Last updated July 28, 2026
CHT drags selected text back to your standard text style. Select a mixed bag of annotation that has come in from three different sources over five years, run the command, and everything that is single-line text is switched to the style called STANDARD.
It is by Craig Carr of Superior Designs, written in 1994 with a copyright running to 1997.
What it does, precisely
It steps through your selection, checks each object, and for anything that is a TEXT entity it runs AutoCAD’s CHANGE command and sets the style to STANDARD. Everything else in the selection is skipped, so you can window a whole area without worrying about what else you catch.
Two things follow that the description does not tell you.
The target style is fixed. STANDARD is written into the code; you are not asked which style you want. If your office standard is a style called something else — and most are — the routine as supplied will move your text to the wrong one. The style name appears once in the file as plain text, so changing it is a thirty-second edit and worth doing before you use it.
Mtext is not touched. The check is for TEXT specifically, and multiline text is a different object type. A drawing that mixes the two will come out half-converted. That is not a fault — changing an mtext style needs a different approach — but it does mean CHT alone will not standardise a modern drawing.
Note also that it switches command echo off and does not put it back, so AutoCAD goes quiet afterwards until you reset CMDECHO to 1.
Where this earns its keep
Received drawings. A consultant’s file arrives with text in four styles referencing three fonts you do not have, and AutoCAD substitutes something ugly for the missing ones. Windowing the lot and forcing everything to a style you do have fixes the display in one step.
It is also the quick fix before issuing a drawing, where inconsistent text styles are the sort of thing a checker will send back.
Command reference
The file defines a single command, CHT.
Be aware that CHT is also the name of a much better known text-changing routine from Autodesk’s Bonus Tools, which is bundled in the CAD Tools download on this site. If you load both, whichever comes last wins, and the two do quite different things. Rename one.
How to load it
Unzip Cht.zip, edit the style name if yours is not STANDARD, then load cht.lsp with APPLOAD. No support files. Our AutoLISP guide covers loading.
Step-by-step usage
- Make sure the style you are converting to actually exists in the drawing.
- Type CHT. It prompts “PICK TEXT TO STANDARDIZE..”.
- Select the text. A window over the whole drawing is fine — non-text objects are ignored.
- Press Enter. Every single-line text object in the selection is switched.
- Check any mtext separately, and reset CMDECHO to 1.
Compatibility notes
Dated 1994, so written-for rather than tested-on. It works by driving the CHANGE command with a fixed sequence of responses, which is the part most likely to age badly — if the prompts have shifted at all in your release, the responses land in the wrong slots. Test on a copy with two or three pieces of text before letting it loose on a whole drawing.
Plain AutoLISP with no dialog boxes and no Express Tools calls, so nothing requires the full product; LT users on LT 2024 or later, the release that brought AutoLISP to LT, should be able to run it. See what runs on AutoCAD LT.
Download
| Name: | CHT text |
| Description: | Lisp to standardize/modify selected text in a drawing. |
| Type: | AutoCAD AutoLISP Routine |
| Author: | Craig Carr |
| File Size: | 1 Kb |
| Cost: | Free |
| Worked on: | AutoCAD |
| Download File: | Cht.zip |
Related routines
- TEXTSIZE — work out the right text height for the scale before you standardise.
- Add or subtract text — adjust the numbers inside the text rather than its style.
- LLP Suite — a large set of text editing commands.