AutoCAD or Automated Computer Aided Designing is a computer software for those in the design industry. It helps professionals design two-dimensional and three-dimensional models with great design precision.

Most professionals use AutoCAD as it can be relied on for its mathematical measurements. For example, people from the architecture and aeronautics fields require exact measurements for bringing stable structures to life. The mechanical and electrical fields too depend on AutoCAD for producing designs with precision. It is also used by interior designers, and graphic designers for its flexibility in visualising every aspect of a design.

What are Wildcards?

Wildcards are special characters which are used to locate items that are similar. For example, when I use the wildcard character, *, to access a particular query say “wh*”, it will help find words such as “what, why, white” but will not return words like, “awhile and watch”. If this example didn’t cement your understanding of wildcards, then another example would be using the character, ‘?’, to find a set of words. That is, if I type “b?ll” in the query box, then I will get the following words  “bell, bill ball” returned.

So, wildcards are used for search functionality in various operating systems. In AutoCAD too, wildcards are used for finding named objects.

How can you efficiently use wildcards in AutoCAD?

Find drawings

Using the AutoCAD file browser, wildcards help you locate drawings stored in a network drive. With wildcards, you do not need to remember the entire file name. If wildcards are strategically used, multiple files can be searched for.

For example, if you wish to find drawings that have the word “foundation” in it, then, go to the Find window of AutoCAD and type *foundation* in the Named field. The symbol, * placed before and after the word implies that the name of the file can have any word before or/and after the word ‘foundation’. Once you have entered the query in the named field, fill in other details like the file type and choose a directory path. Once you have selected the necessary requirements needed to find the file, click on the Find Now button and voila, the results will appear in the Find window.

You can also use two words in the named field. You can type in the wildcard string, foundationbay* in the Named field. This string implies that there can be any word before foundation and/or after foundation and in between the two words foundation and bay.

Find and replace text strings

Wildcards are used for finding and replacing several text strings in a drawing. For example, if there is a drawing with MText elements called “ABC backsplash XX”, where ABC is a random text string and XX stands for numerical values of two digits. Now, say the word backsplash must be replaced by a Fixture in all the text strings, then we follow the following steps:

• Use the command line to open the Find and Replace window by typing Find on the command line.
• In the search panel of this window, choose ‘Use wildcards’.
• Then in the Find what field type, “??? backsplash ##” and press enter. This string will let AutoCAD know that the first three characters could be any character, which will be followed by a space, then the word backsplash, followed by another space and two numeric characters.
• Once typed, select the Find button, and boom, your query will be returned with a list of texts that matches the wildcard.
• From this list, you can choose all the text that you wish to replace and type a replacement text in the Replace with field and select the Replace button. Press and hold the CTRL and SHIFT keys to choose and change numerous text strings from the given list.

Wildcards in Quick Select

If you wish to choose multiple text strings that have a recognizable pattern then use wildcards in Quick Select. To illustrate this, let us suppose in the example discussed in the previous point, there are many MText strings and you wish to choose only those MText strings that have the word “backsplash”. Then, follow these steps:

• Get the Quick Select window by typing QSELECT on the command line and pressing enter.
• Once the window has popped up, choose “Entire drawing” in the Apply to section and choose “MText” in the Object type section.
• The MText object type will return the available properties in the Properties panel. Choose “Contents” from the available properties and select *Wildcard Match from the Operator section.
• Type *backsplash* in the Value field. The * symbol placed before and after “backsplash” specifies that any character can come before and after “backsplash”. As QSelect is case-sensitive, ensure that the correct case has been used in the Value field.
• Select “Include in new selection set” from the How to Apply section. Once done, press the Ok button.
• This will close the Quick Select window and select all MText strings that have the word “backsplash”.

Wildcards for Layer Search

Sometimes, in your drawing, you may want to find particular layers from a list of layers. If you open the Layer Properties Manager, in the top-right corner of the window, there will be a search field. In this field, you can type and enter any wildcard string to search the layers. For example, say you wish to find the layer that has the word “line” in it. Type *line* in the search field to get the desired layer.

Layer filters

A layer property filter can be used to get identical kinds of layers. For example, if you want all the layers which have the word “wall” as the third character then you can get this result using wildcards. Let us take a look at the steps for this:

• Your drafting and annotation workspace will have a home tab that contains the layer panel. From this panel, open the Layer Properties Manager.
• In the top left corner of the Layer Properties Manager, you will come across the New Property Filter icon. Click on this icon and a Layer Filter Properties window will pop up.
• Type any name which you will be easy to remember in the Filter name field, say for example “wall type”.
• Move to the Filter definition panel and in the Name column of this panel type, ??wall*. Once done, click OK.  This wildcard will return layers that have two random characters at the beginning of a layer, which will be followed by “wall”, and then any random characters at the end of the layer.

Design Centre

Wildcards can be used in AutoCAD’s Design Centre to look for drawings and named objects in drawings like line types, layers, blocks etc., without opening the required drawing. Suppose there are several drawings in a folder and a few drawings have blocks called A-door, B-door and so on. If you need to find the drawings that have each of the aforementioned blocks, then follow these steps:

• In the command line, press CTRL+2 to open Design Centre.
• Click on ‘search’ located at the top of the Design Centre.
• Once the Search window opens, go to the Look for drop-down and choose Blocks and name a folder from which you wish to search for the blocks in.
• Type ?-door-# in the field, Search for the name. This string will inform AutoCAD to get the blocks in the mentioned folder with a name that begins with any random character, that is followed by ‘door’ with the hyphens before and after the word door, and a numerical value at the end.
• Once the wildcard has been entered, click on Search Now. All the blocks that have names matching the wildcard will emerge.

Wildcards, are not restricted to just the above six uses. It can be used in other places too. So, go ahead and explore the various features Wildcards have to offer.

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