AutoCAD – Achieving Drawing Consistency using Add Selected & Select Similar functions

By Dennis Collin

When working on drawings you haven’t looked at recently, it can be hard for some users to draw consistently from the previous session. This is especially true when a drawing is sourced externally or has many layers with similar colours and linetypes.

The Match Properties command is a brilliant way to achieve drawing consistency not just on layers, but annotation styles, hatch patterns, view port scales and many other things.

There is however another way to ensure consistency of drawn objects and that is by using a ‘Add Selected’ function. In some ways this command mimics the ‘pipette’ function certain graphics programs have when sampling pixel colours.

Referring to the image above, select an element and right-click, choose Add selected. AutoCAD will, despite the current layer being equipment, place a similar partition panel, with identical settings as the original selected object. In this case the object is a block of a partition panel, but if I was to select for example, a line, AutoCAD would invoke the line command, drawing an object on the same original layer. Achieving a similar result to the aforementioned Match Properties command.

Another useful function is the Select Similar command also accessed via the right click menu. Located just below the Add Selected command.

This command enables users to select a text object and using select similar, pick up all text of a similar type, style layer etc. These objects can then be moved to another layer. This process could also be used for the checking of drawings and will identify elements that have been drawn incorrectly which is not immediately obvious from first glance.

These tools are a useful addition to any Cad Manager’s repertoire to check compliance of Cad standards. Whilst all these functions mentioned are available in both full AutoCAD and LT, only the full AutoCAD has a Cad Standards checker which I will discuss in a future post.