Starting with AutoCAD 2008, you now have direct access to the Layer States Manager, without opening the LAYER dialog first.
In AutoCAD 2008, click the button on the far right of the LAYERS toolbar.
In AutoCAD 2009, click the button shown below:
Once you get the Layer States Manager dialog open, don't forget to click the 
button to expand the dialog and reveal more options.
Labels: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2008, AutoCAD 2009, Tips
PermaLink Posted 7/03/2008 06:05:00 AM Comments (0)
So you have installed SP1 and you know how to fix drawings with a bloated scale list. But what if you have dozens or hundreds or thousands of "infected" drawings each containing hundreds of scale list entries?
Autodesk has released a tool to fix these bloated drawings. You can select any number of drawings and batch process them.
You have heard about this tool, haven't you? If not, that means you are not reading Shaan Hurley's Between the Lines blog. Here is the link to the Scale List Cleanup Utility. While you are there, I suggest subscribing to this blog to keep up to date with the latest happenings at Autodesk.
Labels: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2008, Free, News, Notices, Tips, Utilities
PermaLink Posted 4/29/2008 06:58:00 AM Comments (1)
There are 4 websites with a lot of good information.
Oh well, I'll just paste the links in this post also:
...and one more - Hot Tip Harry's latest article on Lisp Symbols.
Labels: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2008, Free, Notices, Programming
PermaLink Posted 1/24/2008 05:42:00 PM Comments (0)
You may not even be aware that this problem exists in some of your drawings. To take a peek, click on the Annotation Scale popup located in the AutoCAD status bar. If you get something that looks like the image below, it's time to clean up.
To clean up, you can use the ._SCALELISTEDIT command. This will open the following dialog.
Press the RESET button, answer YES if you get a warning prompt, and you are done.
You may be wondering where all the scales from the first image are in this dialog. Well, this particular drawing contained over 5200 scale list entries and the dialog will not handle that many. In fact I received this error just by executing the ._SCALELISTEDIT command.
So how do you clean a drawing in this shape? Use the command line version of this tool as shown below.
Command: .-scalelistedit
Enter option [?/Add/Delete/Reset/Exit]: _R
Reset scale list to defaults? [Yes/No]: _Y
Scale list reset to default entries.
Enter option [?/Add/Delete/Reset/Exit]: _E
Command:
Two more rules before you start cleaning your drawings.
- Install the latest service pack for your product. This will keep this problem from happening again.
- Clean from the inside out or the bottom up, depending on your point of view. What I mean is to start at the lowest level xref drawing and work your way up to the parent xref drawing.
If Drawing "A" is xrefed into Drawing "B" and Drawing "B" is xrefed into Drawing "C" -- then clean "A", then "B", then "C" - in that order.
You can also create a toolbar button to quickly execute this command, here is the macro:
^c^c.-scalelistedit;_R;_Y;_E;
Labels: AutoCAD 2008, Tips
PermaLink Posted 12/20/2007 12:01:00 PM Comments (2)
I put together some tests to compare the (command) function to two other methods of entity creation, (entmake) and (vla-add...). The test constructs 1,999 line entities using various methods.
I originally posted this on 13 DEC 2007, but after receiving a couple of good comments, I decided to edit this original post rather than make a separate entry. Thanks to the comments by Petri and Matt, I added a couple of new tests to the roundup.
Test1 - Uses the (command) function with CMDECHO set to 1
Test2 - Uses the (command) function with CMDECHO set to 0 and NOMUTT set to 1 (this basically turns the command line off...)
Test3 - Uses the (entmake) function.
Test4 - Uses the (vla-add...) function
Test5 - Uses the (vla-add...) function, but moves (vla-get-modelspace (vla-get-ActiveDocument (vlax-get-acad-object))) outside the timer, which make sense because the time to do this task should not be included. Surprisingly, it didn't make much differance at all.
The results are shown below. The times represent the average of 5 consecutive runs.
