Lynn Allen's Blog

Autodesk University Registrations have Skyrocketed!

It's time again to sign up for everyone's favorite Design conference - Autodesk University!  With only 3 weeks out the gate we have over 1000 more sign-ups than we did at the 3 week mark last year!  What does that mean to you?  It means that Autodesk University will no doubt hit the highest attendance mark ever - but more importantly it means you need to sign up now to ensure you get the courses you want!  Don't wait around until the last minute or you'll end up taking the "Under-Water Basket Weaving with AutoCAD" course...

If you haven't attended CAD Mecca before, this is the year to do it!  With nearly 400 courses to choose from, and everyone's favorite speakers, the amazing networking opportunities, the AU Party (always very important), the huge exhibit hall...I could go on and on...and the amazing sign-up rate indicates that the masses are glad it's back in Vegas!

So sign up today!  Autodesk University

A Hip Tip on MTEXT and an Autodesk Visitor

Last week I was quite surprised when a fellow AutoCAD user, blog reader and AUGI Top DAUG winner showed up on the doorsteps of Autodesk.  Temesgen Hussein and his lovely wife Carol surprised me by stopping by in anticipation of a tour.  While a tour guide I am not (which they might vouch for)- I did my best to show them around the Autodesk Headquarters building.  What a shock to have them drop by - but an even bigger shock that I was in the office at the time!  It was my very first day back from sabbatical and I was actually in town...as luck would have it.  I did meet Temesgen once before in Lansing, Michigan when he attended the AUGI CAD Camp and won the Top DAUG contest (no easy task I might add...so he's a true AutoCAD Wizard).  Below is a picture of him and I in front of Autodesk Headquarters in San Rafael, CA.

Temesgen and Carol were intrigued by our break room (we have a refrigerator fully stocked with sodas...very cool!) so I snapped a shot of them in there as well...too funny!

So now you can say you've seen inside the Autodesk break room at Headquarters too!

On to our Hip Tip on MTEXT:

Last week at Disney one of the attendees asked me if there was a way to get the old MTEXT editor back and I drew a blank...I knew it was possible but couldn't remember the system variable.  I dusted off my brain and remembered it is the new MTEXTED setvar.  Some of you don't like the newfangled in place editor and long for the old days of the slightly prinmitive MTEXT Editor.  Now those of you in AutoCAD 2006 should definitely listen up...especially if you have lots of rotated text and are tired of standing on your head!  The old editor would whip that text back around for you, so it was back to that 0 degree angle for easy editing (and fewer headaches).   

Set the system variable MTEXTED to "oldeditor".  Yes that's right - you heard me.  This will tell AutoCAD to use the old MTEXT editor.  To put it back you'll need to set MTEXTED to "internal".

AutoCAD 2007 updated the in-place-text editor such that if the text is too small or rotated it will blow the text up to a decent height and rotate it for easy viewing while you edit.  So most of you won't need to touch the MTEXTED command anymore.  If you don't like the fact that the in-place editor does this new feature (I love it incidentally),  you can put it back (but why?).  The MTEXTFIXED system variable controls the behavior as seen below:

MTEXTFIXED (when MTEXTED is set to "internal") when set to 0 or 1 will leave the text as is - won't enlarge it or rotate it for easy viewing.

MTEXTFIXED when set to 2 enlarges super small text for viewing and rotates it if necessary.

In my humble opinion, it should be set to 2.

Off to see Snakes in a Plane tonight!

Back to the Drawing Board...

Well I'm back to work and on the road again.  Today I enjoyed a huge crowd of nearly 400 in Long Beach, California (my old stomping grounds).  I grew up in Long Beach, even went to Long Beach Polytechnic High School...I can't believe how much it's changed (definitely for the better though).  The audience today came from as far north as Fresno and as far south as San Diego...what a great event.  We passed out my AutoCAD 2007 Tips and Tricks booklets and they even had a nice autograph line after my presentation (they were just trying to make me feel good of course).  Below you'll find some of those I paid to stand in line to get my autograph.  : )

Notice the stunned look on my face...

I'm off to the Disney CAD Camp tomorrow in Burbank with my good friends Shane, Patti and Tom...a day of education will no doubt be had by everyone (me as well).  I'm doing a couple of presentations on AutoCAD 2007...and here is a tip for you to end your week with!

Hip Tip to Square Off Corners:

I mentioned this tip today in my presentaion and had several people ask me about it (leading me to believe that not everyone is aware of it.  So let's say you have a "messy" corner that needs to be cleaned up like the example below.

You'd probably use the Fillet command with a 0 (zero) radius or use the Chamfer command with a distance of 0...right?  Well realizing that this is our chosen means of cleaning up corners, AutoCAD 2006 added a faster option for quicky cleanup.  Select one of the lines with the overhang, and then use the Shift key to select the second.  AutoCAD will automatically assume you intend to Fillet with a zero radius and will automatically square up your corner for you!  And the extra cool thing about doing it this way is that it doesn't reset your fillet radius back to zero! 

Command: FILLET
Current settings: Mode = TRIM, Radius = 0.0000
Select first object or [Undo/Polyline/Radius/Trim/Multiple]:
Select second object or shift-select to apply corner:

Give this nifty time saver a try...and in closing I give you another puppy picture of Tiffany (who weighs a whopping 2.5 lbs now).

The Party is Over!

