As designs get more and more complex, and the need to separate things into multiple drawings becomes more important, so does the need to copy things between those drawings. As a result many of you are probably as addicted to the “Ctrl” + “C” shortcut as I am. Although “Ctrl” + “C” is a wonderful shortcut, it has one fatal flaw. It doesn’t allow you, the user, to specify a base point.
Of course did you know about pressing “Ctrl” + “Shift” + “C” (all at the same time)? That will evoke the “Copy with Basepoint” command, and allow you to specify a point such as “0,0″.
Using the “Copy with Basepoint” command of course requires that you have a second drawing open, and that you flip between drawings. There is a little known copy command that, if you can keep a secret I will share with you.
The mysterious copy command I speak of is the “NCOPY” command, or “Copy Nested Objects”. As you may have suspected it is an Express Tool that will allow you to copy an entity from a block or XREF into your current drawing space. The command works much the same as the standard issue ACAD COPY command.
seriously? seriously? you wrote a blog post about a keyboard shortcut that anyone can see plain as day on the edit menu?!