Lynn Allen's Blog

A Caribbean AutoCAD Hip Tip:

No - I'm not in the Caribbean (I wish!)...but this weekend I am having a party at our house with a Caribbean theme (the next best thing?).  The shindig of about 100 people (yikes!) should be good fun with a great live band (Stagefright!) and Caribbean cuisine - not to mention the all important Tropical Rum punch!  The best part is that we've asked everyone to bring pet food or pet toy for the local Humane Society so we're hoping for a nice big stash of goodies for all those poor homeless dogs and cats.  I'll be sure to take a picture of the "pet stash" and post it next week. I'll also have to keep Tiffany's paws out of it!  I'm taking off all day Friday to cook (how does one cook for 100 people?).  Any and all suggestions are appreciated! 

Now on to a Hip Tip on Converting Single Line Text to MTEXT!

So you have all these individual lines of text - making up a paragraph - and you need to change the width of the paragraph.  Yuck!  With all those single lines of text you are doomed!  So the magical answer here is "You need to convert it to MTEXT!".  Once converted to MTEXT you'll be able to easily change the width of that paragraph.  You'll also be able to do use all those cool features that MTEXT has that plain old TEXT does not.

So how do you convert your Text to Mtext?  A fabulous Express Tool - of course!  TXT2MTXT.  Sorry you LT users - you don't have this fab tool.  You'll be asked to select the text strings you want to convert - just like the individual strings below.

Command: txt2mtxt
Select text objects, or [Options]<Options>:
Select objects: Specify opposite corner: 4 found
Select objects:
4 Text objects removed, 1 MText object added.

and then you get:

One paragraph (notice the grips indicate they are MTEXT objects).  You'll also see that each line is evened out just as MTEXT would do.

What are the Options available to you? 

If you don't want this Express Tool to even out each line of text - you can turn off that word-wrap option in the lower left corner.  You'll probably want to just window the text you want to convert to MTEXT - so that means you'll want AutoCAD to sort from the top-down...but it's your call!

I'm off to work on my Huli-Huli pork for the party!  Oy!

An AutoCAD (and Excel) Hip Tip on AutoFill

The days in Marin County (where I live) are starting out chilly and then warming up as the day goes on.  Right now I'm still in the chilly phase (brrrrr).  Tiffany, my dog,  is running in and out from the backyard and consequently I have the door open - (double brrrr). 

Speaking of pets - it seems that pets have been in the news for the past couple of days.  First there is the tiny little Chihuahua Zoey who saved a baby from a rattlesnake (and took several bites himself).  Now there's a good dog!  Zoey somehow managed to survive (although it was touch and go for awhile).  There's Jake the Black Lab who just died of cancer.  Jake searched tirelessly through the rubble of the World Trade Center searching for survivors.  He also helped during Hurricane Karina.  Jake was abandoned as a puppy and yet he became a true hero.  I am certain Jake went straight to Heaven! Oscar the Cat who can predict when residents in the nursing home (where he lives) are going to die (a little eerie).  And then there's Michael Vick...well you don't EVEN want me to go there.   I will only mention the following quote:

We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.

Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804)

 

At the risk of upsetting the Blog Gods I will stop right there...

On to a much happier topic - another AutoCAD Hip Tip!  This Tip also works in Excel (so it's a double-tip).

An AutoCAD Hip Tip on "AutoFilling Table Cells:"

So let's say you have the same number you'd like duplicated down through a column. For example, you would like 1.8 to be repeated in the empty cells below it as shown in the following figure.

AutoCAD 2008 makes this process pretty simple. Simply highlight the cell you want to duplicate, and select the light blue grip in the lower right corner as seen below.

 

Then you'll drag that blue grip down through the cells you want to be "automatically filled-in" with 1.8.

You can use the same process to automatically increment cells (which is probably even more frequently needed).  For example, I'd like the first column to automatically be incremented by 1 right down the line.   

