SubscribeOh 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...