Hi,
I am going to share here add-in (TemporaryVisibility/Graphic Override) which we use in our office and I have to begin with my acknowledgment; I pinched the ideas from programs such as Revit, Microstation, 12D.
With this add-in you can temporarily change appearance of AutoCAD entities and as you can see on setting window below you have these three options:
1) Display cross symbol at entity vertices. Current available entities are Line, Polyline, Polyline3d, Arc, Solid3d and Dimension. You can also display Z-coordinate for vertices.
2) Hide entities in entire drawing. Current available entities are Text, Mtext, Dimension, Leader, Hatch and Xref
3) Change properties of entities in entire drawing. Current available options are Color=ByLayer, Color=White, Linetype=ByLayer, Linetype=Continuous.
I have created this utility sequentially for entities and functionality as we needed in our office at the time. That’s why settings windows is so ugly. If you find that you miss some entity in Vertex or Hide section reply to me I’ll see if it can be added in.
How does it work?
Add-in controls AutoCAD how to display chosen entities, it doesn’t modify your drawing file at all. So if you are worried that the add-in can damage or corrupt your drawing file you don’t have to be.
Important to know
Main purpose of this add-in was to create tools for better entity’s display representation during the design (that’s why it is called temporary…), not as for final drawing print. AutoCAD without this add-in will display just default entities.
Below is example of 3D polyline with Z-coordinates
For more information read help PDF provided.
Tested with AutoCAD 2010, 2012, 2013.
Thanks,
Richard