Lynn Allen's Blog

The last day of the Experience Tour and the AUGI Salary Survey

Oh woe is me...the 15 city tour is about to come to an end.  I'm in my room waiting to go on for the final time (so dramatic - aren't I?).   If I'm lucky I'll catch Heather doing her traditional farewell cartwheel at the very end of the day (stay tuned for a picture if I can get one!)

The wonderful AUGI gang has asked me to mention their annual Salary Survey that will be closing soon (June 30th!).  If you haven't contributed yet be sure to do so!  The survey is very short and sweet and should only take a couple of minutes (even I took it!).  The results of the survey will be posted in the September issue of AUGIWORLD.   

Did you know that AutoCAD 2009 has a different icon for EXPLODE?  Sadly...I guess that dynamite is no longer politically correct and now we have the below icon for EXPLODE...my goodness what is the world coming to when we lose our good old EXPLODE icon?

So here is a quick hip tip that just came up recently.

AutoCAD Hip Tip to turn off the annoying extra prompt in the PEDIT command:

So you decide you want to turn a line or an arc into a polyline.  You enter the PEDIT command and select the desired object.  AutoCAD comes back and says the very annoying "Object selected is not a polyline, do you want to turn it into one?".

Of course you do - that's why you went into the PEDIT command!  If you (like me) find this irritating and unnecessary then you'll want to turn it off with the PEDITACCEPT system variable.  Simply set PEDITACCEPT to 1 and it will suppress that extra prompt and automatically convert it to a polyline.  That saves you an extra step in the PEDIT command and that saves you a smidgen of time. 

And I believe that many smidgens actually add up to minutes at some point...right?  (what exactly is a smidgen anyway?)

I'm off to my last Experience tour presentation...I hope I don't cry at the end!

The Last Week of the Tour...

Ahhhhhhhhhh...the tour is definitely winding down as we only have one last event to go (in Edmonton).  I think I'm going to be really sad when this 15 city tour has come to an end.  I love the enthusiastic audiences...I love my travel buddies...I love meeting our customers and hearing the good (and the bad).

My travel buddies from left to right:  Leslie, Jeff, Heather, Rodney and Amy (sadly no Eddie)

Over the past two months I've gotten to know the other roadies quite well.   I know that Heather (who manages the entire tour) orders a glass of red wine with dinner (regardless of what we are eating) and she loves chocolate desserts (especially if there is ice cream involved). Newlywed Jeff (our fabulous AV guy) is a vegetarian who wears the same shirt all week (no room for extra clothes when you are hauling all that equipment around) and has litterbox trained free-range rabbits as pets at home.  Amy (of "Ask Amy" fame) has decided to join Jeff as a vegetarian and gets the award for sticking to her diet regardless of what the rest of us are eating (she is amazing!). 

Our new BFF Eddie is a fascinating mix of a great shopper (better than some of my best girlfriends)!, tattoo sporting (he got a brand new one of flames while on the tour) and prefers to drink diet Coke.  There's Rodney and his "I am sooooo single" girlfriend (too time-consuming to explain this one) and the always charming Pete Southwood who consistently offers to pay for dinner and drinks (incidently we love that about Pete).  Add all of this up and you have an amazing team of fascinating individuals that I will miss dearly.  I couldn't ask for a nicer lot to travel with. 

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Back to business - for those of you who are fighting with the FIND command in AutoCAD 2009 - rest assured that the first service pack (due in early July) will solve all of your problems.  So stay tuned...

Free Download of Inventor LT 2009!

Inventor LT 2009 has been posted and is available for download!  Here you will find the next best thing to the full Inventor package (Autodesk's solid modeling package for manufacturing).  Be sure to visit labs.autodesk.com (the land of awesome "FREE" stuff) to download it.  You say you aren't in manufactuing?  No matter...do you have kids in the house?  This fantastic, easy to use solid modeler is a great stepping stone for your kids and a great way to introduce them to a real 3D package.  If you think AutoCAD is true 3D - you haven't seen anything until you've seen Autodesk Inventor!  Now there is a package you can really sink your teeth into!  Do I sound salesy?  I might because I really love Inventor.  Believe me - once you start to use it you will become an addict like myself!

Tell us your AutoCAD story and get a free video camera!

Well it's been quite the busy week lately! My only excuse for not blogging is the fact that I have just been ultra busy! Do you ever have one of those crazy weeks where you just feel like you are treading water and trying desperately to just stay afloat? One of the reasons I've been so ultra busy was because I changed to a different department at Autodesk. I am so excited to now be working with the Autodesk Customer Experience team. That means I will be in a better position to help out Autodesk product users (that means you!). The Customer Experience team at Autodesk is all about doing what they can to ensure a great experience and that definitely brings a smile to my face. Pretty much the same job...different team that's a little more up my alley.