- Test1 - 11.7 seconds
- Test2 - 5.50 seconds
- Test3 - 0.44 seconds
- Test4 - 0.94 seconds
- Test5 - 0.90 seconds
So (entmake) is still the fastest method, (vla-add...) takes about twice as long as entmake, and the most efficient (command) method about 12X longer on average. Removing the command line echoes from the (command) method speeds this up considerably.
In summary, if you are only drawing few entities, you won't notice any difference by modifying your code. On the other hand, if you code is drawing hundreds of entities, you might consider a change. Keep in mind that these numbers are relative and will vary depending on the system.
The lisp code used is shown below
(defun date2sec ()
(setq s (getvar "DATE"))
(setq seconds (* 86400.0 (- s (fix s))))
)
(defun C:test1 ( / i timer endtimer)
(setvar "cmdecho" 1)
(setq i 1 timer (date2sec))
(while (< i 2000)
(command "._line" (list i i 0.0) (list (+ 2 i)(+ 3 i) 0.0) "")
(setq i (1+ i))
)
(setq endtimer (date2sec))
(alert (rtos (- endtimer timer) 2 8))
)
(defun C:test2 ( / i timer endtimer)
(setvar "cmdecho" 0)
(setvar "nomutt" 1)
(setq i 1 timer (date2sec))
(while (< i 2000)
(command "._line" (list i i 0.0) (list (+ 2 i)(+ 3 i) 0.0) "")
(setq i (1+ i))
)
(setq endtimer (date2sec))
(alert (rtos (- endtimer timer) 2 8))
(setvar "cmdecho" 1)
(setvar "nomutt" 0)
)
(defun C:test3 ( / i timer endtimer)
(setq i 1 timer (date2sec))
(while (< i 2000)
(entmake (list
(cons 0 "LINE")
(cons 10 (list i i 0.0))
(cons 11 (list (+ 2 i)(+ 3 i) 0.0))
)
)
(setq i (1+ i))
)
(setq endtimer (date2sec))
(alert (rtos (- endtimer timer) 2 8))
)
(defun C:test4 ( / i timer endtimer)
(vl-load-com)
(setq i 1 timer (date2sec) ms
(vla-get-modelspace
(vla-get-ActiveDocument
(vlax-get-acad-object))))
(while (< i 2000)
(vla-addline ms
(vlax-3d-point (list i i 0.0))
(vlax-3d-point (list (+ 2 i)(+ 3 i) 0.0))
)
(setq i (1+ i))
)
(setq endtimer (date2sec))
(alert (rtos (- endtimer timer) 2 8))
)
(defun C:test5 ( / i timer endtimer)
(vl-load-com)
(setq ms (vla-get-modelspace
(vla-get-ActiveDocument
(vlax-get-acad-object)
)
)
)
(setq i 1 timer (date2sec))
(while (< i 2000)
(vla-addline ms
(vlax-3d-point (list i i 0.0))
(vlax-3d-point (list (+ 2 i)(+ 3 i) 0.0))
)
(setq i (1+ i))
)
(setq endtimer (date2sec))
(alert (rtos (- endtimer timer) 2 8))
)
Labels: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2008, Programming, Tips
PermaLink Posted 12/14/2007 07:10:00 AM Comments (6)
Starting in AutoCAD 2006, you can specify a highlight color and opacity to your selection areas as illustrated by the green area shown in the example below.
Below is a description of these options and how to change them.
If you want to go through the OPTIONS dialog, open it up and switch to the Selection tab. Click on the Visual Effect Settings button. Everything you need to control is there on the right half of this dialog, shown above.
If you want to change these options with code or a macro, here are the system variable names to do that.
- SELECTIONAREA - turns this feature off (0) or on (1).
- WINDOWAREACOLOR - sets the color used during a window selection (1-255)
- CROSSINGAREACOLOR - sets the color used during a crossing window selection (1-255)
- SELECTIONAREAOPACITY - determines the amount of transparency used by the selection area colors (0-100)
Here is an example of setting these variables using lisp
(setvar "selectionarea" 1)
(setvar "windowareacolor" 30)
(setvar "crossingareacolor" 51)
(setvar "selectionareaopacity" 30)
Labels: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2008, AutoCAD LT, Programming, Tips
PermaLink Posted 12/12/2007 12:36:00 PM Comments (0)
If you need 3D polylines, and you need a non-continuous linetype, for example to represent the flowline of a ditch - there are a couple of workarounds. Both assume that you have assigned the correct linetype to your 3D polylines.
