Autodesk AutoCAD is still among the most pirated software applications according to the Software Industry Association. How many of these unregistered applications do you see on machines of co-workers, relatives, or even your own machine?

There is also a related article in the February edition of Cadalyst magazine.

Labels: News, Piracy

There are various "Drawing Tabs" add-ons for AutoCAD available, I created a quick review of some popular ones last January.

Autodesk released one themselves back in October 2006, for AutoCAD 2007. It was OK for a first effort, but not the greatest.

Now in AutoCAD 2009, you will find the "Quick View Drawings" feature. This is "drawing tabs" on steroids (no offense to current MLB players....)

Essentially, it's a button in the status bar that when you pick it, a display appears in the lower part of your drawing area that shows you a preview of each currently open drawing. As you move the mouse to hover over a drawing preview, the drawings shrink and you then get a preview of the layouts in that particular drawing. All this is done with a smooth effect. (See the animated GIF below.)

If you are hovering on a drawing file preview, you can pick it to switch to that drawing. You can also Save or Close that drawing by picking the appropriate icon. You can also right-click on the preview and choose from other options including "Close All", "Save All", and "Close other files".

If you are hovering on a layout preview, you can click to switch to that drawing and set that layout current, and there are plot and publish icons available. You can also right-click on a layout preview to get the standard layout tab context menu, including "New Layout", "Page Setup Manager", and the new command "Export Layout to Model".

Labels: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2009, New Features

Well, it's that time again. Another 12 months, another version of AutoCAD, whether you are ready or not. You will find all sorts of detailed reviews at various websites. This is not meant to be a detailed review. This is simply a quick look at some of the highlights in AutoCAD 2009.

AutoCAD 2009 is going to blow you away at first, not because of any spectacular new features, but because the UI has changed in such a dramatic way. So where to start...?

First off, there is the Ribbon, copied from the latest Office versions. You might think of it as a sort of meshing of toolbars and the Dashboard (in fact the Dashboard is gone). So you are probably looking at the image below thinking "where are the pull-down menus???"... Well, hang on a minute. While you are looking at that image, notice that the Communication Center is buried in the Title Bar now, which saves a bit of space.
(Note: Image below is broken horizontally so it will fit on this page)

Ok, where are the pull-down menus? Do you see that Big Red "A" in the upper left corner? Click on that to expose the Menu Browser. This is sort of like the Windows Start Menu, except it's in the upper left hand corner. Judge for yourself, if you want the old style pull-down menus, set MENUBAR to 1. 

Quick Properties is a mini version of the properties palette that automatically appears when you select one of more objects. It is customizable. 

Quick View Drawings is basically a version "Drawing Tabs" on steroids... Rather than just a set of tabs with drawing names, you get a preview of the drawing and a preview of the layouts in the drawing. Click on a drawing or a layout and you are taken directly there. 

Quick View Layouts is similar to Quick View Drawings, except that this shows you are preview of the layouts in the current drawing. Click on one to switch to it. 

The Layer Properties Manager is now a floating palette. You can leave it open while working. Changes are applied immediately which sounds like a good thing, but if you are manipulating many layers at once it could slow things down - as opposed to making all your layer changes and then pressing Apply. CLASSICLAYER will open the 2008 and earlier version of the Layer Manager. 

Regular and super-sized ToolTips are everywhere. Hover over a button in the Ribbon and a regular tooltip appears, wait a second and the larger one appears. This may be helpful for new users, but thankfully you can disable this feature. 

Action Recorder is a tool that you can use to record drawing and editing activities, and play these back later. It does not write VBA code like the Macro Recorder in MS Office. Editing capabilities are limited. 

There are some new 3D visualization tools such as the Steering Wheel and ViewCube. 
 

By default the buttons in the status bar for things like ORTHO, SNAP, and OTRACK are now icons. You can revert back to "text" buttons if you want to. 

XCLIPFRAMEs now include grips for on the fly editing and a "flip" grip to switch from a regular clip to an inverted clip.

What should have been a bug fix in 2008 is now available, and that it the ability to suppress XREF scales from the Scale List. Set HIDEXREFSCALES to 1.

That is it for now. The big change is the UI for this release.  The DWG format is unchanged (still 2007). On the programming side, nothing major has changed from 2008. VBA is still available. The VLIDE is unchanged.

Below are the new and changed commands and system variables.

