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Reference

STYLE in AutoCAD: text styles

How AutoCAD's STYLE (ST) manages text styles: new, rename, delete, set current, a fixed height, and what a style does to TEXT and MTEXT. Try it free online.

STYLE manages the drawing's text styles: what a text is written with. Every text, multiline text and attribute has a style, and new ones take the current style, Standard in a new drawing. AutoCAD's STYLE opens the Text Style dialog; MellowCAD has none yet, so STYLE opens the text table of the Styles palette, where DIMSTYLE's dimension styles are too. A selection made before it is dropped, as the dialog drops it, and typed with an apostrophe inside a command, 'STYLE, it opens without ending that command.

The table lists the styles with the current one marked. New makes a copy of the selected style, named style1, style2… the first free name, and makes it current. Set Current makes a style current; its name can be retyped, and a name already in use, in any case, is refused, as AutoCAD refuses it. Delete removes a style, but never Standard, the current style or one in use. Height gives a style a fixed height: 0, the default, leaves it free, so TEXT asks for one each time; with a height set, TEXT does not ask. Every change is a step that U takes back. With texts selected, the Style row of the Properties palette gives them another style, in one step.

At the command line

The engine draws it and writes its history as you would type it: the prompts in AutoCAD 2027's order, with the same option letters.

A nameplate: STYLE, then TEXT, whose Style ? lists the drawing's style, Standard in Arial, and the plate's name written in it.PLATE
  1. Command: STYLE
  2. Command: TEXT
  3. Current text style: "Standard" Text height: 2.50 Annotative: No Justify: Left
  4. Specify start point of text or [Justify/Style]: S
  5. Enter style name or [?] <Standard>: ?
  6. Text styles: Style name: "Standard" Font typeface: Arial Height: 0.00 Width factor: 1.00 Obliquing angle: 0 Generation: Normal Current text style: "Standard"
  7. Current text style: "Standard" Text height: 2.50 Annotative: No Justify: Left
  8. Specify start point of text or [Justify/Style]: J
  9. Enter an option [Left/Center/Right/Middle/TL/TC/TR/ML/MC/MR/BL/BC/BR]: MC
  10. Specify middle point of text: 50,10
  11. Specify height <2.50>: 6
  12. Specify rotation angle of text <0>: 0
  13. Enter text: PLATE
  14. Enter text:
A nameplate: STYLE, then TEXT, whose Style ? lists the drawing's style, Standard in Arial, and the plate's name written in it.

What it does not do yet

The Text Style dialog and its preview: STYLE opens the Styles palette instead. Font, font style and big font, width factor, oblique angle, and the Upside down, Backwards and Vertical effects: every style is drawn in Arial, upright, at width 1. Annotative styles, and the Annotative style a new AutoCAD drawing holds beside Standard. -STYLE, which asks it all at the command line.

What it does and still lacks, in detail (in English)

Questions

What is the shortcut for STYLE in AutoCAD?

ST, then Enter or Space; DDSTYLE too. _STYLE works in any language of AutoCAD.

How do I change the text style in AutoCAD?

For new text, make the style current in the Styles palette that STYLE opens, or with TEXT's Style option. For text already written, select it and choose the style in the Style row of the Properties palette.

How do I change the font of a text style?

In AutoCAD, in the Text Style dialog's Font Name. Not yet here: every style is drawn in Arial, and a style differs only in its name and its height.

Why does TEXT not ask for the height?

The current style has a height of its own. Set its height to 0 in the Styles palette and TEXT asks for the height again, offering the last one used.

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