 

This time you will need to highlight two cells to establish a pattern.  Use the Control key to highlight the top two cells as shown below.

Simply pick the blue grip and drag it down and Voila!  All those cells fill in automatically and your work is done! (well perhaps the last part is wishful thinking...)

Well I'm off to work on some things for Autodesk University!  Ciao!

An AutoCAD Quickie Hip Tip!

I flew back to Pittsburgh this weekend for my husband's brother's wedding.  Believe it or not it was the first time I'd met any of his family!  Hopefully they won't be sending him emails suggesting he's made a terrible mistake. Our trip back home was a nightmare as we ended up spending nearly 9 hours in the Pittsburgh airport trying to get home - it was really such a travel disaster it actually became funny!   One thing I've learned about traveling - there's no sense in getting upset over the assorted delays, missed connections, mechanical problems, etc. Otherwise I'd be a candidate for high blood pressure with all the traveling I do! 

We just hung out and tried to enjoy eating at the same restaurant 3 times. Too funny!  Every plane we tried to get on was jinxed - regardless of the airline they tried to put us on.  As soon as they saw us coming the plane would break down...

So it's nice not to be in an airport today!  I'm trying to catch up after a few days away and thought I'd throw a Quickie AutoCAD Hip Tip your way to start the week off with. 

An AutoCAD Hip Tip to Keep your Toolbars from Docking!

If you are as greedy as I am with my screen Real Estate then you might find some value in this Hip Tip.  Here you have this nice long command prompt area...do you really need the entire length of the screen for your commands?  You can choose to shorten the command line to open up more space by resizing the command window - or you can place a favorite toolbar on the right side of the command line - whatever works best for you! 

The trick here is keeping the desired toolbar from docking.  As you know - once you get near an edge of the screen your toolbars feel the need to dock - right!  Like there is a super magnet on your toolbars!

That's where the Control key comes into play.  If you hold down the control key while you are moving the toolbars around on the screen they will remain floaters and not dock - hoorah!

So that's a Quickie to start your week off with - I'm off to water my flowers (they didn't fair well while I was gone)...

An AutoCAD Hip Tip on Finding Top Secret Express Tools!

We had houseguests this past weekend!  One of my best friends, Barbara Bowen, her husband and their two daughters came out from Boston for a fun filled weekend.  We went out on the San Francisco bay on a great white catamaran called Apparition - it was a fabulous experience!  A big thanks to the great crew - Stan and Sandee (not to mention to Barbara for treating all of us!)  If you are ever visiting the San Francisco area I can't think of a better way to spend the day!  My friend Barbara just rejoined Autodesk as an employee last week working on Certification.  Over time you'll see more Autodesk Certification exams coming to an ATC near you!  Below is a shot of the two of us relaxing on the boat (what a great way to enjoy a sunny Sunday afternoon).

And here we are outside of AT&T Park (the LA Dodgers are playing the SF Giants).  We were hoping to catch a Barry Bonds homerun! (It didn't quite go like that though...)

On to a Hip Tip on discovering the hidden AutoCAD Express Tools:

I am often asked how I find so many top secret hidden Express Tools - especially since there are many that are not in any of the menus - you have to know the actual command name to use them.  How do I know about them?  How can you find out about them?  How can you be the resident E.T. guru?  Well you can easily find these choice gems from the Express Tools Help file.

Now this is not the standard Help file - this one is specific to the Express Tools.  If you go to the Express Tools menu you will find the last option sends you to the Express Tools specific help file as seen below:

You'll need to expand the Categories section - and there you'll find those Express Tools that are Command Line Only (there are about 20 of them).

 

You'll have a blast looking through these juicy morsels and you might just find a command that solves something perfectly for you!  You'll also find that in general the ET help file is really well written and easy to understand.  In many cases the ET programmers wrote the help file information themselves!  (imagine that!).

Enjoy your week...I'm busy working on all things AU?  (Autodesk University).  Start saving your pennies now so you can join me!

