Lynn Allen's Blog

Blogging in Belgium!

While in Belgium I met two great bloggers who were kind enough to send me a link to their blogs along with the pics we took together at the user event.  The first blog, Inventor Wizard, is run by Stefaan Boel and is focused on Autodesk Inventor Tips and Tricks (there were so many Inventor users there!)  It's currently displaying some great pictures from the event.  Here is a picture of Stefaan...

 

The second blogger I met was Toon Beyls.  His blog, CADjobs Info, is currently referencing my blog!  So here's right back at you.  Here is a picture of Toon and myself from Antwerp, a city near Brussels.

So here's to my fellow bloggers from Belgium!  It was great meeting you!

Do you have a Hole in your AutoCAD Hatch Boundary?

Today I had a fabulous time presenting in Belgium.  I divurged from my usual tips and tricks presentation and did one on some of the features that might surface in future releases of AutoCAD (top secret!).  The audience was very receptive - and to top it off I was awarded a beautiful box of Belgium chocolates for my efforts - it just does NOT get any better than that!

Tomorrow I'm back to the Netherlands for a presentation at a customer site.  And on Friday I return to the USA.  I won't miss the hotels but I will definitely miss the people.

A Hip Tip on Hatching:

We all know what it's like to select a boundary in the BHATCH command only to have AutoCAD tell us the boundary is not closed.  I have actually been known to argue with AutoCAD about this - insisting that the boundary is indeed closed!   And let's face it, we will spend more time zooming and searching for the hole in the boundary than it would take for us to erase the boundary and draw another one! (or is it just me?).  AutoCAD 2005 to the rescue...

AutoCAD 2005 introduced a groovy new feature that will definitely keep your blood pressure down.  Now the BHATCH command lets you indicate the size of the boundary gap (or hole) that it will permit in your hatching boundaries.  You might be tempted to make this value quite large to insure against  running into this painful issue in the future but I suggest against it.  If you set the value too large it won't work (especially if the value is larger than either of the adjoining edges).  So set it to something reasonable and hatch away!  You'll find yourself taking less aspirin and drinking less.

 

So there's your Hip Tip - I'm off to eat a chocolate!

A Hip Tip from Amsterdam

Sorry for the lack of blog attention but internet access has been a bit difficult to find...I'm just a couple of hours away from moving on to Belgium for a big user event but thought I'd attempt to catch up some on my blog...no time to post pics yet (well maybe one)...but definitely time for a quick hip tip!

AutoCAD Hip Tip:  Making speedy JPEGs (and other types of bitmaps) out of your AutoCAD drawings

AutoCAD 2005 snuck in several commands for speedy output to .JPG, .PNG, .BMP and .TIF.   The commands are simply JPGOUT, PNGOUT, BMPOUT and TIFOUT respectively.

Command: jpgout
Select objects or <all objects and viewports>: 1 found
Select objects or <all objects and viewports>:

You'll notice you can select specific objects or simply hit enter for all objects (including viewports).  There aren't any specifics to configure - so you don't much control over the output - it's essentially what you see is what you get...Quick and Dirty - there's your Hip Tip from a very cool town.

One picture - this is a picture of me standing outside the very affecting Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.  A "must see to believe it" experience - you can't help but leave with a heavy heart over all this sweet girl and her family went through.  We can't even begin to fathom it all...

 

A Prescription for Slow Drawings

Today is the last day of my conference in Sweden.  Last night we had an awards dinner and entertainment at Cabaret Lorensberg.  The waiters are also the entertainers and they were quite talented (including one young lady who was the spitting image of a young Barbra Streisand).  A good time was definitely had by all!

On to the Hip Tip on Slow Drawings:

There are many things that might lead to slow drawings, but one of the main culprits is too many layer filters in your drawing.  Typically I find this to be a symptom of drawings with multiple Xrefs.  You attach an Xref from someone who obviously had a layer filter party in the office and now you are being bogged down by this painful baggage.  How can you quickly check for these evil critters and remove them from your life?  The new FILTERS command in AutoCAD 2006 to the rescue! 

Since this command isn't documented - you probably haven't discovered it yet.  Don't bother searching the Help file for it - you won't find it there!  This great top secret command will display all the layer filters in your drawing and make it super easy for you to rid yourself of the ones you don't want.  It's simply a matter of moving the unwanted filters to the left column and hitting the Delete Filters button for fast removal.

Now don't confuse this with the FILTER command - that's something completely different (one character can make such a difference).

So that's your Hip Tip from Sweden - tomorrow I'm off to Amsterdam!

An AutoCAD Hip Tip about Images

Well I made it to Sweden, and the weather is actually quite nice (so I'm feeling a little silly about bringing my winter coat).  I have decided to blame www.weather.com for leading me astray! I am staying in the smallest hotel room in the world - barely able to fit the spacious twin size bed in the room.  : )   At least the bed is quite comfortable...so on to our Hip Tip

AutoCAD Hip Tip:

In order to edit an image (move, erase, etc) you need to have the frame on (IMAGEFRAME set to 1).  Often, however, we prefer to have the frame turned off for printing (IMAGEFRAME set to 0).   Consequently we find ourselves flipping this system variable back and forth from 0 to 1, which is quite tedious.  AutoCAD 2006 introduced a new setting for IMAGEFRAME which now allows us to have the best of both worlds.  We can now set IMAGEFRAME to 2 which means the frame will display for editing purposes, but it won't print - Awesome!

So there's your Hip Tip from Sweden!

Text Hip Tips

What a beautiful weekend here in California!  Great weather, was able to play some tennis and take in the new movie, Flight Plan.  And now I'm off to Europe...(and another LONG flight!).

So here are a couple of Text Hip Tips for you:

1.  Controlling the MTEXT sample string:  The default MTEXT text string is Abc...(how dull)...why not change it to something more personal - your company name,  dog's name, favorite team, etc.  The system variable MTJIGSTRING (don't ask me what it stands for!) allows you to set the sample string to any 10 character combination of letters and numbers.  If you don't want any sample string (how dull) set MTJIGSTRING to a period.  Mine says "Go Colts!"  (Can you say 4-0 record?)

2.  Controlling the paragraph width:   Most of us know how to control the MTEXT paragraph width with grips - but did you know you can also do it in the MTEXT dialog box?  The arrows on the ruler bar make it easy to stretch the width of the paragraph.

If you are on AutoCAD 2005 you can sill stretch the ruler bar to adjust the width even though there are no arrows (it still works great!).

I am off on a plane so I may not have a chance to post another tip tomorrow but I'll give it the good old college try.  Happy AutoCADding!