Creating General Notes (columns of text)

I realize there are many ways to generate General Notes.

I am trying to re-think the way we are creating our columnar notes, in the
hopes of finding a simpler, more direct method.

What we have done in the past, basically, is maintain our General Notes as
an MS Word document. (One nice thing about this is Word's ability to
provide auto-numbering for the notes.)

Then, when it is time to bring the notes into AutoCAD, we start up MText,
highlight the text in MS Word, Ctrl-C, then Ctrl-V in the MText Editor
window (we use TextPad for this).

And so on, one MText object for each Section of notes.
We have preferred this way, as it seems to allow for fast and easy
re-editing of notes.

The main DISADVANTAGES of doing things this way, as I see it are:
- Notation becomes separated from the creation document.
Once any editing is done to the MText object, it
becomes out-of-sync with the original .doc file.
- Auto-numbering control is lost upon re-editing (correct?)
- Text fonts/formatting may not be the same
between the drawing and the original .doc file
(Example: MS Word cannot display .shx fonts, if
that is what you want to use for your notes)

With respects to other ways - I've also seen notes wherein each LINE of text
is a separate text or mtext object - <Egads!> - but I can't see HOW this
would lead to efficient re-editing.

I've fiddled with pasting a Word .doc directly into the drawing via OLE,
which is attractive at first glance - but it seems that there is still a
size limit(?) (Using ADT 2004) so that longer sections of notes turn out
incomplete (or only show the first 'page' of text.)

Now that MText tabs are supported, this has GREATLY improved the appearance
of our notes - Thanks, Autodesk!

But I was wondering if there was a way (similiar to xrefs) whereupon a
general note (file/document) could be created/maintained/synchronized via
Word or some other text editor, BUT would ALSO be referenced into an AutoCAD
drawing, with Formatting/Fonts the same.

Perhaps this already exists, and I'm just in the dark. If so, please
enlighten me.

On the other hand, it could very well be that I'm missing a more optimal way
of doing things. How do you prefer to create your general notes, and why?
Advantages? Disadvantages?

Also, do you prefer UPPER CASE for General Notes, or mixed (sentence) case?
Why? What about plan and/or detail notes?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Best regards,
David Kozina

 

Continue to use a separate document as your source data. However, instead
of cutting a pasting from Word to an MText entity use the RText command.
When your notes need updating just go to the source document, make your
change then open your drawing a the changes are there already (kind of like
an xref for text documents).

 

With respects to other ways - I've also seen notes wherein each LINE of
text

We use relatively simple general notes for Mechanical and Plumbing notes.
The single line text is the fastest way for use to edit. Simple drafting,
using insertion points to line the text up. Takes a good drafter a minute
or two to modify. BTW - we are on LT2K4

Our electrical guys (actually a different firm) use Full 2K4. One wrote a
lisp to use between excel or word and Acad. Search for the lisp, I don't
think it's too complicated once you get beyond font issues (maybe use fonts
standard to all programs)

Back to my first response. Again our general notes are just that, general.
For more detailed notes and specs we use book specs.

All caps. Just the way we do things.

Just some thoughts,
Happy Holidays from Florida (about 76 degrees today)

Matt

 

My mistake, you need to save your Word (.doc) document as an ASCII (.txt)
document. The doc format has formatting that AutoCAD doesn't recognize.

So create your document in Word (or what ever word processing software you
have on hand), save it as a .txt file, the use the rtext command.

 

....but keep in mind that as soon as you save down to a .txt file, you lose all the MSWord intelligence (such as the automatic numbering as David mentioned).

 

Thanks for the memory jog, Jon! I forgot all about RText.

Unfortunately, when I tried RText, I had a few difficulties...
- I could not get in-line MText Formatting, nor tabs to work.
- RELATIVE paths to a different 'Docs' folder did not work.
Apparently, absolute paths must be used here.

Fortunately, however, Terry Dotson's LiveText works like a charm on such
'external text files'! In-line formatting, tabs, AND relative paths all
seem to work fine with the base .txt files I want to use for this.

I ALSO mentioned my wish for auto-numbering (or re-numbering)
After a bit of fiddling, I found a way to do this in TextPad using the Find
and Replace dialog...

Find: \n[[:digit:]*].\t
Replace: \n\i.\t

Cool - now I can avoid MS Word altogether for this little exercise.


Best regards,
David Kozina

 

Slight Find/Replace Expression correction:

Find: \n[[:digit:]]*.\t
Replace: \n\i.\t

I've attached a TextPad Macro if anyone's interested...

 

Okay you are right on that, and David has already found another solution,
but if you cut and paste your Word document directly into a text editor (I
tried it with both EditPad and NotePad) you retain numbered items. So you
could create your Word document, paste it to an ASCII document and then
RText the text document to your drawing (I know you still have a separation
between the Word document and the entity called by the rtext command, but
you still have the same formatting in the .doc file).