A Rainy AutoCAD Hip Tip (in the summer?)

I realize that some of you out there are used to having rain in the middle of summer - but not so up here in Northern California!  What is one to do with soggy lawn furniture? 

One great thing about working at Autodesk is their willingness to support a wide variety of charities.  You'll also find a vast crew of Autodesk employees who donate their time to those causes they feel passionate about.  One such group has formed a team who are biking for Multiple Sclerosis and they're looking for support from the likes of you!  If you'd like more information on Team Autodesk, or are feeling charitable today and would like to donate to this great cause just refer to either of the above links.  My hats go off to these guys and their great efforts! 

You'll notice that there is one non-Autodesk biker up there - Roopinder Tara of Tenlinks fame.  Roopinder is an avid bicyclist and has also been kind enough to ride with Team Autodesk.  (Thank you Roopinder!)

I've received a few emails about my Hip Tip from yesterday on BCOUNT.  Apparently it does work on Dynamic blocks as long as the Visibility parameter hasn't been altered (thank you Ray Mendoza!).  And Tracy Lincoln reminded me that I forgot to mention that BCOUNT doesn't work on nested blocks or blocks within XREFs.  For any of those cases you'll need to use EATTEXT.

A Hip Tip on getting a True Block Count:

Many of us count our blocks by hand - and I mean literally "by hand".  We get a marker out and count them...what a drag.  The Enhanced Attribute Extraction command, EATTEXT, will absolutely count your blocks up for you and even write the information out to an Excel file or an AutoCAD Table.  Let's take a quick look!

You can find this command under Tools>Data Extraction (in AutoCAD 2008) - or just type it in.  This function changed quite a bit in AutoCAD 2008 to accommodate extracting object data along with blocks - but we are focusing on Blocks for today.  Follow this friendly wizard along, answering the questions with each page.  On the second page of the wizard you'll see an option for Settings as seen below - this will allow you to indicate you want to include blocks from Xrefs as well (your call here).

If you have no intention of extracting object data - if your entire goal is to get a block count you can uncheck the first two options under Extraction settings that focus on objects.

Page 3 let's you focus on blocks and only blocks.

You'll see a check box in the lower left corner entitled "Display blocks only"...that's the one you want - then proceed to the next page.

Page 4 wants to know what information you want to display about your blocks...since you only want to count the blocks - you just need check one thing - anything - to move on to the next page.  Unfortunately you can't progress through the wizard without selecting something!  (bummer).

I selected Block Unit and deselected everything else!

And finally - the next page has the information you're after - the Block Count!

Voila!  The good news here is that once you've gone through all of this and saved it to a template file you won't have to select all these options over and over (thankfully).

For those of you who are not on AutoCAD 2008 yet you'll actually see that you have it much easier.  EATTEXT was expanded in 2008 making it more powerful, but also making it a bit harder to quickly count your blocks.  : (

So there you go - Enjoy!

A Summer AutoCAD Hip Tip

Don't you just love the summer time?  I so enjoy being able to eat dinner outside (while fending off the yellow jackets of course).  And everyone just seems to be in a much better mood when it's nice and sunny!  This weekend we had a little dinner party with Joseph Wurcher (who runs the Autodesk University Blog) along with his wonderful wife Kim and Cheryl Romero (who runs all things Autodesk University) and her every-charming husband Alex.  I believe a good time was had by all - it's always nice getting together outside of work.  Unfortunately I forgot to get a picture of the bunch to share with all of you.

I'd also like to take a minute to commend a colleague who has gone above and beyond for the user community - especially AUGI.  I first met João Greno Brogueira when I was presenting in Portugal (one of my all time favorite countries!) and we've stayed in contact ever since.  He is definitely a technical wizard and I've been very fortunate to know him.  João was nominated as the Volunteer of the Month by AUGI and I hope you'll check out the link to read all about him!  Thanks for all you do in the community to help out your fellow Autodesk product user João (picture below)!