Joseph Wurcher (the AU Blog) and I have been working on the final Autodesk University schedule and we hope to put the final stamp of approval on it soon! This year we have over 625 classes (fantastic!) and we are loving the great courses that were submitted. Now it's just a matter of getting the right classes at the right time...which can really be a juggling feat. Sometimes I feel like its a giant Rubik's cube.

Announcing the Autodesk Customer Video Project! They will be giving away 100 of the very cool Flip Video Cameras (I want one!) in return for a couple of minutes of video. They are looking for a few good passionate AutoCAD users who want to share their stories with us (how AutoCAD has changed your life, cool projects you've done, etc). You upload the videos to the website then after approval you get to be features on the AutoCAD site! Think of this like the YouTube for AutoCAD fans.

You can request your camera send an email to [email protected]. Don't miss out! This almost sounds too good to be true!

I'm off to a Customer presentation for Emcor Corporation. I'll be doing my "60 AutoCAD Tips in 60 Minutes" presentation...which is a whirlwind tour through some very cool tips (or at least I think they are cool). I'll be doing a 90 minute version of the same presentation (with 30 more tips) at Autodesk University so be sure to join me!

The Autodesk Experience Tour hits Montreal!

After a very long day of flying, (two very delayed flights) I finally made it to beautiful Montreal late last night (or rather early this morning).  I hadn't eaten since lunch and of course room service was closed so I enjoyed a healthy mini-container of Pringles potato chips...which is definitely not on anyone's diet any where!  ugh...

The show went well today and the Montreal audience was fantastic!  I had a couple of attendees let me know about an issue with the updated FIND command in AutoCAD 2009.  Since I've now heard this at a couple of stops along the tour I thought it might do you a service to mention it - at least you'll know you aren't doing something wrong.

In AutoCAD 2009, FIND automatically zooms up on the word it finds (which is nice) - but it won't stay there.  The command returns to the previous zoom when finished.  That's not cool if you want to do something to that object and now have to search for it manually.  The AutoCAD team is aware of it and are hoping to get that fixed as soon as possible!

On to happier "stuff"...(bugs aren't happy).

An AutoCAD Hip Tip to get back those "Hidden Messages"

We've all seen those messages warning about this or that happening...and we have all seen those little boxes that we can check to turn off the message.  The ones that say something along the lines as "Never show this message again" or "Always perform my current choice".  Now Never is a strong word...Always is a very long time...Always and Never requires a serious commitment.  What if you change your mind later on down the road and want the message back?  What if you realize the err of your ways after the fact?  How do you repent and return those messages to your AutoCAD World? 

No problem...AutoCAD 2009 has a new option in the OPTIONS command (Systems tab) that allows you to turn those hidden messages back on!

You CAD Managers might know someone in your group who really NEEDS these messages to be on - to protect them from themselves...so now you can help them out!

I'm home on an early flight tomorrow - if I don't get a chance to blog be sure to have a fantastic weekend!

A Dead Hard Drive and the Virtual Experience Tour!

"Houston...we have a problem"...or rather make that many problems! Last Friday as the Experience Tour hit Houston we just seemed to have one problem after another.  For me personally, I awakened to a crashed hard drive (not the most pleasant way to start the day).  Help Desk assured me it was really, really, dead (kind of like the Wicked Witch of the East) and that started off the quest to pull together all my demo sets and Powerpoint Slides for my afternoon presentation (not to mention another laptop).  Remember...always back up your files!  :-)  The Cavalry came rushing in on their white horses and managed to siphon off the data needed for my presentation...thank you Don Bowe, Shawnita, Heather and Roger!!!  Everyone was so helpful - you really have NO idea how helpful!  It was honestly very touching!

So...my laptop wasn't back up and running until last night - and consequently you haven't heard "boo" from me on my blog.

Today we had the all day Virtual Experience Tour - what great fun that was!  Attendees could listen to all of the same sessions that occurred on the real Experience Tour as well as visit booths, talk to Autodesk employees who were manning the booths, you name it!  What a kick that was!  So I had my AutoCAD Tips and Tricks session virtually today.  All the sessions were recorded so you can listen to them later (in case you didn't get a chance to see them live today).

And of course - it's Tips and Tricks Tuesday!  Did you get your video fix today?  Be sure to watch my latest Cadalyst video - this week it's on some everyday editing commands that can really save you time if you know all the ins and outs of the commands! 

Tomorrow I'm off to Montreal for another stop on the Tour!