Happy New Year!

Every year Autodesk observes the annual week of rest between Christmas and New Years - so it's been mighty quiet on the Autodesk front.  I, myself, came down with an icky cold so I didn't get much done last week.  I had vowed to post to my blog (even though I was technically on vacation) but somehow the dreaded cold won out and I opted for laying around instead.  The good news is that I'm doing much better today and hope to join the rest of the Autodesk troops back in the office tomorrow. I even noticed that the ever-faithful Tenlinks took a week off (you deserve it Roopinder!).   I hope you all had a wonderful holiday month, a happy New Year, and are looking forward to a fantastic 2007! 

AutoCAD Hip Tip for Trimming or Extending something that doesn't intersect a boundary or edge:

If you've ever drawn a construction line to do a quick Trim or Extend because the cutting edge or boundary didn't intersect the selected object(s) then stop!  There are a couple of cool modifiers in the Trim and Extend commands that allow you to tweak the way the two commands work.  The Edge option allows you to tell AutoCAD to imagine the edge is extended for the purposes of the command. 

In the above picture the cutting edge would be extended (extrapolated) and the right section of the object would be trimmed.

Here's how you set it:

Command: TRIM
Current settings: Projection=UCS, Edge=None
Select cutting edges ...
Select objects or <select all>: 1 found
Select objects:
Select object to trim or shift-select to extend or
[Fence/Crossing/Project/Edge/eRase/Undo]: E
Enter an implied edge extension mode [Extend/No extend] <No extend>: E
Select object to trim or shift-select to extend or

Feel free to leave Extend on for as long as you like - it's really the better option (unless you are trimming a hatch pattern).

Well there is my first tip for 2007 - I hope to share many more with you as the year wears on!

Happy New Year!