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Tables -- when in doubt, right-click!

The new Table Cell contextual tab has made editing table cells easier by putting all the relevant commands right in front of you. But, as neat as it is, it can't do everything.

(click image for larger version)

Sometimes, the right-click menu is the best place to find the option you're looking for. If you don't have menus turned on, you really should. (There's no reason not to now, not with time-sensitive right-clicks.)

Depending on where you are in the table-editing process, the menu options will change. Here's a quick run-down on what's available where.

Entire Table Selected

Cell(s) Selected

Cell Active

(Look familiar? It's the same as for the Mtext Editor...notice that the contextual tab also shifts to the Text Editor tab when you activate a cell. Sneaky!)

Autofill Grip Active

You see that there's a whole host of tools and functions just waiting to be discovered in the right-click menu...happy exploring!

Table Cell Styles

Just like any other kind of annotation, AutoCAD LT tables have styles. Each style really just has one setting: the table direction (down or up). The real meat of the table style is in the cell styles.

Each table style, by default, comes populated with 3 cell styles: Title, Header, and Data. You can see an example of where each style might be used in the image above.

On the General tab are cell formatting options like Fill Color, Alignment, Format (text, percentage, data, etc.), Type (label or data), and Margins. You can also choose whether to merge new cells into the existing one when you create a new row or column -- this option is useful for Title cell styles.

The Text tab contains standard text options like style, height, color, and angle. If your text style has a defined height, then the height box here will be unavailable.

The last tab enables you to control the borders for each cell of that type -- lineweight, linetype, color, and you can even choose a double-line border. With the buttons at the bottom, you can choose which sides of the cell to apply the formatting to.

For some tables, three styles may be enough. If they're not, though, it's easy enough to create more. The two buttons next to the cell style pull-down enable you to create new styles or modify the existing list. There isn't a separate dialog to manage cell styles -- once you create a new style, you adjust its properties in the Table Style dialog. Cell styles don't translate between Table styles, either. They can only be used in the Table style where they were defined.

Of course, you can always directly modify the properties of existing table cells through the Table Cell contextual tab or the right-click menu. But sometimes it's nice to have styles predefined, to cut down on repetitive work later.

Grips in Tables

It's been a while since I posted about table functions, so I thought I'd dedicate this week to them.

First up are table grips. Just like dynamic blocks, tables have lots of specialized grips to help you edit them, and it's important to know the difference between their functions.

When you left-click once on a table, the entire table is highlighted. The image below shows the grips you'll see and their purpose.

Entire Table Selected

(click on the image for a larger version)

Most of the grips are straightforward, but the one tricky bit is that to resize a SINGLE column (and move the others) you have to left-click once on the grip, then press and hold CTRL before you left-click again to define the new width.

When you click again on the border of a cell, different grips appear with different behaviors.

Single Cell Selected

(click on the image for a larger version)

See this post for more on Autofill.

Finally, it's possible to select a range of cells by clicking-and-dragging to define your selection area. This is probably the ONLY time in AutoCAD LT where you actually need to hold the left button down as you move the mouse. (Okay, so the other exception might be selecting a range of text to edit. But honestly, that's it. The rest of the time, click once and let go, then click again. No need to press down forever.)

Multiple Cells Selected

(click on image for larger version)

Really, the only difference in the grip behavior between having many cells selected and one is that the change in distance is equally applied across all the selected rows or columns instead of just one.

Break Table Into Columns

Tables can be split up into columns while remaining one entity, just like mtext objects. The easiest way to do this is with the light-blue triangular grip at the bottom of the table. (It's the one in the middle of the row pointing upward. The other two re-size the table's rows or columns.)

If you don't like the way the default break looks, the Properties palette is full of options.

