Lynn Allen's Blog

An AutoCAD Halloween Trick or Treat!

Boo!  Rumor has it that Halloween is the second most celebrated holiday in the U.S. (as far as decorations and festivities are concerned).  While I was driving around last week to the various Autodesk events I definitely agree as there were Halloween decorations everywhere!  Growing up I, assumed that was just the world's way of celebrating my birthday (since I'm a Halloween baby) but of course I know better now (now it's just a painful reminder). Even my vet was in the Halloween spirit when they decided that my dog Misty needed a festive Halloween cast for her leg (she blew her knee out and had surgery last week).  The nurses no doubt thought it would make her feel better - although I'm not so sure it worked judging from the picture below:

Poor Baby..she looks pretty pitiful (but with a very chic cast!).

Tis the Season for something spooky and ghouly so I thought I'd provide a Hip Tip with just a tinge of fright power:

An AutoCAD Hip Tip on OverKILL:

If you've ever been plagued with overlapping lines (too many and you'll end up with extra heavy lines when you're printing) or with objects that appear to be continuous but are in fact multiple connecting segments then you need the power of the OVERKILL Express Tool.  This fabulous command is a master clean-up tool that will have your drawing neat and tidy in no time!

Overkill can help you out by doing the following:

• Deleting duplicate objects
• Deleting arcs that are drawn over a portion of a circle (so you can't see the arc)
• Combining lines that partially overlap to form a single line
• Removing duplicate line and/or arc segments within a polyline.

You have a variety of other controls you can place on the cleanup such as whether or not objects on two different layers should be considered duplicate and a fuzz factor that allows you to delete objects that are close but not spot on.  The larger the fuzz factor the further away the duplicate objects can be and still be removed.

Give this delicious command a try and you might find yourself with ...say...a little more time to go Trick-or-Treating?

If you are one of those humans who loves to dress your pet up for Halloween - be sure to send me a picture and I might just blog your little buddy!

Trick or Treat!

Go Straight to AutoCAD...do not pass go...

I'm in my room in Boston watching the Colts and the Jaquars fight it out for a win.  Ironically I was just in Jacksonville last week at the AUGI CAD Camp (and they all assured me the Jaguars were going to win). I kindly used the system variable MTJIGSTRING to set their default MTEXT string to Jaguars.  Tomorrow is another fun AUGI CAD Camp here in the Boston area where I suspect I will have to set MTJIGSTRING to Red Sox.  Of course - everyone around here is excited about the World Series - but then that goes without saying!

Have you seen the Screaming Eggs video - Hilarious!  There is no way you can't smile during this video so give it a look-see, especially if you're having a rough day.  It is certain to cheer you up!  Go ahead...give it a go...

Wednesday I am presenting in Raleigh, NC for Cadre Systems and they were super kind enough to flatter me with this clever marquee:

I hope my head fits through the airplane door tomorrow! Of course - no pressure to dazzle everyone with my "brilliance"...(I am definitely blushing...)

An AutoCAD Hip Tip for Super Speedy AutoCAD Launching:

If you are a keyboard junkie like me then you can always appreciate a quickie means of launching everyone's favorite software product - AutoCAD.  Of course this works on any program and I encourage you to set up keyboard shortcut keys to launch any and all of your favorites. 

Pick the Start menu of Windows, go to Programs=>Autodesk =>AutoCAD 2008 =>AutoCAD 2008 =>Properties as seen below:

If you have an AutoCAD shortcut on your desktop you can also just right click on that icon and select Properties.

Select the Shortcut Tab, pick in the Shortcut key Box and then simply hit the key you want to assign to your shortcut.  Windows will automatically add in a Control + Alt to the character (otherwise AutoCAD would launch everytime you hit the key!).  You'll see that I used an "A" as my shortcut.

 

So when I want to launch AutoCAD - I simply do a Ctrl+Alt+A.  When I want to launch Inventor - I use another sortcut of Ctrl+Alt+I.

Over and out - I am going to get myself all tucked in and watch the rest of the game (which is going quite well for the Cool Colts). 

