I’ve seen quite a few positive comments about the new automated spell checking feature, with some people saying that it alone is enough to make AutoCAD 2009 worth the price of admission. I wouldn’t go quite that far, but it is a nice feature. If you enter or edit text or mtext, a little dashed red line appears under words that are not in the dictionary. Right click on an unknown word and the menu will offer several suggestions, allow you to ignore the word or add it to the dictionary.
It does have limitations, though, such as not working with attributes. Don’t expect it to do the things that Word does, such as auto-correct words or check your grammar. There is nothing to inform you that you have used a valid word in the wrong context, so AutoCAD considers this to be a perfectly valid sentence:
Eye cant under stand how any one cud sell any off they’re worms rung wen awl 0f there worlds ate testes width a auto mated shell checked.
Translation:
I can’t understand how anyone could spell any of their words wrong when all of their words are tested with an automated spell checker.
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Spell checkers are not spell checkers; they are word recognizers. If the word appears in a list of words, then it is valid — context be darned.
As a professional writer, it frustrates me greatly how gushing-with-billions-in-R&D companies like Microsoft are incapable of advancing spell and grammar checking beyond what my DOS copy of WordPerfect and Grammatik did 20 years ago.
But, I must say that real-time spell checking is wonderful, even if it is a 10-year-old feature in other words-oriented software.
It is very good for works.