- Copy all the 3D polylines in place, explode the copies and place them on a new layer. Create a "plot only" layer state that freezes the layer containing the 3D polylines and thaws the layer containing the 2D polylines. Set this layer state current before plotting.
- Before you get ready to plot, save the drawing. Now explode all your 3D polylines, then plot and quit without saving.
Labels: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2008, Civil, Linetypes, Tips
PermaLink Posted 12/05/2007 08:13:00 PM Comments (0)
Autodesk University 2007 is over. There were a lot of good classes, and a couple that....well, I'll get to that later...
Here were some of my favorites.
- DEA path to Civil 3D migration - DEA presented a class on their migration from Land Desktop to Civil 3D. You can read all the blogs and websites you want, talk to all the resellers you want, but this was first hand info from a consumer on what worked and what didn't. Excellent class. Most of our assumptions were confirmed, one being the expected 5-6 days of training required for each user.
- The Secrets of cutting plan and profile sheets in Civil 3D - Michelle Rasmussen from IMAGINiT Technologies was easily the best speaker I had last week. The content fit the time slot, and it was presented in a logical and easy to understand manner.
- Vaulting the Civil 3D Data Chasm - Mark Evinger from Cowhey Gudmundson Leder presented a fairly technical class on why they decided on Vault over Data Shortcuts, the cost, time, and hardware needed to set up a Vault, and even shared their internal training schedule.
- Filling the gaps in the Sheet Set Manager - If you use SSM, you probably wish it could do some things that it can't. R. Robert Bell demonstrated how to use VBA to solve some of the shortcomings of the SSM.
- Anonymous - I did sit in on one class however that was brutal. It was advertised to users of the product, however the speaker spent the majority of the time talking about doing stuff like manually editing XML files using different 3rd party programs, and using VBA to edit files supplied by Autodesk. I do a fair amount of programming and I barely understood what was going on. About 3/4 of the 400+ user class left in the first 45 minutes.
That last example is an exception to the rule of course.
Outside of class...
- The exhibit hall was huge. Hundreds of booths with a variety of products exhibited.
- I met several people, some for the first time - others I have met before. Allow me to drop some names....
- Melanie Perry - the Mistress of the Dorkness
- Shaan Hurley - Technical Marketing Manager, Autodesk
- Eric Stover - Product Line Manager, Autodesk
- Kate Morrical - Kate's CAD Tips
- Ralph Sanchez - texupport.net, AutoCAD Bugtracker
- R. Robert Bell - AU Speaker, programmer extraordinaire...
- Jerry Milana - Senior Consultant, Autodesk
- Robert Green - CAD-Manager.com, Cadalyst Author, and all around good guy...
- Bud Schroeder - Sr. Test Engineer, Autodesk
- Amy Stankiewicz - Editor-in-chief, Cadalyst Magazine
- Nancy Johnson - Editor, Digital Media
- Bill Fane - Cadalyst Author
- Murph - Map 3D and Murphs Law
- Melanie Perry - the Mistress of the Dorkness
Other notes...
I even ran into Shaan (camera in hand of course) out on the strip Wednesday night. Does he ever sleep?
During my 3:00-4:30 class on Thursday, my wife was out shopping and ran into Pete Rose over at a sports shop in Caesars Palace. You just never know who you might run into in Vegas I suppose....
Labels: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2008, Autodesk University, Cadalyst, New Blogs, Notices, Vault
PermaLink Posted 11/30/2007 02:20:00 PM Comments (0)
1: Run the ._PURGE command. This will allow you to purge (or delete) unreferenced items like blocks, layers, dimstyles, etc.
