Ok...I confess that last week I was on vacation (yes...again). Soon I will be on the road for nearly 4 months straight with the 2008 launch so I'm trying to get in a little extra relaxation before the craziness begins! The good news is that I might be coming to a town near you (I'll keep you posted) and I definitely hope to see you! So I set my blog up to post while I was gone (pretty tricky - right?) - but now I'm back! So let's get back to the good news - more AutoCAD 2008 "stuff". Cool New AutoCAD 2008 UI Changes:
New 2D Workspace
If you are only using 2D AutoCAD commands why not use the new 2D Drafting & Annotation workspace? This displays powerful 2D tools on the Dashboard. If you remember from AutoCAD 2007 - we had this really cool Dashboard but it was 90% 3D tools...now we have some great new panels designed just for the popular 2D tools.
2D Dashboard Control Panels
New 2D control panels include easy access to layers, annotation scaling, text, dimensions, multi-leaders, tables, 2D navigation commands, object properties and block attributes. When you select a tool from the Dashboard the corresponding tool palette also displays (where applicable). You're going to love some of the new tools on the dashboard - and many of you will be SOOOOO happy to see that the Layer Unisolate (LAYUNISO) tool is back and planted happily on the Layer Control Panel - Happy Day!
Tool Palettes
You decide to customize your tool palettes by dragging and dropping geometry from the drawing to the palette. You'll find that even if the desired palette is not active - you can easily drag your geometry to an inactive tool palette tab and it will be automatically activated for easy placement (just be sure to give it an extra second to switch).
A new Specify Image option on the shortcut menu makes it easy to assign an image to any tool (it was a little tricky before).
The location of tools on a tool palette is now saved in the tool catalog (and the profile) – this makes it easier to share your tool palettes with others and maintain the same look and feel. So now when you share your palettes with others it will look the same on their computer as it does on yours!
TPNAVIGATE can be used to set a tool palette current at the command line (for programming purposes).
That's good for now...more tips later this week! I'm in an Inventor 2008 course this week trying to catch up on all the awesome new features! Very, very exciting. I'll leave you with a very cool image Eric Robb built in Inventor and used Inventor Studio to render. This is supposed to be his office,I believe, with a nice picture of his family in it. Eric Robb works for Avatech in North Carolina and is an Inventor Guru!
Have a great week!
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