By Elvis Sverko
When seeing a table in a field for the first time, you might think it’s easy to walk over to it. Either walk straight there or follow a predefined path to it. But if it’s on the other side of a wide river, you wouldn’t know the best way to get across, unless someone told you that you need to walk to the right to go over a bridge, or to use an underground tunnel, or a small boat, or swim, or… the list goes on and on. You may know how to do each and every one of these tasks on their own, but putting the best ones to use in this particular case, is the challenge.
A similar situation can occur when teaching someone how to use AutoCAD. When learning AutoCAD for the first time, most students learn many of the functions, as individual functions, in Model Space, including drawing lines, creating blocks, adding text, and even creating tables. They might even learn some advanced detail functionality of these concepts, including adding fields in a table.
Later, they learn about Paper Space and viewports. Again, they may only learn these ideas as standalone, and not how to tie them together, such as the power of creating tables with fields in Paper Space. This is where teaching someone best-practices, is important.
While in Paper Space, create a table as needed. In one of the cells, insert a Field. In the Field dialog box, choose the Field category “Objects”, Field name “Object”, then click the “select object” button next to Object type. Now is where the power comes into play. You can click an object in any viewport to pull out its Property information.
What a great way to tie together a string of simple concepts, to create a powerful, complex solution. Now go cross that bridge, and relax at the table in the field!
“The belief that one’s own view of reality is the only reality is the most dangerous of all delusions.” – Paul Watzlawick
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