2: Delete all unused layer filters. This was a huge problem a few versions ago in AutoCAD, because named layer filters were carried from drawing to drawing like a virus. You could easily end up with thousands of them. To delete, run the ._FILTERS command. (this is an undocumented command, but it is part of AutoCAD, so there is no add-on needed). The ._FILTERS command was added to R2006, so if you are still on R2005 or earlier, you will need the lisp file found here. (if you are not sure what to do with lisp code, see this)
3: Delete all unreferenced Regapps. Regapps are REGistered APPlication names. I have seen drawings will tens of thousands of these. You will have to use the command line version of the purge command (-purge) to purge these out. Add this to a toolbar button: (command "-purge" "_R" "*" "_N"). The output will be something like this:
Deleting registered application "EPAN100008_091928567580".
Deleting registered application "EPAN100008_094639251560".
Deleting registered application "EPAN100008_100698363170".
Deleting registered application "EPAN100008_111048971960".
Deleting registered application "EPAN100055_130935314550".
Deleting registered application "EPAN100055_133687974070".
Deleting registered application "EPAN100055_160874393360".
Deleting registered application "EPAN100055_161662973360".
....
....
Deleting registered application "EPLT79869_081758743487".
Deleting registered application "EPLT80159_093406689353".
Deleting registered application "EPLT80159_093454012749".
Deleting registered application "EPLT80159_093462674631".
Deleting registered application "EPLT80159_093565515344".
Deleting registered application "EPLT80159_093648013441".
Deleting registered application "EPLT80159_093767728351".
Deleting registered application "EPLT80159_093796266854".
Deleting registered application "EPLT933242145_878928800000".
20483 registered applications deleted.
In this particular drawing, I only deleted the regapps and the drawing file size went from 2679k to 1515k.
Labels: Add-on utilities, AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2008, Tips
PermaLink Posted 11/12/2007 12:26:00 PM Comments (6)
Now you have a drawing containing layouts with the proper plot settings. Let's do some more things.
Create and scale additional viewports.
You can create as many viewports as you need in a given layout. Not only that, but each one can be scaled differently. Maybe you are putting together a detail sheet with various scaled details, or maybe you need a blow up detail of something in your first viewport. To do this, just repeat the steps in part 1. Let's number the steps here so we can refer back to them.
- Type in the command MVIEW (or choose View, Viewports, 1 Viewport from the pull-down menus)
- Pick a rectangle on your "paper"
- The contents of model space will appear within this viewport. If you have objects spread out in MS, you may not see anything. Hang on, we'll fix this.
- In the Status Bar of AutoCAD, find the PAPER button. Click it. It will change to MODEL. Now your cursor is restricted to the limits of the viewport. (If you do not have this PAPER button, use the type in command MSPACE to switch to Model Space)
- Pan or zoom as desired. Notice how only the MS entities move. Layout entities stay put.
- Now let's scale the model accurately. Type in ZOOM, the "C" for Center. Then pick a point roughly on the center of your model.
- Now enter the scale factor. If the scale is 1"=50', enter 1/50XP. If the scale is 1"=20', enter 1/20XP. You can also use the viewport toolbar to set the scale, but you may get undesired results.
- After you have set the scale, you can PAN without altering the zoom level.
- Once you are satisfied, click the MODEL button in the status bar. It will change to PAPER. (If you do not have this MODEL button, use the type in command PSPACE to switch to Paper Space)
- Click on the viewport to highlight the grips. Right click anywhere and choose Display Locked, Yes.
Viewport shapes other than rectangular
So far, all we have made is rectangular viewports. However, you can make polygonal, circular, or elliptical viewports also. You can actually make them any shape you want. Let's start with a polygonal viewport.
- Type in the command MVIEW (or choose View, Viewports, Polygonal Viewport from the pull-down menus).
- If you use the type in command MVIEW, then enter "P" at the next prompt.
- Now draw a figure just like you were drawing a polyline. Notice that arcs are allowed.
- Pick up at step 4 above.
