Last updated July 28, 2026
Three small editing commands in one file, each changing one property of one object you pick. Between them they cover the three edits that come up most often when tidying somebody else’s drawing: the content of a piece of text, how wide that text is squeezed, and the colour of an object.
They are by Ade Suharna, dated 1 September 2004, and carry his own program numbering along with a revision history — the same author as the dimension precision routine on this site, written in the same style.
The three commands
- MET — modify existing text. Pick a piece of text and it offers the current wording back to you as the default, so you can edit rather than retype.
- WF — width factor. Changes how wide or narrow the characters are drawn without changing the height. It shows the current factor before asking for the new one.
- EOC — edit object colour. Works on any object, not just text.
All three follow the same courtesy: read the current value, show it, then ask. That sounds obvious and a surprising number of routines skip it, leaving you to change something without knowing what it was.
WF is the one worth knowing about if you have not met width factor before. It is the text property that lets you squeeze a long label into a narrow space without shrinking the letter height — useful in a title block field or a crowded schedule, and a much better answer than reducing the text size.
One of the three needs full AutoCAD, sometimes
A nuance worth spelling out, because it is unusual.
The colour command first looks for a colour stored directly on the object. If it finds one, everything is plain AutoLISP and there is no problem. If it does not — which is what happens when the object’s colour is set to BYLAYER, so there is nothing stored on the object itself — it falls back to ActiveX to ask the object what colour it is displaying.
ActiveX is not available on AutoCAD LT at any release. So on LT this command will work on objects with an explicit colour and fail on objects set to BYLAYER, which is to say most of a well-organised drawing. The other two commands have no such dependency.
See what runs on AutoCAD LT for the general position. On full AutoCAD none of this matters.
A rough edge in the text command
MET checks whether you actually picked something, and warns you if you did not — but then carries on regardless and tries to read the object you did not select. So a missed pick gets you the warning and then an error.
Harmless, since nothing is changed, but it looks alarming the first time. Pick carefully and you will not see it.
How to load it
Unzip VariousEdits.zip and load the file with APPLOAD, or add it to the Startup Suite — three small editing commands earn their place there. All three come from the one file. Our AutoLISP guide covers loading.
Step-by-step usage
- Type MET, WF or EOC depending on what you want to change.
- Pick the object when prompted.
- The current value appears in angle brackets. Type the new one.
- The change is applied to that object immediately.
For a width factor, 1 is normal, below 1 squeezes the characters narrower and above 1 stretches them wider. Around 0.8 is a common choice for fitting text into a tight field while keeping it readable.
Compatibility notes
2004, with revisions logged through to 2005, which makes this one of the newer files in this library. It works by editing entity data directly, which is durable, and the properties it touches have not changed.
No dialog boxes and no Express Tools calls. The LT position is as described above — two of the three are fine, the colour one is conditional. All three change one object at a time and nothing else, so there is little risk in trying them.
Download
| Name: | Various Edits |
| Description: | Various edit routines which includes color change, text change and text width change. |
| Type: | AutoCAD AutoLISP Routine |
| Author: | Ade Suharna |
| File Size: | 2 Kb |
| Cost: | Free |
| Worked on: | AutoCAD |
| Download File: | VariousEdits.zip |
Related routines
- EPU — the same author’s dimension precision editor.
- CHGTEXT — match text height and style across a selection.
- Add or subtract text — change the numbers inside text rather than the text itself.