Objects must be visible on screen in order to be selected, but a text object that contains nothing but spaces cannot be selected to correct or erase it.

A text object that contains nothing but spaces can be a nuisance if it is located off in another galaxy somewhere. When you do a Zoom All or Zoom Extents then the rest of your drawing reduces to a dot in one corner of the screen because the invisible text object is ‘way off in the distance. You didn’t hear it from me, but this can be used to drive a co-worker crazy.

Figure 1: A typical piece of text in a drawing.

Figure 1 shows three lines of text in a drawing. They appear innocuous enough, but unfortunately there is also a fourth “invisible” text object that cannot be seen or selected.

Fortunately there is a quick cure, where “quick” is the operative word. The QText command is short for Quick Text. It replaces each Text and Mtext object with a simple rectangular box. These boxes also plot in lieu of plotting the actual text. Enter the QText command (or its alias QT) at the command line, and then select On from the prompt box. Now perform a Regen (View | Regen) to see the boxes, as shown in figure 2.

Figure 2: The same screen view as Figure 1, but with QText turned On.

QText can greatly speed up the regeneration of very large drawings that contain large amounts of text, and can speed up the production of quick check plots.

Note the extra box that has appeared in figure 2. It indicates a piece of text that only contains one or more spaces and no visible characters. You can now select to delete it, or change its contents into visible characters by using the EntProp command (Modify | Properties…) as shown in figure 3.

Figure 3: The EntProp dialog box can be used to repair invisible spaces-only text.