Viewports from objects
Now you can create a polygonal viewport. What if you already have an object created that you want to use as a viewport, but you don't want to have to trace it. No problem, follow these steps.
- Type in the command MVIEW (or choose View, Viewports, Object from the pull-down menus).
- If you use the type in command MVIEW, then enter "O" at the next prompt.
- Now select a closed object. You can select any of these closed objects: CIRCLE, ELLIPSE, SPLINE, REGION, or POLYLINE. A viewport will be created.
- Pick up at step 4 above.
Note: Viewports created from objects retain the original object also, and they are linked. If you select a viewport created from an object, TWO items will be selected, the viewport and the original object. This is important to remember if you are trying to edit a viewport in the Properties window and it's properties do not show up.
Setting properties on a per-viewport basis
You can control entity color, linetype, lineweight, and visibility on a per-viewport basis. To do this...
- While you are in a layout, click the PAPER button in the status bar. (If you do not have this PAPER button, use the type in command MSPACE to switch to Model Space).
- Open the layer manager, and scroll over to the right.
- You will see columns that are not normally there while you are working on the Model tab. These are VP Freeze, VP Color, VP Linetype, VP Lieweight, and VP Plot Style.
- Modifying any of these properties for a given layer only changes those properties in the viewport that is active.
See the image below. There are 4 viewports. Three of them were copies of the upper left one. You can clearly see how we are able to modify properties of entitys per-viewport.
- The upper left viewport has not been modified. This is how these entities look in Model Space.
- In the upper right viewport, all the lines have been changed to color 6.
- In the lower left viewport, all the lines except the top one have been frozen.
- In the lower right viewport, all the linetypes have been changed. You can see how this gives you a lot of flexibility.
Plotting/Publishing
When you are ready to plot, everything should be in order since you have already set the plotting parameters for each layout (see part 1). To plot multiple layouts from a single drawing...
- Click on the first layout, then hold the Ctrl Key and click on the other layouts (you can also hold the Shift Key and click on the last layout to select them all).
- Right click and choose Publish Selected Layouts.
- The Publish dialog will open with your layouts included.
- Check the "Publish To" section of the dialog. If you want to create a DWF file, check this option - otherwise leave it set to "Plotter named in page setup"
- If you are plotting to file (including DWF), click the Publish Options button to verify the destination directory and other options.
- Click the Publish button to begin.
Note: Publishing layouts from multiple drawing files has other steps that I did not cover here. More detail on the PUBLISH command can be found in this article by Ellen Finkelstein.
Labels: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2008, AutoCAD LT, Tips
PermaLink Posted 11/07/2007 07:05:00 AM Comments (1)
AutoCAD Raster Design (ARD) 2008 includes a new command (IEMBED) that allows you to embed a raster image in the DWG file. What's the catch? Besides needing ARD, image embedding only works on bitonal (black and white) images and if the recepient of this DWG file does not have ARD, they will need the Raster Design Object Enabler to view the image. Also, commands like IMAGECLIP and IMAGEADJUST will not work on an embedded image. The embedded image is a AECIDBEMBEDDEDRASTERIMAGE entity.
Embedded images can be "unembedded", or converted back to an IMAGE entity using the IUNEMBED command in ARD. When you do this, you are asked to provide a file name and path. It does not link the IMAGE back to the original location.
Labels: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2008, Raster Design, Tips
PermaLink Posted 11/07/2007 07:00:00 AM Comments (1)
Before starting, let me say there are many ways to do what I'm outlining here, this is simply one of them. There are also many options in AutoCAD that could cause one or more of these steps to be missing or could cause an extra step to appear. I'm using a stock copy of AutoCAD, right out of the box.
Preparation
- First, open up the OPTIONS dialog, and switch to the Display tab.
- Under Layout Elements, make sure all the checkboxes are checked ON, except "Create Viewport in New Layouts".
- Close OPTIONS
Set the plotting options
- Right Click on Layout1, choose Rename
- Give it a name like "MY TEST".
- Now click on the MY TEST layout.
- The Page Setup Manager will appear, and "MY TEST" will be highlighted in the list.
