Lynn Allen's Blog

An AutoCAD Hip Tip on Tracking

Cadalyst just released another of my Quick Tip Videos. on Tracking.  I find that so few people even know about this extremely powerful feature which has been in AutoCAD for so many releases.  I strongly suggest watching the video to really get the gist of it but I'll cover it here as well.  A few weeks ago I wrote about using Tracking to update your dimensions - but you can use it at any time on any type of object.

An AutoCAD Hip Tip on Tracking:

Let's say you wanted to insert a block of a sink 2'6" to the right of an existing corner.  How would you do it?  Would you insert it at the corner and then move it?  Would you draw a construction point of some type?  Tracking makes it very easy.  We know we want the sink to be inserted relative to a specific corner - so we'll use that as our tracking point.

   

Enter the INSERT command and select the Sink block.  When prompted for an insertion point you're going to turn Tracking ON by keying in the letters TK.  Then select the tracking point you want to work from (which would be the corner).  Then simply move your cursor to the right (direct distance) and key in the distance of 2'6".

The sequence looks like this:

Command: INSERT
(Select the Sink Block from the dialog)

Specify insertion point or [Basepoint/Scale/Rotate]: TK
First tracking point:
Next point  (Press ENTER to end tracking): 2'6
Next point  (Press ENTER to end tracking): (hit enter)

And Presto!  Your sink block is now in the correct location!  Be sure to watch the Cadalyst video for more tracking tips!

An Academy Award AutoCAD Hip Tip

If you've followed along with my blog at all then you know what an Academy Awards buff I am.  Last night we had a little soiree (wish you could have joined us!) at our house and I do believe a good time was had by all.   All the guests were interviewed by our own version of Entertainment Tonight correspondents and if you are interested in watching it I'll post the video.  Guests dined on Micky Rourke Pork, Benjamin Button Mushrooms, and Frosted Nixon cupcakes (with a picture of Nixon on each one).  We placed Hollywood Blvd. stars down our hallway and fellow AU blogger Joseph Wurcher was graced with a Hollywood Star because of all his hard work on Autodesk University.  :-)

 

And here is a picture from the party.  From left to right we have the lovely Kim Wurcher, Joseph Wurcher, Cheryl Romero (she is the Queen of all things Autodesk University) and her husband Alex (dressed as Puff Daddy...or P Diddy...or whatever he is going by now).

 

People came dressed in everything from jeans to evening gowns and tuxes...it really was lots of fun.  Below is a picture of Craig, myself and two other very important guests.

On to an Academy Award AutoCAD Hip Tip on REVERSE

It won't be long before those of you on subscription have AutoCAD 2010 in your hot little hands!  I thought I'd share one of the cool tools that the audiences in Florida seemed to get a kick out of.

The new REVERSE command in AutoCAD 2010 makes it so much easier to get our linetypes with text to go in the right direction.  Below I have a picture of a gasline linetype obviously going the wrong way.

 

The super simple REVERSE command works on a line, polyline, spline or helix.  It is simply a matter of selecting the object and Voila!  your linetype is now going in the proper direction!

Easy, easy, easy! 

And...Hoorah for Slumdog Millionaire!

An AutoCAD Valentine's Day Post

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!  I hope that those of you out there with sweetheart's are planning something special for today.  There is actually a great story going on right now called "Valentine's to Time Square"  with a beautiful sculpture (and a beating heart) that will be displayed near Time's Square until Feb. 22.

 

Autodesk is very excited about this because AutoCAD and Autodesk Maya were used in the design.  For detailed information on this you can check out the Press Release!   I think it looks absolutely amazing.

Happy Valentine's Day!

My First AutoCAD 2010 Presentation!

This week I had the opportunity to do my first AutoCAD 2010 demo while in Miami for Digital Drafting Systems. Woo-Hoo! I’ll be the first to admit I wasn’t quite polished yet in my performance – (and thankfully the audience was very forgiving) but their response was overwhelming! AutoCAD 2010 was definitely a hit!

I met the nicest user at the event in Miami, Juan Diaz. According to him he has been trying to meet me for 14 years – wow! It was a pleasure to finally meet him and below you’ll find a picture of the two of us. Nice to meet you Juan (let’s not wait another 14 years…ok?)

Here's a little trivia for you... Do you happen to know what the code name is for AutoCAD 2010? Gator. I just love all the interesting code names we have at Autodesk. So, if you hear someone talking about “Gator”, they are referring to AutoCAD 2010 – so now you are in the know!