On to an AutoCAD Hip Tip on Counting Blocks!

So let's say you want to quickly tally up the various blocks in your drawing.  You could do a mock attribute extraction with EATTEXT to get a count...but I really love the good old Express Tool BCOUNT.  This top secret Express Tool is not in any of the menus, it's only available from the command prompt.  It's very easy to use, extremely straight forward.

Command:  BCOUNT
Press Enter to select all or...
Select objects:

Block....................Count
------------------------------
Table - Rectangular......1
Wall Number..............9
Title Block.................1
View Label.................2

You get the idea! Now I must warn you - it doesn't count dynamic blocks (those came out after this command was created).  For that you'll still need to use EATTEXT.

Have a great Monday!

A Very Hot AutoCAD Hip Tip!

Happy 5th of July...by Hot Tip I am referring to the temperature in my very hot house tonight!  Here in Northern California we're dealing with some muy caliente weather - and since we aren't used to hot weather, very few of us have those wonderful contraptions called air conditioners (I can only dream).  I'm back in the saddle after a very relaxing holiday and thought I'd offer up another Hip Tip!

AutoCAD Hip Tip on Managing your Scales List:

AutoCAD has a very cool drop-down list on the Viewports toolbar that makes it easy to quickly assign a scale to a viewport.  This list, by default, is VERY long since Autodesk wanted to include all of the various scale factors that might be needed, in both metric and Imperial units...yikes! 

You'll also find this list of scales residing on the status bar, at the bottom of the screen, if you are using AutoCAD 2008.  At the very end of the lonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng list of scales you'll see an option for Customizing this list - select that!  Select it now before it is too late and you are overrun by scales! You can also go directly to this option by keying in SCALELISTEDIT.  This will take you to the very friendly dialog listed below:

Here you can delete scale factors from the list, add any of yours that aren't on the list and if you totally botch the whole thing up you can Reset the list (which is a good thing).  So do yourself a big favor and delete any scales you don't intend on using (you can always add them back in later).  Keep that list short and sweet!  This makes it easier for you to focus on the scale factors you do use, and much easier to select.

I received a nice picture from an attendee at my Vietnam presentation.  He was the winner of my book and was kind enough to send me a picture he took of the two of us. This snapshot really made me smile!

Have a great Friday everyone!

An AutoCAD Hip Tip before Vacation

Well you may not think I deserve it - but I am taking off Monday and Tuesday (plus the 4th of July) for a nice vacation in Kona, Hawaii.  Just for the record - after a very long trip in Asia - I think I deserve it!  I will admit it is very hard leaving the puppy behind - that's the only draw-back.  We'll call her every day...(just kidding).  Although I've heard there is an amazingly high percentage of people that do call their dogs when they are out of town.

Last Thursday was a fantastic user group event in Honolulu, HI.  I thoroughly enjoyed the enthusiastic crowd who reminded me how nice it is to be back in the good old U.S of A.  Although I love meeting customers from all over the world, "there is no place like home" (picture me knocking my heels together three times in a row).  After the meeting, the wonderful Yoshi Honda, the local user group president, took many of us out for a bite to eat at a local hang-out that was great fun.

An AutoCAD Hip Tip on getting evenly spaced Baseline Dimensions:

The new DIMSPACE command is a real crowd pleaser when I'm doing my AutoCAD 2008 Tips and Tricks presentations.  This command makes it easy to make sure your baseline dimensions look great and are evenly spaced.  Below is a typical dimensioning mess of unevenly spaced dimensions we run into frequently.

Now take a look at the command sequence:

Command: DIMSPACE
Select base dimension: (in the example above I would select the bottom dimension)
Select dimensions to space: (select the rest of the dimensions)
Enter value or [Auto] <Auto>: (here you can let AutoCAD select a value to space them by or you can input a specific value)

and Voila!  You'll end up with something like the figure below!

I'm off to find myself a Mai Tai and a Volcano to climb!