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!