On to an AutoCAD Hip Tip on AutoCAD 2010 Select Color Dialog Box:

Have you ever had trouble seeing which color you are selecting in the Select Color Dialog Box? I know I certainly have. This minor little change in AutoCAD 2010 will make us so much happier when we are selecting colors for layers, objects, etc. Now you can actually tell which color you are selecting! Hoorah! You’ll also see that the current color displays as a smaller swatch in the dialog as seen below.

So there is a little tip for you on AutoCAD 2010…with many, many, more to come!

Some Lesser Known New Features in AutoCAD 2010 (and a very Berry Pie!)

So this past weekend - I made my annual pie as a donation for the Rotary auction. This blackberry pie, was made completely from scratch, along with a yummy quart of homemade vanilla bean ice-cream (afterall - you can't have berry pie without ice-cream!). There always seems to be so much pressure to make a really great pie - as you want to make as much money as possible on it (since all the money goes to charity). My son was one of the spotters for the auction and managed to get the final price to $150. Can you believe that? I certainly couldn't as I definitely let out a big screech when the final price was reached...wow! Of course - the prices are super inflated since everyone knows it's going to a good cause...but it still felt great nevertheless. The pie had a cut-out of the Rotary wheel on it...which of course I drew on AutoCAD (are you shaking your heads right now?)

So enough of this domestic "stuff"...let's move on to what you REALLY care about - AutoCAD 2010!

As always - it's the little things in AutoCAD that matter the most to me. It might be a simple update to a command we use all the time - or a new command that just makes our everyday drawing life so much easier. Let's take a look at a few new features in AutoCAD 2010 that are definitely going to make our CAD lives happier! (and don't we just love that?)

1) Do we have any AutoCAD Dashboard lovers out there?

I was so bummed when AutoCAD 2009 did away with theincredibly cool dashboards (which I had just become accustomed to). Well I have good news for those of you who have customized your dashboards and want to bring them into AutoCAD - you can now easily convert your custom dashboard panels to new ribbon panels (using the Transfer tab in the Customize User Interface Editor). Hoorah!

 

2) Mind the Gap!

Tired of holes in your hatch boundaries? Sure - you can bump up the fuzz factor but how about actually showing us where that pesky gap is? Now, with AutoCAD 2010, when a hatch boundary is not found - AutoCAD will attempt to show you exactly where the problem is! Red circles will appear around the endpoints pointing out the evil gap.

 

3) Edit non-associative hatches!

Oh dear...someone came along and disassociated your hatch pattern from a boundary (or even worse - created it that way to begin with). Well not you can use grips to dynamically change its shape - Hoorah!

4) Changing the layer color from the Layer drop-down list.

Need I say more? Now a simple click from the layer drop-down list will launch the Select Color dialog box...that's going to save some time!

(although...I will be the first to admit that the layer property manager seems to be much faster in 2010)

so that's just a few....more to come in future blogs!

Let the AutoCAD 2010 Blogging Begin!

I am actually thanking the AutoCAD gods profusely for finally putting geometric constraints AND parametrics into the program.  Woo-Hoo!  I am going to have such a great time touring and showing my fellow AutoCAD users the power of these two tools and how much smarter your drawings are actually going to be.  There will be plenty of people blogging today about all the new features so I'm just going to offer up a high-level view on one of these powerful features.

  

AutoCAD 2010 Geometric Constraints

I know all about constraints because of Autodesk Inventor.  While learning Inventor I completely embraced the extreme power constraints can add to a design.  I have been pleading with the AutoCAD team ever since to put constraints into AutoCAD.  You can't even imagine my happiness now that my wish has come true (oh yes there was dancing involved!).

So here is the deal with constraints.  We have object snaps in AutoCAD - but these work only temporarily. If I draw a line perpendicular to another one using object snaps there is nothing to keep me from rotating it later so it is no longer perpendicular.  If I add a perpendicular constraint to the objects I can ensure that it will always be perpendicular - no matter what I do to the two lines.  Let's take a quick look - below I have a random shape with no constraints.

  

I would like the line at the bottom to be horizontal...I'll use the new Parametric tab in the Ribbon and grab the Horizontal tool and select that line.

 

Now I have this...and that line will remain horizontal forever!  (or until I delete that constraint - so in AutoCAD "forever" doesn't necessarily indicate a committment).

   

Notice the little horizontal icon that displays showing you that there is a horizontal constraint on that line (incidentally you can turn those icons off).

Now I'd like to make that lower right corner perpendicular.  I will select the horizontal line FIRST (very important) and the second line I select will become perpendicular to the first one.

and I now have this!

   

Now I'd like the two horizontal lines to be parallel with each other:  I will select the parallel tool and select the two lines.

