The clipping boundaries of a raster image can be controlled in AutoCAD, whether you want to display or hide them in a drawing.

1. Go to the Modify menu, on the drop menu select Object, > Image > Frame.
2. Enter ” 0″ to hide the image boundaries;  “1 “ to show and plot the image boundaries; ” 2″ to show image boundaries but not to plot them.

Image with boundaries

Image without boundaries

 

3. You can also just type “Frame” at the command line.

In AutoCAD, we will get the pop up dialogue box saying “Layer – Not Deleted“, if we go to the layer manager and try to delete a layer that contains objects.

Delete layer

Sometimes there are so many layers and a lot of nested blocks going on a drawing that we cannot seem to find out easily which object is on that layer. But here is a quick tip on how to delete a layer on AutoCAD even if it contains an object: Use the command “LAYDEL“. Select any object on that layer, hit enter or the space bar when done. When prompted “Do you wish to continue?” type Y, yes and you are done!

Many times we refer to an external drawing, but we only need to show part of it. Sometimes we use a viewport to show the area we need on paperspace. Now I will tell you how you can show partial xref using the XCLIP command.

To achieve that do the following:

1. Type XCLIP in the command line then select the XREF when prompted to select object.
2. For clipping options select NEW.
3. For boundary there are many options: Polyline, polygonal, rectangular, invert clip. I usually use rectangular, but choose the best fit for your needs.
4. Once you select one of the options, for example, if you choose rectangular, just draw a rectangle around the area you want to show from the XREF and that is it!

Have you ever felt annoyed by the multiple annotative text displayed on your model space drawings? It gets really crowded when you have a lot of different annotation scales on the list.  To turn off the multiple annotative text from displaying, use the command: SELECTIONANNODISPLAY and set the value to 0.

That should hide the multiple annotation scales from displaying.

To quickly isolate a layer or layers type in the command line: LAYISO. When the AutoCAD cursor asks, select the layer or layers to be isolated. That will automatically lock all layers except the one you have selected. To restore the layer state just type: LAYUNISO.

To edit or create your own line type:
a)    Type LINETYPE in the command line.
b)    When the Linetype manager dialogue comes up, click on the load button (on top right of the menu).
click on file.
c)    Select the browser arrow down to find out the location of your acad.lin file.
d)    Open notepad or notepad++ and browse for the acad.lin file location.
e)    Follow the format below. Once you are done save the file as a .lin extension.

Line type Definition Format

1- Line type name. (You can use underscore but no spaces).
2- Line type description. (It is limited to 47 characters in length).
3- Line type symbol appearance.
4- Length between each symbol.
5- Drawing unit space length before the symbol.
6- Line type symbol.
7- Type of line type (complex).
8- Line type scale
9- Angle of rotation for the line symbol.
10- X-coordinate position.
11- Y-coordinate position.
12-Drawing unit space length after the symbol.