Lynn Allen's Blog

Online AutoCAD Tips and Tricks

I was delighted to find an email from Cadalyst in my in-box this week promoting my new AutoCAD Tips and Tricks videos.  Featured as Tips and Tricks on Tuesdays (catchy - huh?) - I am hoping you'll enjoy these short but sweet videos that take you through some of the more subtle but powerful tools in AutoCAD.

I was invited to present at a great seminar in Oahu by U.S. CAD (or PAC Cad).  It's always a pleasure seeing Yoshi Honda...former AUGI Board president and his great staff.  I moved on from there to enjoy a few days on Maui.

Though the island of Maui was beautiful...it was very stormy and rainy so there wasn't much pool or beach time to be had! We did see a few beautiful rainbows though  (silver lining) and took the opportunity to drive around and explore (and attempt to out drive the rain!). 

An AutoCAD Hip Tip on Random Double Click Cool Things:

Did you know that you can double-click on the AutoCAD logo in the upper left corner of the screen to close AutoCAD ever so quickly?  (I didn't...just found that out!).  Give it a whirl!

Did you know that you can double-click on any toolbar grabber bar or palette to automatically float it?  (I'm certain it's not called a "grabber bar" but you know what I mean).  Double click again to redock it!

Did you know that you can control what happens whenever you double click on an object?  Using the CUI you can open the Double Click Actions section to completely customize what happens when you double click on an object.  I have mentioned a few extremely cool thoughts here...maybe double clicking on a line turns it into a polyline (PEDIT).  Or how about double clicking on an arc turns it into a circle?  (JOIN command).  You'll need to know some basic macro writing to sort these out but the possibilities are endless!  I believe my next Circles and Lines column will be talking about macro writing so stay tuned!

So there are some extra cool double-click tips for you to think about...(only two days left in the work week!).

Some Thoughts...

So I wasn't going to write anything about attending SolidWorks World last week but so much has been written (and recorded) that I believe I finally need to post something!  Who knew my attendance would cause such a stir?  Members of the press and fellow bloggers were posting pictures of Lynn sightings everywhere.

So just to set the record straight here.  SolidWorks was gracious enough to extend an invitation for me to attend their conference.  I certainly wasn't trying to hide my presence at this event (how could I?)- nor was I trying to "spy" as others have said.  Let's face it - if you want to send someone to spy  - you wouldn't send me.  This was not some type of unique Autodesk strategy.  I went to the event because I wanted to go - plain and simple.  I almost went last year but it was during the Super Bowl weekend (and I do have my priorities as my Colts were playing!).

I feel a little like the famous phrase during the Rodney King riots (which I personally lived through as I lived in LA County at the time). 

"Can't we all just get along?"

The design problems that our customers face aren’t bounded by product labels.  I was there to learn and to listen (and apparently get my picture taken).   I thoroughly enjoyed talking to the attendees and getting a different perspective on the manufacturing world. Being so involved with Autodesk University  I also looked at the conference from a purely AU perspective.  We are continually looking to improve the AU experience and I am always looking for ideas that might do so.

For the record...Autodesk University has opened its doors to the competition for the past two years (despite what has been written).   I never would have attended SWX World if that were not the case (my mother always taught me to play fairly).  A couple of years ago I personally invited some of the SWX folks to attend AU as well.   

I have always believed that there is more to gain when you take the high road.  I was very respectful while in attendance at the conference and appreciate the hospitality that was afforded me. 

So there you have it!   

I just happen to be on vacation until Wednesday (with all this commotion I think the timing is perfect!).  So if you don't mind -  I plan on donning a bathing suit and relaxing by the pool (maybe even order a drink with an umbrella in it)...I feel a little like that Southwest commercial   "Want to get away?"

