SubscribeLast 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!