Listing Objects

the ability to create objects in AutoCAD is a must and we have seen many ways to create data and several different types of objects but what if you didn’t create the drawing what if somebody else in your office made it or what if it came from an outside vendor knowing about the data in your drawing is essential in order for you to be able to work with it so let’s open up the blocks and tables file for this chapter
there are several different ways and methods that you can list out the properties of the data or line work in your file one way is to use the
properties palette as we’ve seen in other chapters already that’s great for one object at a time but it can be overwhelming because the amount of information the properties palette shows you is well everything so there is a feature that you can use that’s called quick properties this feature will pop up a window that will display a very short list of properties for the object you’ve selected this feature can get annoying though as you progress an AutoCAD and if you’re working with more complicated drawings then it can really get in the way many users turn it off in fact however it can be very useful because it allows you to see the information about your objects as you over over them let’s turn this feature on go down to the status bar here on the bottom of the screen and click on the quick properties button you can also press ctrl shift + P to toggle it on and off so as I hover over an object you can see right here that I get a bit of information about what’s going on it tells me here that the line work that I’m working with is an arc it has a color called by layer and the layer setting is on lighting and the line type is by layer
and that’s the pop up once I select an object this window comes up it’s called the quick properties as you can see I get basic information you know color layer line type as I do when I hover over another object but I also get more than that I get the coordinates for the center from the x and y and I get the radius so this gives you a bit more information now I can click here on the options and find some different things that I need or I can close this as you can imagine that can get in the way when I select more than one object it only tells me what they have in common a like layer the same way with the properties palette I recommend that you try the quick properties out especially while you’re learning AutoCAD it will give you information on what’s going on while you’re doing it but for purposes of this training video I’ve turned the feature off for a couple of reasons it can be distracting plus I don’t want that window to pop up and block your view of anything so again to turn it off just press ctrl shift and P at the same time or come down here to the status bar and turn off the quick properties panel a lot of the information that comes in that you can get just with the rollover tooltips like this
those can be turned off and on
by going to your options just type in options
to display and you can turn them off all of these different things here
changes things see I get no pop up now same way with the tools that are the commands I don’t get any of that information if you’re comfortable with this and you know what these tools are but you’re comfortable enough working with them where you think you’ll be okay you can turn those options off
I’m going to leave these all on don’t because they help during the training session to help us know what’s going on I like this pop-up here because it tells me a bit of information about the object and I don’t even have to pick it I just kind of roll my mouse over the top of it I also like to see something about the commands and what they are and then I especially like to see the extra tools and the visualization when it shows you how to do things I think you should leave these on right now while you’re learning how to use AutoCAD but if you find that they get in your way
turn them off it’s not a problem AutoCAD will just keep going even those are on or if those are off so another method to find out information about an object is the list command
so you can just type in lists right up here and it’ll tell you where it’s at it’s on the properties panel on the Home tab remember if you can’t find a command on the ribbon and just come up to the application menu and type in your command and it will show you where it is right over here it’s kind of hidden so you have to find it
but just remember in the ribbon on any of the panels that have this little arrow right in the middle here it means there’s more commands to it or more options for you to look at and to see so if you can’t find something you can pull those down or remember to type in the command in the application menu now for the list command you can either come to it here which means a couple of steps you just pick the list command or you can type in
list the shortcut
the command alias is just a lie
hello the list command is very simple turn it on pick an object press enter all of your information is given to you here in your command line in the text window
here’s my command list how many objects are there well I’ve found and selected one and it tells you about it it gives you a lot of information tells you that it’s an arc what layer it’s on where it’s at it tells you it’s in model space or paper space it gives you the handle number you know an AutoCAD file is just a database ones and zeros and that’s all that the computer sees it as every object gets a handle it’s a unique identifier so if this was a database this would be item number five a five to this will be unique and it won’t be repeated if I delete this then that five a five to it won’t show up anymore I can use that handle to identify specific objects and files and a lot of other Lisp routines and special coding that you can do but that’s way advanced for me and what we’re doing here so we’re not gonna look at that but that’s there it also gives you the basic geometry information of your object your center point radius start angle end angle and length just press f2 to clear that out now if I use the list command again I can pick more than one object in fact I can pick every object that I want press ENTER and it does the same thing say this was an arc so same one
now the other object we picked was a block we’ll talk about blocks later on now sometimes your list is going to go too far and the screen can’t show all of it so it’ll pause for you so you have a chance to read everything once you’ve read everything on your screen press ENTER to continue and that will just keep doing that until you’re finished now you can always press the f2 button to open up your command line and see it again a different information will be given to you about different object types so we saw what happens when you list out circle or an arc in this case but if you select a closed polygon like this one here and we type out the list command
it will give you different information like the coordinates of all of the vertexes or vertices on there the perimeter length and the area let me show you again
this type of information will be displayed at the beginning of the list of the different object types so you’ll need it first now if you click anywhere on the screen it will continue on just like pressing enter so there’s a lot of information here that you can get from the list command not all of that is possible to get from the properties palette if I press control one at the same time I get the properties palette and if I select this polyline I don’t get any of that information on the vertexes I do get area and length of course you know in the layer information color etc so there are some things you can get from the list command that you can’t get anywhere else
and again if you list all that
information you can come here press F to scroll up
select all of this bit of information or just any part of it really
and you can right-click and copy it and now you can paste that information into a word file a spreadsheet and email whatever you need if we needed to give coordinates to a surveyor for the wall or contractor or something we could just select the object use the list command and then copy and paste all this information out into a format that the contractor whoever it is that can use so those are a few ways to get out
information from your drawing file into the real world