Today is the last day of my sabbatical...(let the tears begin to flow)...and the end of all the wedding excitement...the final festivities were on Friday - a fabulous reception with our dearest friends and colleagues...I certainly hope a good time was had by all.  If you'd like to see some of the pics taken again by our good friend Jerry Behm feel free to peruse at Wedding Reception.  I like to think a good time was had by all - the dance floor was consistently filled and thanks to Renee Swenson - (reception coordinator/fabulous friend) everything ran like clockwork.  The steak was too rare and nearly impossible to cut with our butter knives (not sure what the deal with that was...guess we should have said BYOSK..Bring Your Own Steak Knife).  It was amusing watching all the tables rocking as people attempted to cut their meat.  The band seriously knew how to rock and the Tiffany box cake was beyond expectation (thank you Rene - you are an artistic genius). 

The highlight of my day today was discovering that our shindig made Tenlinks and Roopinder Tara's blog CAD Insider.  Roopinder and I go way back to his days as editor for CADENCE magazine (now Cadalyst) and Craig just happens to be Roopinder's eye doctor as well.  It was a thrill having him and his sweet wife at our reception.  Be sure to visit his blog for a hysterical take on the reception - I think Roopinder truly missed his calling!  If you are not on the TenLinks email list you are truly missing out!  That's how I keep up on all the news on all things CAD...everyday I get the most up to date info along with some fabulous tips that will make your everyday drawing life just a little bit better!

We also found out that Jerry's website with our wedding photos has had over 100,000 hits - imagine that! (it must have been that one photo of the garter that did it...)  : )

Tomorrow it's back to work (yikes!)...which means more blog postings for all of you...thanks for your infinite patience (my blogging definitely decreased) and all the wonderful congratulations I received over the past few weeks...I was truly touched.

An AutoCAD Coordinates Hip Tip!

Oh my...only a few days left of my sabbatical...where did the time go?  I barely checked off any of the long list of things I was supposed to get done!  I've been working on my new book (co-authored with the very talented Scott Onstott)...which I hope to have finished very soon...Scott's been doing much more of the work here than I!  No matter where I go, I cannot hide from AutoCAD (but then why would I want to do that anyway?)

A great big thank you to all of you who so kindly congratulated me on my nuptials (after being single for 15 years!)  It should be noted that Craig does have a last name - that's Dr. Craig McCurdy, he's an optometrist in town.  Although...the poor guy has been called Craig Allen on several occasions!  Thank you, thank you out there - I was touched by all the emails...

An AutoCAD Hip Tip on Coordinate Input:

So Scott and I differ on using the new dynamic input in AutoCAD (well - not so new anymore).  He has embraced it so much he's turned off his command line - the thought of that just makes me shudder! Until the dynamic input displays all the information the command line does I just can't see myself living without it.  But I do like the new dynamic input and I hope you've all chosen to use that regardless of whether you've banished the command line or not.

By default, dynamic input defaults to relative, polar input.  That means there is no need to type in that pesky @ symbol (or the < symbol).  Besides now-adays we prefer only see that @ symbol in email addresses - right?  The time savings in input is a big step in the right direction.  You simply type in the distance and the angle.  If you want to key in the distance in the X and the Distance in the Y simply follow the first input with a comma (and that will indicate you don't want to use polar coordinates).  But what if you would like to temporarily specify an absolute coordinate?  Well you could switch up your dynamic input settings (too much work), you could turn off dynamic input and do it the old fashioned way (which if you've turned off your command prompt could prove to be very interesting!).  Or you could use the top secret # symbol to tell AutoCAD you want to use absolute coordinates.  As soon as AutoCAD sees #, it knows you want to use absolute coordinates.

So there's a hip tip for you to play around with!  Back to my book...

An August Wedding and a Dashboard Tip!

Alright...so I have a fabulous excuse for not being a good blogger...I was in the Cayman Islands getting married!  My new hubbie (Craig) and I took our families on a cruise, and were married on Grand Cayman.  Our good friend Jerry Behm (another Autodesker) took some pictures and was kind enough to post them up on a site for those of you who want to see the events of the day - it was a beautiful wedding overlooking the water.  It rained for days before we got there but the wedding gods smiled kindly upon us and the rain let up for the day.  It was VERY warm and quite windy (you'll notice that we all look a tad windblown) but that's to be expected when you are on an island.  Feel free to peruse some pictures of the day at Wedding Pictures.  (Thank you so much Jerry!).  My daughter Ashley was the Maid of Honor and my son Joshua gave me away.  Craig's three sons were the groomsmen. Jerry and his wife Jo were our witnesses.

OK...enough of that wedding stuff (but let's remember that I am female and that "stuff" is important to me!).  Let's get back on the AutoCAD Band Wagon...

Adding those 2D Tools to the Dashboard in AutoCAD 2007:

You don't have to settle for just the 3D Tools in the new 3D Dashboard.  There's an additional 2D control panel that can easily be added in so you have all your tools available (one stop shop!).  Simply right click on the dashboard and select Control Panels from the shortcut menu.  Here you'll find the top secret 2D control panel lurking and waiting for you to activate it as seen below.

After turning on the 2D Draw tools, you'll get the following control panel added to your Dashboard.

You can, of course, turn off any of the other control panels you don't plan on using by using the same technique...this allows you to focus on those tools you really do use.

So let's say you don't even use any 3D - why not turn off all the 3D control panels leaving only the 2D Draw panel?  Here you'll find your onestop shop for everything 2D (including plenty of cool editing commands).  So much better than using the Draw and Modify toolbars!  Below I've turned off all the other control panels and stretched out the 2D Draw control panel to display all the commands.  Then you can easily tuck it over to the side by anchoring it...Fabulous!

So there's a couple of cool Dashboard Tips for you...I'll leave you with a picture of the entire wedding clan all dressed up the night of the wedding.  My son is on the far right and the other three boys are Craig's sons.  And of course, the only other girl in the picture is Ashley - my daughter!

And here is one nice shot from the wedding that afternoon...ahhh...it was so romantic...