The End of a Great Educational Tour (and a Hip Tip)

I am finally home from the whirlwind educational tour in Northern Europe which ended with a splendid event in Oslo, Norway (brrrrrrr).  Pictures of various things along the way will be posted at the end of this posting for those who care (or for those of you with nothing better to do).   Since my dog didn't bite me when I returned I guess she still remembered me.  Of course she hasn't let me out of her sight for even one minute lest I try to escape again (and she's keeping a watchful eye on my suitcases as well!).  As I type she is helping me out by leaning her head on my laptop (making sure I don't type any false tip information).

An AutoCAD Hip Tip on lining up Balloons:

Hopefully you've tried the new wonderf ul Multileader feature in AutoCAD 2008.  If you have, then you know it's easier than ever to create balloons as seen below:

On occasion you might it helpful to gather up those balloons onto one single leader as seen below:

This can be done with the very cool MLEADERCOLLECT command (also found on the Multileader panel of the Dashboard).

Command: MLEADERCOLLECT
Select multileaders: Specify opposite corner: 16 found
13 were filtered out
Select multileaders:
Specify collected multileader location or [Vertical/Horizontal/Wrap] <Horizontal>:

And Voila!  Your balloons are all collected together ever so nicely - couldn't be easier!

And now onto the pictures I promised>>>

While in Copenhagen I saw the famous "Little Mermaid"  (based on Hans Christian Anderson's story - also from Denmark).  This poor thing has had her head sawed off along with her arm over time by vandals...so very sad!

I managed to catch a beautiful sunset while visiting a fortress in Sweden...lovely!

Dénelise l’Ecluse (the one who organized this whole event and my wonderful travel companion throughout the tour) and I had a little time to visit the Edinburgh Castle between speaking events - Here is a picture of the lovely Denelise up at the castle overlooking the city.

And those Scotts sure love their dogs!  (and you can imagine how much I love that).  I took a picture of their Dog cemetery up at the castle.  The soldiers felt very strongly about their canine companions.

And last but not least the beautiful room at the Edinburgh Zoo where I did my presentation.  My presentation was interupted by the Penguin feeding outside - I can't say that I've ever been interupted for an animal feeding before!!!  Hilarious!

An AutoCAD Hip Tip from Scotland

Two stops on the Educational down with two to go! Yesterday's event in Birmingham was quite nice as we spent the day with the local educators. Then a quick flight up to Edinburgh where I have a lovely view of the castle from my room. wow! You don't get that in California...I tried to snap a picture from my room to share with you all but I've obviously failed Castle Photography 101 because they all came out blurry...

On to a Hip Tip on Filtering Objects :

Let's say you wanted to find all of the TEXT in the drawing on the NOTES layer with a height of 1/2". Or maybe you wanted to find all of the Window blocks that are NOT on floorplan layer. Most of you out there in the AutoCAD world know all about the QSELECT command, but those of you veterans out there know about the even more powerful FILTER command. When you really need to step up your object selection using specific details then this is a great command to fall back on. This top secret command can no longer be found in any of the menus (and I mean ANYWHERE) but you can still access it from the command line. And FILTER command is transparent so you can pull it out of a hat whenever you need it by placing an apostrophe in front of it ('FILTER). The FILTER command allows you to select, edit and save named filters for object selection (which means once you have your filter set up you can save it for future use!).

Note: Don't confuse this with the FILTERS (plural) command - these two commands serve entirely different masters!

Now I admit that this dialog box is not for the faint of heart, but it is really much easier than it looks. You simply select the properties of the objects you want to filter by as seen below. The FILTER command has a much more extensive list of options than the QSELECT command - below you see just about half of the many, many options you can choose from.

Below you'll see that I've asked AutoCAD to find all the Blocks on the Doors layer that have a 90 degree rotation angle.

You can also choose a selected object from the drawing and the FILTER dialog will populate the list with all of the info on that object. Then you can simply delete any information you don't think is relevant.