• Enabled just means that table breaks are turned on. If you set it to No, the table goes back to one big long column.
• Direction (right, left, or down) controls the placement of the additional columns.
• Repeat top/bottom labels controls the display of header rows (so that the extra columns get headings too). See this post for more on that.
• Manual positions lets you decide whether the columns can be moved independently of one another.
• Manual heights lets you decide whether each column can have its own height or whether they should all be the same (although the last one may be shorter).
• Break height is the height of the column (if Manual heights is set to No).
• Spacing is the distance between columns.

With all these options, you should be able to get your long tables to fit in any space you need them to.

Repeat First Row in Table

Since the ability to break tables into columns was introduced in LT 2008, a lot of people have wondered how to get the first row(s) to repeat across each column, the way you can in Excel when you print a spreadsheet on multiple pages.

The answer is in two pieces -- the cell style and the table properties. If you want a table row to repeat across columns, you have to make sure that in the Cell styles part of the Table Styles Manager, the Type is set to Label.

Also, in the properties of the Table itself, the Repeat Top Labels item must be set to Yes.

Now you should be able to use the triangular grip at the bottom of the table to break the table into columns, and see the title and header rows repeat in each column.

For (many) more tips like this, check out the Annotation webcast tomorrow at 10:00 PDT!

Auto-fill Table Data

Tables in AutoCAD LT have been greatly improved since their introduction in LT 2006, with every version incorporating more and more features.

One helpful feature is the AutoFill grip. The image below shows the four familiar dark blue resizing grips as well as the light blue AutoFill grip.

Once you have cells selected you can left-click on the AutoFill grip to increment or copy the data in the cell to adjacent cells. (You can specify which method to use with options in the right-click menu available inside AutoFill. In other words, left-click to start AutoFill, then right-click to see the options.) The grip tooltip says "click and drag", but remember that those are two separate actions. You don't have to keep holding the mouse button down.

If you only select one cell, as shown above, the increment value is 1.

If you want a different increment value, all you need to do is fill in the second value in your series, select both cells, and LT does the rest.

Bonus Tip: AutoFill works with dates as well as numbers.

Quickly Create AutoCAD Table from Excel Data

If you already have a table or schedule in Excel, you can quickly convert it to an AutoCAD table. Simply open Excel, select the cells you want, and Ctrl+C. Switch to AutoCAD, go to Edit-->Paste Special, and select “AutoCAD Entities”. Voila – there’s your table.

Now, it may not look exactly the way you want it to. Select the table, right-click, and choose “remove property overrides” to get it to match a defined table style. The column and row sizes may still be off, but it’s a lot quicker to grip-edit them to the right size than it would have been to re-create the table!

Shade Table Cells

It’s possible to give individual cells in your AutoCAD tables a shaded background! Simply left-click on the cell to select it, open the Properties window, and look for “Background Fill”. Select the color you want, and you’re done. Keep in mind that any color that prints black will obscure any text in the cell. Most company's pen tables have a "screened" color or two (ours is color 8) that will print lighter, so it can be used for emphasis without hiding the text. If you're printing in color, though, you're only limited by your creativity.

Table Grips & Right-Click Menus

The grips and right-click menus available for tables depend on what part of the table you have selected.

Single-left-clicking on one of the table lines selects the whole table. The grips that show up now let you change the overall width and height of the table (expanding rows and columns equally), or to change the width of an individual column. The right-click menu contains the global table options, such as “size all rows equally”.

Single-left-click in an empty space or on text, though, and you get a whole new set of options. Now, just a single cell is selected. Grips here change only the height or width of the appropriate row or column, and the right-click menu contains cell-specific commands such as alignment and formatting.

If you left-click in an empty space, but hold down the button and drag, you can select a range of cells. The grips work the same as the overall table grips (rows and columns are resized equally), but the right-click menu is the same as for a single cell. However, if you select multiple cells, right-click, and pick “inserts rows/columns”, AutoCAD will insert multiples rows/columns – as many as you have selected.

(This tip applies mostly to 2007+; tables first appeared in 2006, but had very limited functionality.)

Line Break in Table

To force a line break within text in a table cell, use ALT+Enter. (As with most other AutoCAD table functions, it’s just like Excel.)