Last updated July 28, 2026
NOTE puts a dialog box on screen with a list of standard notes in it. You pick one, then pick two points, and the note lands on the end of a leader pointing where you want it.
It is by Ken Jolly, dated 1997, and it comes with a DCL dialog file. That last detail decides most of what follows.
The list is one stone shop’s, from 1997
Thirty-five notes are hard-coded into the file, and they are not generic. They read: 1/4 W x 1 1/4 DP SLOTS, BULLNOSE, PITCH, HONE, ANTIQUA, EASED EDGE, MASONRY LEDGE, WEEP AT VERTICAL JOINTS, MARK BACK OF STONE, CREAM, INDIANA, SHELL.
That is a dimension stone fabricator’s vocabulary — anchor slots and drips, stone finishes, limestone varieties. Six entries begin with MS followed by a face (MS EDGE, MS TOP, MS BOTTOM, MS FACE, MS END), which will have meant something specific in that shop and means nothing outside it. Two of the entries are just PLEASE VERIFY ? and PLEASE PROVIDE ?, which is the most universally applicable thing in the file.
So do not download this for the notes. Download it for the shape.
The shape is the useful part
Every office has thirty or so notes that get typed over and over, and typed slightly differently every time. One drawing says GYP BD, the next says GYPSUM BOARD, the third has a typo in it. A pick-list fixes that at the source: if the note can only come from the list, every drawing says the same thing.
Making it yours is a single edit. The notes live in one list near the top of the file, each in quotes. Replace them with your own, keep the quotes and the brackets, and everything else works unchanged. There is no limit that matters — the box shows twelve at a time and scrolls.
Worth noticing while you are in there: one of the supplied entries reads WEEP AT VERTICAL jOINTS, with a lower-case j. It has been sitting in the file since 1997 and it would come out that way on your drawing. Whatever list you build, it is worth proofreading once, because after that nobody will ever read it again — they will just pick from it.
Command reference
One command, NOTE.
This one will not run on LT
The dialog is a DCL file, and DCL is not supported on AutoCAD LT at any release. LT 2024 brought AutoLISP to LT, but not dialog boxes, so this is one of the few routines in this library with a straight no against it. See what runs on AutoCAD LT.
On the full product it needs both files where AutoCAD can find them. The dialog is loaded by name, and the name is not the one you would guess: the DCL file is CHAN.DCL, not NOTE.DCL. If AutoCAD cannot find it the routine aborts rather than telling you why, so an unexplained abort the moment you type NOTE almost always means the DCL file is not on the support file search path.
What it does to your settings
This is the part to read before you run it on a drawing you care about.
The routine changes five system variables. Command echo and blips go off, ortho goes off, the running object snap is set to Nearest so the leader picks land on a face, and dimension text placement is set to run through the line rather than above it.
Three of the five are never put back. The other two — object snap and dimension text placement — are put back to fixed values written into the file rather than to whatever you had. So it leaves your running object snaps at endpoint, midpoint, node, intersection and insertion whether or not that is your usual set, and it leaves dimension text above the line.
Worth checking OSMODE and DIMTAD before your first run, so you know what to type back.
There is no error handler, which makes the above worse than it sounds. The lines that restore anything sit at the very end of the routine, after the leader is drawn. Press Escape partway through picking the leader and none of them run, so you are left with Nearest as your only running snap — which is exactly the confusing state where every subsequent pick lands slightly off a real point and you cannot see why.
The Cancel button has the same problem and one of its own: its action calls a function that is not defined anywhere in the file. Treat Cancel as an escape hatch that leaves a mess behind, not a clean way out.
If the leader step fails
The leader is drawn by dropping into the old dimensioning mode and calling LEADER from inside it. That is 1997 practice, and the DIM command has since been given an entirely different job, so this is the step most likely to break on a current release.
If it does, the modern answer is MLEADER, which is a better object anyway — it holds its text and its arrow together, and it will follow your multileader style. Swapping the one call is not difficult, and it is a good first exercise on someone else’s routine.
How to load it
Unzip Note.zip. It contains NOTE.LSP and CHAN.DCL. Put both somewhere on your support file search path — the DCL file will not be found otherwise — and load the LSP with APPLOAD. Our AutoLISP guide covers loading.
Step-by-step usage
- Note your current OSMODE and DIMTAD settings if you have them set the way you like.
- Type NOTE. The dialog appears, headed NOTES.
- Pick a note from the list and click OK.
- Pick the arrow point, then the point where the text should sit.
- Put ortho back on if you want it. The routine turned it off and will not turn it back on.
Compatibility notes
1997, so written-for rather than tested-on. The dialog half is the durable part — DCL has barely changed — and the leader half is the fragile part, for the reason above. The header carries an AOL member page for the author’s site, which has been gone since AOL closed that service, so there is nowhere left to check for a later version.
The file carries the usual as-is disclaimer of warranties, which is the 1990s shareware convention rather than anything unusual. It draws a leader and some text and changes settings; it does not delete or modify existing objects.
Download
| Name: | NOTE |
| Description: | This utility will add a predefined note that the user picks from a list along with a leader. |
| Type: | AutoCAD AutoLISP Routine |
| Author: | Ken Jolly |
| File Size: | 2 Kb |
| Cost: | Free |
| Worked on: | AutoCAD |
| Download File: | Note.zip |
Related routines
- Line Then Text — the same job without the dialog or the list.
- DELLEAD — for when you want the leaders gone again.
- PTEXT — placing paragraph text rather than single notes.