SubscribeOK...I confess...I'm an American Idol addict. Surely there is a twelve step program to help people like myself but I SOO look forward to hearing these talented singers every week and I'm always sad when they are voted off (well nearly always). Who will go tonight? I think Brooke is absolutely adorable, David Archuleta is amazing (and most likely to win), Michael Johns was fabulous last night and David Cook always seems to shine. I think Chikezie is just so amazingly likable (we always root for him to do a good job) - all I know is I end up calling in and voting for 3 or 4 idols each week (yes - I actually call in as well!). Oh my...it just isn't pretty! Who will leave us tonight? (I can't bare to look...) Tell me I'm not alone! There must be some fellow idol worshipers out there somewhere among you CADDIES...
Let's move on to AutoCAD...shall we?
More AutoCAD 2009 Treats!
Now I realize that many of you are tasked with balancing two CAD systems, or at least working with drawings from more than one. I've run into many an AutoCAD user who had to figure out how to deal with data from Microstation drawings. If you can relate to this scenario than you're going to be glad to know that AutoCAD 2009 makes it even easier to play nicely with others!
AutoCAD 2008 opened the door to importing and exporting Bentley Microstation V8 files. AutoCAD 2009 now supports V7 files as well. The feature I'm going to focus on today, however, is key to helping you deal with that data once you've imported it. For example, Microstation doesn't have layers - it has numbered levels. These levels rarely follow your CAD standards and consequently it's a laborious task to sort everything out. The new DGNMAPPING command in AutoCAD 2009 to the rescue! (picture it riding up on a white horse to enjoy the full effect). DGNMAPPING allows you to remap levels to layers, DGN-format linestyles to linetypes, lineweights and colors.
Of course there will be some upfront work needed to set up your mapping. If you are working on mapping an incoming DGN file you'll find this dialog is automatically populated with the information from the DGN file (the left column). You get to provide the information in the right column. You do the hard work up front - save the mapping info and the next go round things will be MUCH easier.
And of course this goes the other way as well...should you need to export your AutoCAD DWG file to DGN this mapping tool will also come in handy.
Ultimately - you won't need to fuss quite so much when dealing with multiple CAD systems...unless you really want to!