Transparent Commands

Often times I’ll need to do some calculations when I’m doing a task in AutoCAD / AutoCAD Civil 3D. I recently sat in a class to observe. One of the transparent commands that I didn’t know about was the ‘CAL transparent command.

This transparent command lets you use an expression to calculate the value. So if you wanted to create a line a certain distance based on two values that you have you could start the line command and select the starting point. Then type ‘CAL, then type in your expression. One valid expression is 2*6 to get 12 units. Now this is certainly a simple example with a number you could probably get in your head, but it does provide an example on how the transparent command works.