SubscribeI figure most of you won't get to this Hip Tip until Monday (can't say I blame you). For those of you who are reading blogs on Friday afternoon I commend you for your commitment to improving your skills! Or perhaps you are bored...or perhaps you are trapped in an elevator that conveniently has wireless and you have nothing else to do while you are waiting for them to come and get you out! (my imagination runneth over).
Yesterday I enjoyed a great event in Southern California, the Southern California CAD Summit - put on by U.S. CAD. They had a full house and offered all types of classes (I even took a couple). Kade King did a great job talking about Autodesk Design Review 2008, DWF, DWG TrueView (free stuff on www.autodesk.com). U.S. CAD just changed their name from L.A. CAD (lest anyone be confused.)
A reader sent me this cartoon (thank you Chris!).
Love it!
On to an AutoCAD Hip Tip on Layer States:
First off - you need to understand that most AutoCAD gurus use Layer States. Layer States are golden when you want to really ramp up your design time! A layer state is basically a saved snapshot of your layer settings that you can restore at any point in time. If you find yourself spending a great deal of time going into the layer dialog box and flipping layers on and off then you need to use Layer States! Pre-AutoCAD 2008 you have to go into the Layer dialog box to get to your saved layer states. With AutoCAD 2008 you can go directly to the Layer State Manager from the Layer toolbar (and I love saving steps - don't you?).
You can also get to it from the updated and fabulous Dashboard:
Or even better - there is a new drop-down list on the Dashboard that allows you to go straight to your saved Layer States in no time flat! This is the ultimate in time-saving.
In fact...I would go so far as to recommend putting that drop down list on a toolbar so you could get to it even faster than you can in the dashboard! I usually anchor my dashboard (because it is so darn big) which means I have to move my cursor to the icon, wait for it to roll out and I don't always have the patience for this (although I should). Putting the Layer States drop-down list in a toolbar can easily be done in the CUI by grabbing the "Layer State Combo Control" from the command list (or the dashboard) and dragging/dropping it onto a toolbar (probably the Layers toolbar would make sense). Below you can see the listing in the CUI.
Create Layer States and use them! They are fabulous and will save you so much time...You'll have to spend some time up front creating them but they are definitely worth the investment.
Have a great weekend!!! Thanks for all the great emails you've been sending to me...they are always appreciated.