Cleaning Up AutoCAD Files and Adding Demolition Keynotes with Custom Multi-Leader Styles

Let's do a little housekeeping in our AutoCAD file. Let's zoom in first right here to the pantry area and we can go ahead and delete these extra door jams right here between the closet and the pantry. We'll select both and click delete on our keyboard.

We don't need those anymore. And then right here in our pantry we have this line that indicates overhead shelving. Let's select that line and type in properties and enter.

We'll see it's set to the layer a case overhead. We'll drop that down and we're going to remove those shelves. We're going to change our layer to a case demo.

Once we have that we'll go ahead and close this down. Now we can jump into making our demolition keynotes. We're going to have AutoCAD opened up and we also need to refer to our demolition plans PDF.

The keynotes are these numbered bubbles that we see in the plan and they help us describe what happens during the demolition process. You can see there's a number for example number one and all the number ones point to the doors. So they're talking about the demolition of each door.

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All right so a couple of important setup items that we need to do. First we need to change our annotation scale. The annotation scale is found here at the bottom right corner of AutoCAD.

We'll click that and it's currently set to one to one. We want to drop that down and change it to one quarter inch equals one foot. And you might say to yourself well nothing happened and that's true because we need to now regenerate our drawing to see the results.

And the command to do that is called regen. Type it in r-e-g-e-n and click enter. And what happens we'll notice that all of our demolition lines are now dashed.

They're easier to see and that's because we have this quarter inch scale going on now for our annotation. All right our second portion of the setup is to get to the correct layer. So let's go ahead and type in layer l-a-y-e-r enter.

And we want to change our current layer. If we look at the top we see our current layer might be set to a-wall-demo. But we want to swap it out to our keynote layer.

And so we'll scroll to the top because it's the third layer down. It's called a-anno-keynote-demo. Double click that layer and that should change our current layer.

It should now read a-anno-keynote-demo. Once you've got that go ahead and click the X close out your layers. All right so we've set the stage.

Now we need to create this numbered bubble. How do we do that? It's called an m-liter style. We'll type in m-liter style and click enter.

We'll notice that we do already have a keynote circle in here but we're going to create our own just for the demolition keynotes. So go ahead and click on the standard. You'll see a standard and it should say current multi-liter style at the top.

We want to click on standard and click set current. So that's our current multi-liter style. But you might notice there is no circle there.

We need to create that bubble. So once we have it set as current let's go ahead and click new. And it's going to start with standard because that's the current style but we want to give it our own name.

So what new name do we want? We're going to call it keynote-demo and then click the continue button. This brings up all of our options to modify our multi-liter style and it should start us off in the content tab. And right at the top of content it says multi-liter type and it's set to m-text which is just text.

But we want to drop that down and change it to block. And now we have these source blocks and these are really cool. They're default they come with AutoCAD and right now it's set to detail callout.

Let's click on that drop it down and change it to circle. That gives us the bubble that we want. And that's all we need to change here on the content tab.

Now let's go to the far left and go to the leader format tab and make a couple of adjustments. First our arrowhead. Let's change its size to one-eighth of an inch.

We'll select everything there, delete it, and type in one divided by eight inches. So I've got a one-eighth inch closed filled arrowhead. Everything else looks okay here so let's go to leader structure tab and we want to set our landing distance.

And right now it's a weird dimension. Let's change it to one divided by four inches for one quarter inch. That looks pretty good and we'll change our scale to annotative.

And that's it. We've got it all set up. So go ahead and click the ok button one time.

And now we want that to be our current style. So it might already jump to that automatically. If not, click on it keynote demo and click set current and then click the close button.

Okay so we've got the correct layer. We've got the multi-leader and the correct annotative scale. We should be able to create our little keynote tags now.

Let's zoom into the kitchen. We'll start there. We'll start with that number seven keynote.

And what we want to do is type in MLEADER and click enter. Now we click twice is all we have to do to create this bubble. Once is where the arrow is pointing to.

The second click is kind of the corner and that's it. We'll click right here on the upper cabinet and I need to turn off ortho to get the angle. Click a second time and that's it.

Just two clicks. Now we can enter our tag number which is seven and click the ok button. And just like that we have our first demolition keynote bubble.

And it looks really good. It's on the correct layer because we set the correct layer and so it shows red in color. Let's keep going.

We'll type in MLEADER again and right now we'll click our number six which is pointing to this countertop. Click once. Click a second time.

Type in six and okay. Easy peasy. Now let's do this kind of unique one we have.

Number eight. Number eight doesn't have an arrow. Well how do we create that? There's kind of a way to trick AutoCAD to force it to create the bubble without the arrow.

And here's how it works. First type in MLEADER. M-L-E-A-D-E-R.

Enter. And then you'll click twice but in the exact same location. If you move your cursor at all this won't work.

So I'll click one time. Click a second time without moving. Type in the number eight and click ok.

And there's that eight bubble without an arrow. Alright so let's continue on and let's practice going a little bit faster. There's a trick in AutoCAD where if you hit ENTER or spacebar again after doing a command it repeats that same command.

So let's go ahead and try that. Click enter and right away we're in the MLEADER command again. We'll click once at the center of the sink here.

Click a second time. Four and okay. Pretty quick right? Let's jump down and do our number five.

We'll just hit ENTER on the keyboard again and we'll click right in the center of the refrigerator. Click and five. Enter.

Let's do the number two here. Click click two. Okay.

And then we'll click enter on our keyboard. As long as we keep using that command over and over we can keep clicking enter and get right to it. Click and number one.

Okay. Now we can do a number one for this door. So enter.

Click. Go down. One and okay.

Enter on the keyboard. We'll do the other door while we're here. Click.

Click. One and okay. Then above our dining room we have a number eight.

So click enter to click the MULTILEADER command again. Click in the exact same place two times. One, two, and number eight.

Okay. Let's repeat that again. Enter.

Right above the bedroom. Click. Click.

Eight and okay. There we go. Enter again.

We'll do this number two. Click. Click a second time.

Two. Okay. And enter.

Now we'll do this window cut right outside here. We'll click. Click.

Three and okay. And looks like we have just one more right here at this door in the hallway. Enter.

Click on the door. Click a second time. And number one.

And okay. Let's zoom out and see the result. At this point we have all of those keynotes for our first floor plan.

So go ahead and click that save button.