Tenlinks Founder a Local Celebrity

I live in Novato, California - an average size town about 25 minutes north of San Francisco.  Here in our quaint town also resides my former CADENCE magazine editor and founder of the very popular Tenlinks.com, Roopinder Tara.  While we live in the same city - I have yet to run into him even once in the 12 years I've lived here!  Well it was a welcome surprise when I opened up our local paper, the Novato Advance,  this week and saw he had made the front cover!  If you are a fan of Tenlinks, CAD Digest, CADDepot (the land of CAD shareware), or  CADTALENT.COM (need a job?) then you might enjoy taking a look at this interesting article on Roopinder Tara.  I enjoyed working with Roopinder at Cadence magazine (those were the days) and it's always a pleasure hearing about his latest endeavors.  I'm sure there are many of you out there who wouldn't know anything about my blog were it not for the Tenlinks directory!

I'm so proud! 

On to an AutoCAD Hip Tip on creating speedy JPG, TIF, PNG or BMP files.

As I presented my "60 Tips in 60 Minutes" last week I tried to note those tips that people were writing down (since that meant they found those to be extra valuable).  I have found that very few of the attendees knew about the JPGOUT, TIFOUT, PNGOUT, or BMPOUT commands.  These commands provide a quick means of creating different types of raster files.  You can select the objects you want included in the final output file or indicate that you want ALL objects and viewports.  The commands are simple and straightforward but extremely handy.

Incidentally, Shade Plot options are preserved in the file when you use this command. If you have light glphs displayed in the drawing file - they will appear in the final output file as well,  even if the Plot Glyph property of the lights is set to No (somewhat unfortunate).

I'm off to finish my Cadalyst article before I get into too much trouble for being late!  (Bad Lynn)

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An AutoCAD Hip Tip from Oregon

Well first of all...I must absolutely thank Robert Bell for saving my right paren's life!  For those of you just tuning it - I accidentally mapped my Shift-0 key from a right paren to a degree symbol.  I was playing around with all things customizing and couldn't remember how I did it (yes...I admit I couldn't retrace my steps).  Alas...since then...my happy faces were few and far between (I could only get a degree symbol for a mouth...so sad).  I eventually reprogrammed the Control+0 to be a right paren using another utility but could not for the life of me get my standard right paren back...For those of you who haven't been able to sleep since my right paren first vanished here is the answer.  I am using an IBM laptop and it has it's own Thinkvantage Keyboard Customizer Utility with a special character mapper...

It's not like I didn't already realize that Mr. Bell was a genius - he consistently shows us that every year with top rated customization AU classes (and that's no easy task!).  But now it's certain...I have probably received close to 75 emails from people trying to offer up their suggestion to save my right paren...and I was just about to give it up as lost for good...put it on a milk carton...when Bob came along with the solution.  Hoorah!!!!!!!!!!!!  I owe you Bob...big time! : )))))))))))))))))))  (I am so excited!)

Today I did my new "60 Tips in 60 Minutes" presentation for the customers of the wonderful PPI Group here in Portland.  The audience was fantastic (especially since this is a new presentation) and I really had a great time.  Of course they had to really hold on while I whizzed through more than a tip a minute (I actually showed them 80 tips) but I think it went well and I can hardly wait to do it again.  Thank you PPI for your great hospitality and pulling together such a nice event!

An AutoCAD Hip Tip on Creating a Super Speedy Tool Palette of your Blocks!

I was reminded of this tip at the last CAD Camp I attended while watching Matt Murphy finish his class.  Matt will remind everyone that he won two (not one...but two!) Speaker awards for AU last year.   

Let's say you have a drawing that contains most of your blocks.  You would love to quickly get all those blocks onto a Tool Palette (because we all love our tool palettes!).  The answer is simple with Design Center.

Control+2 will put Design Center onto your screen.  Simply navigate to your drawing file where you'll see a listing of all the blocks in the drawing.  Right click on Blocks and you'll find a very handy option of Create Tool Palette.  It doesn't get much easier than that!

I'm off to check out our new Customer Briefing Center in our Autodesk Portland office and to hang out with our wonderful Manufacturing team at Autodesk...and of course I'll toast Robert Bell tonight for saving my right paren's life!

The First Trip of the New Year and an AutoCAD Hip Tip!

