A Couple of DText Tips

We often work with drawings that contain single line text (dtext). It can be a little frustrating when you need to add another text string underneath the existing dtext strings! Join Lynn Allen as she shows you a couple of clever dtext tips that will make working with single line text so much easier! 

Video Transcript

Happy Holidays and welcome to another AutoCAD tip, courtesy of Cadalyst magazine. I hope you are having a great holiday season, celebrating whatever holiday you chose to celebrate wherever you are in the world.

Today I'm going to share with you a tip that I shared in my Autodesk University class, 60 AutoCAD Tips in 60 minutes. This tip has to do with text. Specifically, lining up new text strings underneath existing text. I'm going to show you a couple of cool tricks. Because sometimes we have to add to existing drawings or even the drawing that you've been working on. Some of us prefer to use single-line text as opposed to mtext, and I'm going to go into the DText command. I'm going to put some text on my screen. Let's make it say 3 units high, and I'm going to say "First line of text." Maybe I chose dtext because I only need one line, and maybe I don't like mtext for whatever reason. Whatever works for you.

Let's say I'm going to decide I'm going to go off, and I'm going to draw a circle. I'm going to do other commands, and then I say, "Oh, I need to add an additional line of text underneath the last one that I added to my drawing file. Well, just a little tip for you, if you go into the DText command, and you hit an extra Enter, it will automatically begin a new text box string using all the same information, the same height, same angle, and it starts it right underneath the first line of text. So, type "Second line of text." That's kind of cool. Even if you go off and you do other things, it will always remember the last line of dtext that you did, and it will allow you -- just by hitting that extra Enter -- to go down to the next line. That's cool.

But what if -- we know how easy it is to do with mtext, right? Easy. Good reason to use mtext right? All you have to do is go in and use an extra Enter. You can move onto the next line. That's easy. What if you are opening an existing drawing. It wasn't the last single line text you added to the drawing file, and you want to add another text. You could erase it, and just start all over. You could erase it and change it to mtext -- bunch of options.

But you can also just go into the single line text command again. Select the insertion point for the existing text string. Now you are going to need to know the height and the rotation angle. You are going to need to quiz that first. So I'm going to say -- I happen to know because I just added it, that my text is a height of 2 and rotation angle of 0. Simply just hit the space bar, and then hit an extra Enter, and you will find this is the second line right underneath the first line. Easy, easy. So it spaces it perfectly, and you can very quickly add an additional text even though this text was added a long time ago. When people don't use mtext and you do want to have a second line, now you know a couple of tips to help you get that done.

Once again, I hope you have a great holiday season, and I'll see you back here at the first of the year. So maybe I should say, "Happy New Year" as well. Happy New Year! Take care.

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