- Click the modify button.
- The dialog that opens looks a lot like the PLOT dialog.
- Set your printer, paper size, plot style table, orientation, etc.
- Leave "What to Plot" set to "Layout"
- Make sure the scale is 1:1
- Click Ok, then Close the Page Setup manager.
Create the Viewport
- Create a Viewport
- Type in the command MVIEW (or choose View, Viewports, 1 Viewport from the pull-down menus)
- Pick a rectangle on your "paper"
- The contents of model space will appear within this viewport. If you have objects spread out in MS, you may not see anything. Hang on, we'll fix this.
- In the Status Bar of AutoCAD, find the PAPER button. Click it. It will change to MODEL. Now your cursor is restricted to the limits of the viewport. (If you do not have this PAPER button, use the type in command MSPACE to switch to Model Space)
- Pan or zoom as desired. Notice how only the MS entities move. Layout entities stay put.
- Now let's scale the model accurately. Type in ZOOM, the "C" for Center. Then pick a point roughly on the center of your model.
- Now enter the scale factor. If the scale is 1"=50', enter 1/50XP. If the scale is 1"=20', enter 1/20XP. You can also use the viewport toolbar to set the scale, but you may get undesired results.
- After you have set the scale, you can PAN without altering the zoom level.
- Once you are satisfied, click the MODEL button in the status bar. It will change to PAPER.(If you do not have this MODEL button, use the type in command PSPACE to switch to Paper Space)
- Click on the viewport to highlight the grips. Right click anywhere and choose Display Locked, Yes.
You are ready to go now. No more selecting the printer and paper size each time you want to print. It's ready to go. As mentioned before, you can import this layout into any other drawing. Here is how.
Importing this layout into another drawing
- Save the drawing you have been working on.
- Open a different drawing.
- Right click on any layout tab.
- Choose From Template
- Change the files of Type from "DWT" to "DWG"
- Find the DWG that you just saved and select it.
- A new dialog will appear that contains the "MY TEST" layout. Select it and press OK.
- The layout you created earlier has now been imported into the current drawing.
For best results, create the various layouts you need in your template drawings. Then they will always be there when you start a new drawing. You can add a sheet border and title block to the layout also.
Part 2 is here
Labels: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2008, AutoCAD LT, Tips
PermaLink Posted 10/30/2007 08:52:00 PM Comments (2)
Remember, if one of the child xrefs is corrupt, then this will affect your main drawing also. In the past, you would have to run RECOVER on each child drawing. If you had several xrefs, you might even have to open the main drawing and make note of the path and name of each drawing.
With RECOVERALL, you simply pick the main drawing and it, along with all the child xrefs are fed through the RECOVER command. All errors are fixed, and each drawing is saved in the current format.
The first time you run this command, you will get this dialog.
Press Continue and select the main drawing. After the process has completed, you will be presented with the Drawing Recover Log which will look something like this.
Labels: AutoCAD 2008, Tips
PermaLink Posted 9/19/2007 07:15:00 AM Comments (0)
These additional layer properties add several columns to the layer dialog. You can hide unused columns easily by right-clicking on any column and unchecking the ones you want to hide.
Labels: AutoCAD 2008, Tips
PermaLink Posted 8/29/2007 10:03:00 PM Comments (0)
If you do not have a valid school issued email, you can invite a faculty member to sign up and they can give you access.
You can also find job postings, discussion forums and product tutorials there.
http://students.autodesk.com/
I bet there are other resources there too. If you are a member, let me know what I left out...
Labels: AutoCAD 2008
PermaLink Posted 6/08/2007 08:00:00 PM Comments (0)
The Google Earth™ Publishing Extension is now available for AutoCAD and other products*. You can use this utility to publish your models directly into Google Earth™
This extension works with:
- AutoCAD 2007
- Architectural Desktop 2007
- Autodesk Civil 3D 2007
- Autodesk Map 3D 2007
- AutoCAD 2008
- AutoCAD Architectural 2008
- AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008
It's beta, it's unsupported, but it's "really cool"... so give it a try if you have an interest.