Well the playoffs continued this weekend and my team is out...:-(  Alas - I had to put away my Peyton Manning jersey, Colts necklace and Colts hat for another year.  Thank you to all of you who sent me condolences (as I type I received another from John Moran of Boeing) and no thanks to those of you who rubbed it in (ouch!).  Well at least one Manning brother made it to next week...

Last week I hit the new year running as I presented in Atlanta, Albany and Toronto doing presentations from Inventor to AutoCAD.  The break was very refreshing to me and I was looking forward to ramping back up and sharing some Tips and Tricks with my fellow users.  Visiting our customers at Clough Harbour and Associates is always a highlight for me - I threaten to move to Albany just so I can hang out with them more (not to mention the cheesecake!)  A great big thank you to Brian, Eileen, Matt, Clarence (aka Derrick), Preston, Jennifer, and of course Len.  I am so terribly spoiled when I visit them. 

This week I'll be doing a new presentation in Portland - "60 AutoCAD Tips in 60 Minutes".  So I'll be fine-tuning that prezo this week as I attempt to share a tip a minute with the customers of PPI Group.  New presentations are always a little rough but I am hoping to iron out the wrinkles with lots of practice before I go.

An AutoCAD Hip Tip on Isolating Layers:

Many of you are familiar with the cool tool LAYISO (started as an Express Tool and grew up to be a real AutoCAD command in AutoCAD 2007).  The goal behind this tool was to make it super simple to isolate objects quickly by turning off all the  layers the selected objects do NOT reside on.  In a nutshell, you enter the LAYISO command, select any objects you wish to isolate, AutoCAD checks out the layers these objects are on and turns off all of the rest - make sense?  If you care to bring all those layers back on you can use the LAYUNISO command.

In AutoCAD 2008 the LAYISO command was added to the Layers control panel in the dashboard as seen below.

And rather than dramatically turn off all of the other layers - those layers are now faded and locked as seen below.

This makes it easy to see and osnap to the objects on the other layers for reference - but you can't hurt them!

The real tip I'd like to share here is that you are not forced to use the new fading procedure (even though I think it's pretty cool).  Many of you have written requesting the ability to put it LAYISO back  to the way it used to be (for a variety of reasons).  No problem - you'll find a "Settings" option in the command that allows you to do exactly that - simply switch to "off" to return it to it's legacy behavior.

Command: LAYISO
Current setting: Lock layers, Fade=81
Select objects on the layer(s) to be isolated or [Settings]: S
Enter setting for layers not isolated [Off/Lock and fade] <Lock and fade>:

Here you can also key in a number between 0 and 90 to use as a fade factor.  90 being the most faded (without turning them off)... 0 not being faded at all (but still locked).

Well there is your AutoCAD Hip Tip to start your week off!  Enjoy (and don't work TOO hard!)

A Stormy AutoCAD Hip Tip

We Californians aren't really used to big storms and consequently tend to freeze in utter confusion when one attacks us.  Last Friday I awakened to a crazy storm that kindly removed our fence (we now have a lovely view of our neighbor's yard), and left us with no power, heat, internet (OMG!), cell phone (yes - cell phone), no land-line (we have all portable phones that require electricity) and no lattes.  I couldn't get out of my house (electric garage opener) so that pretty much left me and my little white fluffy dog stranded (and very chilly).   We regained power later that night...but alas our DirectTV never regained consciousness (can you say "playoff weekend"?).  We lost power again the following day (still no lattes).  How we learn to appreciate the little things in life when such things occur - I must have pumped up the heat to 80 degrees when we did get the power back...just in case! 

Interestingly we had dozens and dozens of hummingbirds at our feeder all day, and they'd previously really slowed down for the winter.  I've never seen so many hummingbirds as I did during the storm (but then - there wasn't much else to do than watch the hummingbird feeder)...I'm sure one of you out there can explain that.  Those cute adorable little birds had to wrap their wings around the feeder and hang on for dear life!

Today I'm packing for a red-eye to Atlanta for a Manufacturing User Group Meeting tomorrow night.  Then on to Albany (where I've been promised it will be warm...sure it will) and finally Toronto for a CAD Camp.  Be sure to visit me if you live in any of those cities...