 

and now we are here:

Do you get the idea?  Are you getting any clever ideas of what you can do to make your designs smarter?  Or are you now realizing just how lazy you can now be while you are drawing?  There are so many great constraints - let's take a quick look at the others:

coincident (sharing a point)
collinear
concentric
vertical
tangent
symmetric
smooth
equal

Equal is a very powerful constraint...if you have two lines that you always want to be the same size you can use Equal.  Then if you change the length of one - the other automatically updates!  Two circles, two arcs, etc!.  Imagine the possibilities...

And here is a very important tip when working with constraints - when constraining two objects - whichever one you want to win - select that one first!  With perpendicular - the line you select first will stay put and the second line you select will make the move to become perpendicular.  Make sense?

I'm off to explore more of the great features in AutoCAD 2010!  It's all so exciting...

This just in! See a Sneak Preview AutoCAD Launch event!

But you'll have to be REALLY fast!  Tomorrow (Thursday) you can get a sneak peak - Click HERE to learn more!!!

The webcast is at 3:00pm, EST...you don't want to miss it! (sorry for the late notice...I just found out myself!

A Super Bowl Hip Tip on Slimming Down your Drawings!

Ahhhh those Pesky Steelers!  Well half of my family is thrilled (the other half including me wanted to see Kurt Warner win!).  Even my dog was a Steelers fan yesterday (no wonder they won!).  Is there no loyalty anywhere?

 

Yesterday we had a great Super Bowl shindig with Pittsburgh Chip-Chop Ham and Cardinal's Wings (my attempt to be properly festive).  There was quite a bit of jumping up and down and screaming at the TV as though our enthusiasm could really alter the course of the game.  Of course I am wondering why that "fumble" wasn't reviewed during the last minute of the game (hello...why does the Tuck rule only work for those Patriots?).  Am I sounding like a poor loser?

Back to the world of AutoCAD...

After eating all of that horribly fattening Super Bowl food I think it's time for an AutoCAD Hip Tip on slimming down your drawings!  Ironically - the PURGE command is involved!

An AutoCAD Hip Tip for Losing Excess AutoCAD Poundage:

Have you ever had an AutoCAD drawing that magically became overbloated for no obvious reason?  It's not filled with millions of objects, there's no excuse for it going so slow or being so large!  You need to put your drawing on a diet to slim down those extra bytes!

So here is the deal...from time to time you may find that external data gets inadvertently added to your drawing.  This XDATA can really clog up a drawings arteries (see...the painful analogies just continue on and on).  This data from registered applications (or REGAPPS if you want to appear cool and in the know) can be added without your knowledge - and even if you delete an object that has this XDATA attached it doesn't delete the REGAPP that goes along with it - Yikes!  These evil REGAPPS often come to us from XREFs without our knowledge.

So how do you get rid of these extra pounds and speed up your drawing file?  It's super easy.  First we'll look at the standard AutoCAD means of doing it - and then I'll point you to a routine that former Express Tool programmer Tom Stoeckel wrote.

You will need to go into the PURGE command...but not the dialog box - you'll have to force the command prompt version by placing a dash in front of the command.  Then you'll key in "R" for Regapps.

Note:  Don't bother selecting "A" for All thinking this will include your REGAPPS...it won't!

Command:  -PURGE
Enter type of unused objects to purge
[Blocks/Dimstyles/LAyers/LTypes/MAterials/MUltileaderstyles/Plotstyles/SHapes/te
xtSTyles/Mlinestyles/Tablestyles/Visualstyles/Regapps/All]: R
Enter name(s) to purge <*>:
Verify each name to be purged? [Yes/No] <Y>: N
Deleting registered application "ACAD_DIMASSOC_CALC_DIMLFAC".
Deleting registered application "ACAD_DIMASSOC_DIMLFAC".
Deleting registered application "ACAD_DIMASSOC_OVERRIDDEN_DIMLFAC".
Deleting registered application "ACAD_DSTYLE_DIM_EXT1_LINETYPE".
Deleting registered application "ACAD_DSTYLE_DIM_EXT2_LINETYPE".
Deleting registered application "ACAD_DSTYLE_DIM_LINETYPE".
Deleting registered application "ACAD_DSTYLE_DIMARC_LENGTH_SYMBOL".
Deleting registered application "ACAD_DSTYLE_DIMEXT_ENABLED".
Deleting registered application "ACAD_DSTYLE_DIMEXT_LENGTH".

9 registered applications deleted.

And Voila!  my drawing is instantly slimmer (and faster!).  If only losing weight were this simple!

Now if you want a snappy REGAPP utility simply pick HERE:

Note:  This utility only works on AutoCAD 2008 and 2009.