Mastering AutoCAD 2005 and AutoCAD LT 2005

AutoCAD 2005 offers a variety of new tools that help simplify your drawing tasks . The Sheet Set Manager (Chapter 22) offers a way to manage multiple drawings in a project set. It offers tools to help keep track of your drawing files and automates some of the more common tasks involved in coordinating multiple drawings. The Table feature (Chapter 8) lets you quickly produce tables and schedules by automatically organizing text into columns and rows. You can add line work to your tables and control the color and line weight of the table cells . The Field feature (Chapter 8) helps automate common types of text that change frequently, such as dates, login names , and filenames and locations.

AutoCAD 2005 also offers the following new features:

• Text background colors to set off important text

• Improved Copy command with implied multiple copy

• Gap tolerance for hatch patterns so you don't have to be absolutely precise when selecting an enclosed area for a hatch pattern

• Gap tolerance for joining polylines that are not exactly end-to-end

• Portable license utility to allow multiple installations of a single license

• Layer group , and Layer property filters to help manage large layer lists

• More built-in symbols for text

• View boundary editing to allow fine-tuning of stored views

Finally, you'll find an improved Plot dialog box as well as background plotting so you can continue to work while you print or plot.