7.1 Object Properties & Match Properties

The Properties palette and Quick Properties panel are the two on-screen tools AutoCAD gives you for inspecting and editing the settings of an already-drawn object — color, layer, linetype, lineweight, and a long list of geometry-specific values unique to each object type. Match Properties (MATCHPROP) takes a different approach: instead of editing fields one at a time, it copies an entire set of properties from one object directly onto others. ACU AutoCAD Objective 3.1 tests both halves of this pairing — reading and altering properties through the palettes, and using Match Properties to apply a template object's look to the rest of a drawing.

The Properties Palette (Ctrl+1)

The Properties palette opens with Ctrl+1, from the View ribbon tab, or by right-clicking a selected object and choosing Properties. It's a dockable, persistent window that stays open as you work, and its contents update automatically to reflect whatever is currently selected.

Every object shows a General category at the top of the palette with properties that apply to nearly anything you can draw:

Below General, the palette displays a Geometry category unique to the selected object's type. A line shows Start X/Y/Z, End X/Y/Z, Delta X/Y/Z, Length, and Angle. A circle shows Center X/Y/Z, Radius, Diameter, Circumference, and Area — and editing the Radius field directly resizes the circle instantly, since Properties isn't limited to display-only fields. If you select multiple objects of different types at once, the palette collapses down to only the properties they share, which in practice usually means just the General category, since geometry fields rarely overlap between, say, a line and a circle.

To change a value, click into its field and type a new one, or click the small drop-down arrow that appears on fields with a fixed list of choices — Layer, Color, Linetype, Lineweight, and Plot Style all work this way. Choosing Other… at the bottom of the Color or Linetype drop-down opens the full Select Color or Select/Load Linetype dialog, giving access to colors or linetypes that aren't already loaded or in use elsewhere in the drawing.

Quick Properties: The Abbreviated Popup

Quick Properties is a compact alternative that appears automatically the moment you select an object, provided it's turned on through the status bar icon or Ctrl+Shift+P. Instead of opening a full dockable palette, a small panel shows up anchored near the selected object, listing only an abbreviated set of the most relevant fields — typically the General category basics (Layer, Color, Linetype) plus one or two of the most important object-specific values, skipping the longer geometry breakdown the full Properties palette provides.

The distinction the exam expects you to know is behavioral, not just cosmetic: Properties is a persistent window you open and dock, showing every property of the current selection at once; Quick Properties is a transient popup that appears and disappears with your selection, showing a shortened, configurable list meant for a fast glance or a quick edit without committing screen space to a full palette.

ByLayer vs. Object-Level Overrides

Because Color, Linetype, and Lineweight can each be set to ByLayer or to an explicit value, editing one of these fields directly on a selected object creates an override that breaks its inheritance from the layer. This produces a classic troubleshooting scenario: a layer named Center-Lines is set to color red with a dashed linetype, but one particular line on that layer displays as a plain white continuous line. Selecting that line and opening the Properties palette reveals the cause immediately — its Color and Linetype fields show an explicit value instead of ByLayer. Setting both fields back to ByLayer restores the object's inheritance from the layer, and it snaps back to matching every other line on Center-Lines.

MATCHPROP: Copying a Template Object's Properties

Match Properties, run with the command MATCHPROP (alias MA) or the paintbrush icon on the Home ribbon's Clipboard panel, automates exactly this kind of fix across many objects in one pass. The command's prompts run in a fixed order:

1. Select source object: — pick exactly one object; this becomes the template every destination object will match.
2. AutoCAD reports the current active settings on the command line, listing which property categories are about to be copied.
3. Select destination object(s) or [Settings]: — pick as many objects as you want, one at a time or with a window/crossing selection, and press Enter when finished. The source stays fixed for the whole command, so you never need to reselect it between destination picks.

By default, MATCHPROP transfers every Basic Property — Color, Layer, Linetype, Linetype scale, Lineweight, Transparency, Thickness, and Plot style — from source to destination. When the source and destination happen to be the same object type, it also transfers applicable Special Properties: Dimension style for dimensions, Text style for text and mtext, Hatch pattern/scale/angle for hatches, width for polylines, frozen-layer lists for viewports, and table style for tables. If the destination is a different object type than the source, AutoCAD simply skips whichever Special Properties don't apply — a text object matched onto a line still passes along its Basic Properties, just not a text style the line has no field for.

The Settings Option: Choosing What Transfers

Typing S at the destination-object prompt opens the Property Settings dialog, which lists every Basic Property and applicable Special Property as a checkbox. Unchecking a box excludes that property from the copy while leaving the rest active — a common use is unchecking Layer so that color, linetype, and lineweight transfer from the source object without also relocating the destination objects onto the source's layer, which would otherwise happen silently as part of the default full-property copy.

On the Exam

Expect a scenario describing an object that looks wrong despite being on the correct layer, asking you to identify both the cause (an explicit override instead of ByLayer) and the fastest fix (resetting the field to ByLayer, or running MATCHPROP from a correctly-styled object). Expect a direct comparison of Properties versus Quick Properties, and a question testing whether you know MATCHPROP requires exactly one source object but accepts unlimited destination objects in the same command run, along with what the Settings dialog is for.