You can also use "And" and "OR" as well as various other conditions to control the filters (this gets a little more complicated but it isn't as bad as it looks). At the end of the Filter list you'll find a variety of conditions to help you get the exact results you are after!

Be sure to give this powerful tool a try! There are many, many other cool things about this command you can do but you'll just have to discover all the secrets yourself...

I'm off to check out the Edinburgh Castle! I hope I don't get thrown in the dungeon...

On to Birmingham...

I'm on my way from Goteborg, Sweden to Birmingham for another Educational Event.  Having spent many years as a teacher myself I can definitely appreciate the hard work and patience it takes to be a teacher.  Not to mention finding time to keep up on technology!  That's where I'm trying to help by presenting some of the top industry trends as well as providing an intro to moving to 3D with Autodesk Inventor.  And of course I'll be sharing plenty of AutoCAD Tips and Tricks as well to round out the day.  They are probably thoroughly tired of hearing from me as the day is so much "Lynn" (over 3 hours worth)...but they kindly don't tell me that.  (thank heavens!)

So here is a a crazy announcement I've asked to mention!  If you've ever been to Autodesk University (in Las Vegas) you know that just about every year some couple gets married at the event.  Nothing says romance quite like Autodesk University!  (insert a tinge of sarcasm here) If you are making plans to attend AU and tie the knot be sure to let the Autodesk guys know by emailing [email protected].  They have a special surprise for you!!!  And definitely let me know as well - I'll be sure to mention it during the conference (I am the emcee). 

And for another announcement from the AutoCAD team: 

Play the part of the AutoCAD Product Manager! Every year, we post a survey to the AutoCAD user community seeking your thoughts on future product directions, enhancements, and how to improve the product line. The results of this survey are one very important component of how our roadmap is developed. We oftentimes contact respondents about their answers.

If you're interested in helping to guide the next generation of AutoCAD products and technology, please take about 15 minutes and take the following survey:

http://myfeedback.autodesk.com/adsksurvey/TakeSurvey.aspx?SurveyID=720Hm92

An AutoCAD Hip Tip on Breaking Dimension Lines

I had a fabulous time on my MicroSol tour through New York, New Jersey and Philly - followed up by the MidWest CAD event in Kansas City.  A great big thanks to all of you who attended (and came up and introduced yourselves).  I’ve now moved on to Denmark where I enjoyed a delightful day of presenting to teachers and students at their Education day.

I had so many great tip suggestions as I was traveling from city to city - I hardly know where to begin!  First off I need to tell you that I lied to you when I told you you could move the Layer States drop down list to a toolbar.  For some reason that juicy morsel is only available in the Dashboard!  (what's up with that?)  Tom Stoeckel, the king of the original Layer States Manager as well as the fabulous BATTMAN command pointed this out to me...so I hold my head down in shame...so sorry about that! 

On to a Hip Tip that isn't a lie!  : -)

--

An AutoCAD Hip Tip to Break Dimension Lines (without really breaking them!):

Your drafting instructor warned you about the dreaded crossing dimension lines didn't he! 

We go to great length to break our dimensions to avoid such a travesty.  We end up exploding the dimension (bad, bad, bad!), and then breaking it manually.  If you find yourself running into this situation frequently then you are going to LOVE the new DIMBREAK command in AutoCAD 2008.

--

Command:  DIMBREAK

Select a dimension or [Multiple]:

Select object to break dimension or [Auto/Restore/Manual] <Auto>:

Select object to break dimension:

--

The process is simple.  You select the dimension that you want to break and then the dimension(s) that are on top of that dimension.  AutoCAD does the rest for you!

This dimension break is smart...if you move the dimension to a location that no longer requires a break it automatically reheals itself for you!

This is a fabulous command in AutoCAD 2008!  I wish I'd had this many, many years ago...

I'm off to Gotenborg, Sweden next (we have an Autodesk office there).  I thought I'd try driving there rather than hopping on yet another plane...(it's only a few hours away).  If you don't hear from me I'm guessing that might have been a bad decision!