Lynn Allen's Blog

The Academy Awards are in!!!

I, for one, thoroughly enjoyed the show last night...I am thrilled Cate Blanchett won for her great performance as Kathryn Hepburn - and was equally thrilled to see Jamie Foxx win for his outstanding role in Ray.  Having the opportunity to see Ray Charles perform a couple of years ago I found Jamie's take (apparently we're on a first name basis) on the legend to be fabulous.  Hilary Swank was my pick for Million Dollar Baby (she looked stunning last night) and I personally found the movie to be just a slight bit better than Aviator (although they were very close) so I was glad to see it win Best Picture.  Morgan Freeman was certainly overdue for an award (although I thought Clive Owen was amazing in Closer).

It seemed as though Chris Rock was doing more of a stand-up routine than playing Emcee - but he did bring a certain energy to the awards.  Not quite sure why he felt the need to pick on the acting skills of Jude Law...who has also been nominated for an Academy Award in the past.  I personally prefer the wonderful Billy Crystal as host (perhaps next year).  The beautiful Beyonce Knowles knocked it out of the park as she sang most of the nominated songs (including an amazing French number).

I had a great time competing with my family on a downloaded ballot and am happy to say I was the supreme leader!  : )  Ahhhhh - I can only dream of someday being there in person...(I could then die a happy Technical Evangelist!)

AutoCAD Quick Tip - Another Super Speedy Means of Counting your Blocks!

If you are on AutoCAD 2002 or higher - you can used the Enhanced Attribute Extract command (EATTEXT) to do a quick calculation of all your blocks...Simply use the defaults for the first three pages of the wizard and you'll find yourself looking at a very nice listing of all the blocks in your drawing - neatly tallied up for you! 

AutoCAD Quick Tip - Top Secret Options in Trim and Extend

Both Trim and Extend have two top secret options that come in really handy for those of us who've discovered them.

1)  When asked to select the Cutting Edges (Trim) or Boundary Edges (Extend) you can simply hit an Enter to select all the visible objects on the screen as edges.

2) When asked to select the objects to Trim (or Extend), you can use the very valuable Fence option to select many objects at one time.

These two top secret options will save you tons of time (and don't we use the Trim and Extend commands ALL the time?).  Don't forget that you can now hold down the Shift key within either of the two commands to switch to the other (so if you're in Trim it will switch to Extend and vice versa).

Quick Tip - Super Quick Extrusion of Text (and other objects)

Need to give your text an extrusion thickness?  Dust off the old CHANGE command.  Simply select the text (or any object(s) you want to extrude) and select Properties.  Select Thickness and give the object the desired extrusion.  Super Easy!

Command: change
Select objects: 1 found
Select objects:
Specify change point or [Properties]: P
Enter property to change [Color/Elev/LAyer/LType/ltScale/LWeight/Thickness]: T
Specify new thickness <0.0000>: 3

(I recently saw a tip where it was suggested you explode the text into individual segments with an express tool and then extrude it - yuck!  Wayyyyy too much work!)

Quick Tip - Pushing objects from one space to another

Have you ever needed to move objects from Paper Space to Model Space (or vice versa?).  I've seen it done so many convoluted ways including making a block of the objects and then inserting them into the desired space  yikes!  So here's an easy answer - the Express Tool - CHSPACE!   Change Space (CHSPACE) allows you to move one or more objects from one space to the other while maintaining their original appearance (such as size).  Give it a whirl!

At the Movies with Lynn

I am still trying to catch up on all the Best Picture nominees for the Oscars later this month...here are my most recent movie reviews!

Million Dollar Baby:  A-
Great film, very enjoyable to watch with a bit of a twist at the end (so don't let anyone spoil it for you).  The acting was great - Hilary Swank was amazing!  This could easily be her second Best Actress oscar.  Clint Eastwood, who is up for multiple awards, directed, produced and starred in the movie- even wrote the music - is there anything this man cannot do?  Morgan Freeman (who is up for best supporing actor) added  character to the movie and lightened it up enough to make it easily digestible.  The throw away lines were the best part of the movie - you had to pay close attention to get them all.  Note:  If you are looking for a happy, feel-good movie - this probably is not the one for you!  Bring your kleenexes...

Finding Neverland:  B+

I really enjoyed this movie - although it also required the use of a kleenex.  Johnny Depp was his usual fabulous self bringing charm and depth to his character (up for a best acting Oscar) but I doubt he can win out over Jamie Foxx or Leonardo Di Caprio.  Great cast, great acting, but the boy who played Peter stole the show (a supporting actor nod for him would have been nice!).   Will this movie win the oscar for best picture?  Highly doubtful, but definitely one I recommend seeing.

Quick Tip - Controlling your Toolbars

Two helpful tips for better control over your toolbars

1)  To keep your toolbars from docking while you are relocating them - simply hold down the control key.

2)  Double-clicking on the double bar will automatically float the toolbar

AUGI CAD Camps are FANTASTIC!

Last week I presented at the two AUGI CAD Camps in Houston and Lansing, Michigan.  It was so exciting hanging out with the attendees and presenting on topics I don't normally get to cover (such as customizing menus).  Even more exciting was hearing Shaan Hurley talk about some of the features that might be coming up in future releases of AutoCAD - the crowd was mesmerized!  Be sure to visit Shaan Hurley's blog as well for more info.  A good time was surely had by all.

The ATC in Lansing was amazing (Lansing Community College)...the facilities were state of the art!  Here's a pic of me teaching my AutoCAD 2005 course.

 

During CAD Camp we hold a Top DAUG competition to see who knows the most about AutoCAD - here is the winner of the Lansing competition -  Temesgen Hussein (who also happens to be an instructor at the ATC) along with another top CAD Camp instructor Matt Murphy.

Is CAD Camp coming to a location near you?  Be sure to keep checking for additional locations at AUGI CAD Camp.

Free Online Object ARX classes

Visit the following website!  Object ARX for Dummies

Quick Tip - Close All Open Drawings Quickly!

Tired of closing all your open drawings one at a time (yuck!)?  The CLOSEALL command will quickly close all open drawings, pausing only for you to save the changes where appropriate.