What day is it again?

Here in the States, we had the day off yesterday for the July 4th holiday. While it was great to have a break from email, it also means I’m sitting at my desk thinking, “What day is it today? It feels like Monday, but I’m pretty sure that’s not right…”

Fortunately, AutoCAD LT has a way to help me stay on track: fields.

The Insert Field dialog has an entire category devoted to “Date & Time” fields, with more formats than you will probably ever use.

But if you don’t see the format you want, you can make your own with the code letters as listed on the right.

Here’s a rundown of the four different Date & Time field types:

• CreateDate. This is the date the file was first saved or created. It doesn’t change after you insert it.
• Date. This is simply the date that you insert this particular field. You can update it manually with UPDATEFIELD, but otherwise it doesn’t change.
• PlotDate. This is the date the drawing was last plotted. It will update on successful plots (and as controlled by FIELDEVAL).
• SaveDate. This is the date the drawing was last saved. It will update on successful plots (and as controlled by FIELDEVAL).

Occasionally you might get some quirks—creating a drawing file by copying another will update CreateDate, but not SaveDate.

So, thanks to AutoCAD LT and fields, I know that today is:

Comments

[R.K. McSwain]

If you want a date field that does automatically update as controlled by FIELDEVAL, then you can use a DIESEL string. I documented this here:

http://cadpanacea.com/node/370