On to an AutoCAD Hip Tip on Realigning the MTEXT Grips to Exactly Match the Text:

A reader by the name of Murray Clack sent in a wonderful tip regarding MTEXT grips (thank you Murray!).  If you use wipeouts - you may have run into the scenario where the grips on your MTEXT object are too far outside of the actual text limits.  This can cause your wipeouts to look a little lopsided.  To force the grips to match the EXACT width and height of the MTEXT object, simply launch the MTEXT editor (double click on the text) and then double-click on the two arrows on the far right of the ruler bar as seen below.  Presto!  The width and height of the grips will automatically readjust itself to match the exact width and height of the MTEXT object.

And there's your AutoCAD Hip Tip from stormy California!

Free AutoCAD Tips on Video!

Hello out there...I'm excited to share with you some cool AutoCAD Tips done by yours truly that are posted up on the Cadalyst website!  The first video shows you how to change the evil F1 key to an Escape (since that is probably what you were trying to hit anyway).  This tip is a favorite with my audiences all over.  The second tip shows you some very cool Key Combinations that might just help you be a little more productive.

These videos are short and sweet so take a minute (or two) and get your free AutoCAD Tip of the Week!

I'm so excited about them...let me know what you think!

A Happy New Year AutoCAD Tip!

As I mentioned previously - Autodesk shuts down between Christmas and New Year and consequently everyone is on vacation...hence you might have noticed the blogs a little bit quieter than usual.  For myself - I'm excited about a new year of blogging and sharing some AutoCAD and Inventor Tips and Tricks with you!  I trust you all had an enjoyable holiday and have no doubt started the year off with some fabulous resolutions.  For myself - I resolve to turn in my expense reports in a timely fashion (my manager would rejoice if this actually happens!).  My checking account would also rejoice!

For New Year's Eve we threw a dinner party for some of our Novato friends with a 7 course dinner (and I attempted to play chef!).  We started the shindig at 8:00pm and finished our last course just a few minutes before midnight - wow!  We even had a homemade balloon drop.  All in all I figure we cooked for about 7 hours - and spent 5 hours the next day cleaning up!

Here is a close-up of the table (we even had menus!)...Being into all things CAD I'm not especially artistic so I was very proud of myself.

And here is the wonderful clan that joined us:

if you look close you'll see Tiffany in the lower left corner trying to convince me she belongs at the table.

After the balloon drop we thought it was a good idea to pop all of the balloons (how old are we?).  The next day I laughed hysterically when I picked up my shoes...

Ok...let's get down to business...how about a good AutoCAD Hip Tip to bring in the new year?

A New Year's Hip tip on Converting Text Height between Model Space and Paper Space:

We've all been there...we have our viewports all squared away and we want to add some model space text that matches up with some text in paper space.  We know the height for the text in paper space is 3/8" - but how in the world are we going to figure out the height we would use in that model space viewport to match (especially if you aren't using a specific scale factor for your viewports).  SPACETRANS to the rescue!

SPACETRANS (a transparent command) is used to calculate equivalent lengths between model space units and paper space units.  Since its transparent we actually use the SPACETRANS command while in other commands - or anywhere we need it to some computation for us. Though not restricted to text - it's one of the first logical places you might think to use it.  SPACETRANS is great because it does the math for us (and who doesn't love that?).  Below is an example of using it to figure out the correct text height for some text we intend on placing in model space (we'll use SPACETRANS transparently).

Command:  TEXT
Specify start point of text or [Justify/Style]: pick in the model space viewport where you want to place your text
Specify height <0.375>: 'spacetrans
>>Specify paper space distance <1.000>: 3/8
Resuming TEXT command
Specify height <0.375>: 1.173

So as you can see - AutoCAD took the value of 3/8 - calculated the scale factor in the viewport and figured out the height needed to yield the same results in Model Space.

This is just one example of the way you can use SPACETRANS.  This very powerful command can come i handy for many different scenarios.

Note:  The SPACETRANS command is not available from the Model tab or in a perspective view.

I leave you with one Christmas picture of Tiffany with her Christmas stocking...Happy New Year to each and every one of you - lets make this the best year yet!!!