Editorials ~ K.I.S.S.~ Editorials

K.I.S.S.

"K.I.S.S. (Keep-It-Simple-Stupid)"

Eric Bailey (among thousands of others)

A sure sign of an AutoCAD^® novice is overly complicated drawings. Complicated on many levels. For example: too many text styles, layers, dimension styles etc.. And, most often of all -- too many entities. Now, you might be wondering how on earth could you have too many entities? You need a line to draw a line . . . don't you? Yes, more or less. The "less" is the important part of that statement. Here are a few rules to keep in mind:

use POLYLINES instead of LINES

use BLOCKS for repetitive objects

use SHAPES for repetitive simple objects

K.I.S.S. ~ Continued

At first one doesn't think much about the fact that most of one's time working in AutoCAD^® is spent making "selection sets", first selecting objects, and then using the REMOVE and ADD options to modify the selection set. But you do. Therefore, anything that speeds up the selection set process has an inordinate effect on speeding up your work.

After all, why select two or more LINES/ARCS etc. when you can just select one POLYLINE?!

Why use a half dozen LINES, ARCS etc. when using a SHAPE instead will save time and drawing size?

And last, but definitely not least -- why select possibly hundreds of entities -- when you can select just one BLOCK? This is much more efficient as far as making selection sets, and also, everything else being equal the drawing size will be smaller.

There are, of course, many other advantages to using POLYLINES, SHAPES and in particular, BLOCKS.