***NEW COMMANDS***
ACTRECORD
ACTSTOP
-ACTSTOP
ACTUSERINPUT
ACTUSERMESSAGE
-ACTUSERMESSAGE
ALLPLAY
BACKGROUND
CLASSICLAYER
-DGNEXPORT
-DGNIMPORT
DGNLAYERS
DGNMAPPING
DWFFORMAT
EDITSHOT
EXPORTLAYOUT
HIDEPALETTES
IMPRESSION
LAYERCLOSE
NAVSMOTION
NAVSMOTIONCLOSE
NAVSWHEEL
NAVVCUBE
NEWSHOT
QVDRAWING
QVDRAWINGCLOSE
QVLAYOUT
QVLAYOUTCLOSE
RIBBON
RIBBONCLOSE
SEQUENCEPLAY
SHOWPALETTES
VIEWGO
VIEWPLAY 
***CHANGED COMMANDS***
DASHBOARD
DASHBOARDCLOSE
DGNATTACH
-DGNATTACH
DGNEXPORT
DGNIMPORT
GEOPGRAPHICLOCATION
LAYER
NEWVIEW
QUICKCUI
VPLAYER 
***NEW SYSTEM VARIABLES***
ACTPATH
ACTRECORDSTATE
ACTRECPATH
ACTUI
CAPTURETHUMBNAILS
DGNIMPORTMAX
DGNMAPPINGPATH
GEOLATLONGFORMAT
GEOMARKERVISIBILITY
HIDEXREFSCALES
LAYERDLGMODE
MENUBAR
MTEXTTOOLBAR
NAVSWHEELMODE
NAVSWHEELOPACITYBIG
NAVSWHEELOPACITYMINI
NAVSWHEELSIZEBIG
NAVSWHEELSIZEMINI
NAVSWHEELWALKSPEED
NAVVCUBEDISPLAY
NAVVCUBELOCATION
NAVVCUBEORIENT
NAVVCUBESIZE
NAVVCUBOPACITY
OPENPARTIAL
PREVIEWTYPE
PUBLISHHATCH
QPLOCATION
QPMODE
QVDRAWINGPIN
QVLAYOUTPIN
RIBBONSTATE
ROLLOVERTIPS
SHOWMOTIONPIN
SHOWPALETTE
STATUSBAR
THUMBSIZE
*** CHANGED SYSTEM VARIABLES***
CROSSINGAREACOLOR
GRIPCOLOR
GRIPHOT
GRIPHOVER
OSMODE
TABLETOOLBAR
WINDOWAREACOLOR 

Labels: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2009

How do you set system variables at drawing startup in AutoCAD? This can be answered in a variety of ways, some right and others wrong. I'm going to explain the right way based on Autodesk recommendations.

First off, what do you want to set and where is this setting stored? Look up the system variable in HELP and find out if it's stored in the drawing, or the registry or not at all.

If it's stored in the drawing, then consider whether or not you really want to change this at startup. While you are thinking about that, open you template drawing(s) and make the change there. Now at least your new drawings will be set the way you want.

Now why would you not want to change a drawing-saved system variable at startup? Have you ever opened a drawing, and not changed anything, then tried to close it and you were prompted to save? This is why. If you have startup code that changes a drawing saved system variable, the drawing database is modified and you will be prompted to save the drawing, even if you have not changed it in any other way.

NOTE: DBMOD is a system variable that is set to zero (0) each time a drawing is opened. If anything is changed, the value of DBMOD is not zero (0) any longer. When you go to close the drawing, if the value of DBMOD is not zero (0), then AutoCAD will prompt you to save.

Before we get started, let's cover a couple of "rules".

1. Make sure ACADLSPASDOC is set to 0. This is the default setting.
2. A file called "ACAD.LSP" is loaded once when AutoCAD starts. Any lisp code in this file is loaded into memory or executed at this time.
3. A file called "ACADDOC.LSP" is loaded each time a drawing is loaded, including when AutoCAD is first started. Lisp code from this file is loaded each time a drawing is loaded.
4. For either file above, AutoCAD will load the first file it finds and only the first one.
5. AutoCAD will search the support file search path, in the order of the paths.

Things you might want to put in "acad.lsp" include system variables that are not saved or saved in the registry such as "expert", "isavebak", "and savetime"

Things you might want to put in "acaddoc.lsp" include drawing saved system variables (although I personally avoid this), and other lisp code that need to be defined in each drawing

Once you have determined which file to edit/create, here is how to do it.

1. Open AutoCAD.
2. Paste one of the following lisp functions (in blue) to the command line and press enter
3. (findfile "acad.lsp") -or- (findfile "acaddoc.lsp")
4. If a filename is returned, open this file in Notepad or use the VLIDE (Visual Lisp interactive development environment) to open this file. Go to step 5.
5. If nil is returned, open a new file in Notepad or the VLIDE. Save the file using the correct name and make sure you save it to a directory that is in your support file search path. Close this file, and repeat step 2 and 3 to make sure AutoCAD can find this new file.

Now you have the right file open. You just need to add a bit of lisp code to set the variables to your liking, using the (setvar) function. Here is a few examples:

(setvar "EXPERT" 3)

(setvar "EDGEMODE" 1)

(setvar "OSMODE" 20)

The case of the letters is not important. But the value(s) that you are trying to set are important. In the first example, we are trying to set the system variable EXPERT to 3, which is valid. But if we try to set it to 8, it will fail.

Valid settings for each system variable are found in HELP.

Many system variables are stored as a bitcode using the sum of individual values. OSMODE is one of these. If you look in HELP, you will see that the setting for QUA object snap is 16 and the setting for NOD object snap is 4. If you add these two together, you get 20. If you wanted to set END and MID you would add 3 more and make the setting 23.

Remember, this is only addressing the changing of system variables. Next time, we'll cover adding more sophisticated lisp code to the startup files.

Note: Do not modify the files named "acad200?.lsp" or "acad200?doc.lsp". These files are located in the stock AutoCAD support directory, but these files are used by AutoCAD. If you place your startup code in these files it will work, but these files may be overwritten by a repair, reinstall, or application of a service pack. There is NO reason to use these files. Use "acad.lsp" and/or "acaddoc.lsp". These are user defined and controlled files.

Reference Links:

http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=TS28079

http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=TS21336

http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=TS43235

Labels: Programming, Tips