AutoCAD
by: Paul Li
An AREA That Still Needs Improvement
I
FIELD OF DREAMS
n June of 2021, I wrote an article titled An Area That Needed Improvement. I pointed out that AutoCAD 2005’s new FIELD command provided a powerful dynamic feature. With this command users can now link properties like an object’s area value to a text field. Any time the object changes in size the area value in the text field would update automatically. Though the Field command is a dream come true, it is very complicated to use. The graphical user interface (GUI) required a number
50 AUGIWORLD Magazine | October 2024
of mouse clicks to select an object to link. An additional dialog box would have to appear one on top of another to format the selected value. Worst of all, it was not intuitive at all on how to link a property of multiple objects. This caused me to develop back then and share with the AutoCAD community for free the Area Object Link (AOL) app. Since that time, AOL has gone through a major upgrade to fulfill this area that still needs improvement. I will introduce these new features in this follow up article. augi.com