Because text styles contain the font and text-size settings,
you can usually set up a text style and then begin to add text to your drawing. For those
special cases where you need to vary text height and font or other text features, you can use the
Text Formatting toolbar.
Master It What Text Formatting tool can you use to change text to boldface type?
Solution The Bold button.
Adding Simple Single-Line Text Objects In many situations, you need only a single word or
a short string of text. AutoCAD offers the Single Line Text object for these instances.
Master It Describe two of the three methods for starting the single-line text command.
Solution Click the Single Line Text tool in the Text control panel. Choose Draw  Text 
Single Line Text. Enter DT↵ at the command prompt.
Using the Check Spelling Feature It isn’t uncommon for a drawing to contain the equivalent
of several pages of text, and the likelihood of having misspelled words can be high. AutoCAD
offers the Check Spelling feature to help you keep your spelling under control.
Master It What option do you select in the Check Spelling dialog box when it finds a misspelled
word and you want to accept the suggestion it offers?
Solution Change.
Finding and Replacing Text A common activity when editing technical drawings is to have
to find and replace a word throughout a drawing.
Master It True or false: The Find And Replace feature in AutoCAD works very differently
than the find-and-replace feature in other programs.
Solution False.