FORMATBRUSH is a match-properties brush for field number formatting. Pick a field that displays exactly the way you want — the right units, the right precision, the right suffix — then keep clicking other fields, and each takes on that formatting while keeping its own value.
What FormatBrush does
The cursor changes to the match-properties brush while destinations are being picked, so it is obvious the tool is live.
Only the formatting code is transferred — the part of a field expression that says how to display the number, not what number to display. So a field showing an area and one showing a length can share formatting without either changing what it reports.
How to use it
- Load the routine with
APPLOAD, or put it on your support file search path. - Type
FORMATBRUSH. - Pick the source field — the one that already looks right.
- Keep clicking the fields that should match it.
- Press Enter or Escape to finish.
How it works
There is a deliberate restraint with nested fields, and it is the most considered thing in the routine. A field can contain other fields. Where a nested field already has its own formatting, that formatting is replaced. But a nested field with no formatting is left alone, and formatting is only added at the top level.
That distinction matters. Adding formatting to an inner field that never had any would change how the outer calculation reads its value — quietly altering the result rather than just its appearance. A brush that is supposed to change how something looks should never change what it says.
It is the same rounding trap that FIELDMATH avoids from the other direction: format an inner value to two decimals and every calculation built on it inherits the rounding.
Notes and limits
- Values are never changed, only the formatting that displays them.
- Nested fields without formatting are left alone, deliberately, to avoid altering a calculation’s result.
- Both source and destination must contain fields. Plain text has no formatting code to receive.
- One undo group covers the whole run of destinations.
Download and details
| Name | FormatBrush — copy field formatting from one field to others |
| Download | FormatBrush.lsp — 17.5 KB, plain AutoLISP source. Downloads directly; no zip to unpack. |
| Type | AutoCAD AutoLISP routine |
| Command | FORMATBRUSH |
| Requires | the ActiveX layer (loaded automatically by the routine with vl-load-com). |
| Source size | 17.5 KB, 420 lines |
| Error handling | Yes — a *error* handler restores every system variable it changed, on cancel as well as on error. |
| Undo | The whole operation is wrapped in a single undo group, so one U reverses all of it. |
| Compatibility | AutoCAD (any release with AutoLISP), BricsCAD, ZWCAD, GstarCAD, ProgeCAD and other IntelliCAD-based platforms. AutoCAD LT needs a LISP enabler. No .NET, no ObjectARX, no installer. |
| Author | YZ, August 2026 |
| Licence | Free to use, supplied “as is” with no warranty. |
References
- FIELDSNOOP LISP — read the formatting code rather than brushing it across
- FIELDGRAFT LISP — copy the whole field, expression and all
- FIELDMATH LISP — why inner-field rounding matters in a calculation
- More free AutoLISP routines on this site
- Wisey’s Steel Shapes — free structural steel section drawing program