Google Earth™ Publishing Extension available here: http://labs.autodesk.com/
Google Earth™ available here: http://earth.google.com/
Labels: Add-on utilities, AutoCAD 2008, Tips
PermaLink Posted 5/30/2007 04:09:00 PM Comments (0)
Since the DWF format has been gaining steam over the past couple of years, one of the requests I have seen a lot is for the ability to automatically create a DWF at the same time you save or close a drawing in AutoCAD. Starting with AutoCAD 2008, you can now do this.
In the OPTIONS command, on the Plot and Publish tab, there is an "Automatic DWF Publish" checkbox and a button to set various options for this tool. There are 3 main options.
1. When do you want AutoCAD to create the DWF?
- Save - Each time you save, a DWF is created/updated.
- Close - Each time you close the drawing, a DWF is created/updated.
- Prompt on Save - Same as above, but you are prompted.
- Prompt on Close- Same as above, but you are prompted.
2. Where do you want to save the DWF files?
- Same folder as the DWG file.
- A "DWF" folder relative the the DWG folder. In other words, if you drawing is in "R:\Jobs\MyProject", then the DWF files will be saved to "R:\Jobs\MyProject\DWF"
- A single, hardcoded folder, such as "C:\DWF"
3. What do you want to include in the DWF file?
- Model space
- Layouts
- Model space and the layouts.
The other options are similar to normal DWF creation, such as whether to include layers, whether or not to use a password, and whether you want a single DWF or multiple DWF files.
If you obsessed with keeping a current DWF file that matches your DWG, then creating a DWF at each save may be for you. However, if you have several layouts and/or a large drawing, count on some additional time each time you save. A more reasonable option may be to just have AutoCAD create the DWF when you close the drawing.
Warning: If you have this feature turned on and the last created DWF is open (say a co-worker is viewing it), then the DWF creation process inside of AutoCAD appears to work, but the DWF does NOT get updated. IMO - AutoCAD should warn the user that the DWF can not be updated. If your co-worker opens this DWF and leaves for the rest of the day, you can Auto-Publish the rest of the day and the file will never change.
Labels: AutoCAD 2008, DWF
PermaLink Posted 5/22/2007 07:09:00 AM Comments (0)
Here is a screen shot showing some of the different types of things you can do with MLEADERs.
Notice that you can apply linetypes, use some "built-in" shapes (or your own blocks) for terminators, and that the blocks can be a different color than the leader(s).
The best thing is that now you can have more than leader (or pointer). After you construct the first segment, select it and right click, then choose Add Leader. You can also use this toolbar button.
Another cool feature is the ability to line up several separate MLEADERs.
Note that you don't have to line them up vertically. You can line them up along any angle. The command name is ._MLEADERALIGN.
Labels: AutoCAD 2008
PermaLink Posted 5/10/2007 08:57:00 PM Comments (0)
Have you ever needed to Xref (or reference) a PDF file? One way would be to save the PDF as a TIFF and reference the image. Of course there is the old way of inserting an OLE object referencing the PDF. Both have their drawbacks.
Here is another way. Download DWF Writer from Autodesk (it's free), then open your PDF in Acrobat (reader is fine) and plot the PDF to a DWF using the DWF Writer print driver. Note that multi sheet PDFs are converted to a multi sheet DWF.
Then use the reference manager or the ._DWFATTACH command in AutoCAD to reference the DWF file. (The ability to reference DWF files was added in AutoCAD 2007).
Now if there was just some way to create a reference to each sheet in the DWF all at once rather than having to repeat the ._DWFATTACH command for each one.
Labels: AutoCAD 2008, DWF, pdf
PermaLink Posted 4/25/2007 01:46:00 PM Comments (0)
You can request the trial version (32-bit) one of three different ways. You can download it, you can order a DVD, or you can order a set of CD's. If you would like the 64-bit version, your only option is a download.
Here are some of the other free trial versions available.
AutoCAD LT Trial version download
AutoCAD LT Trial version CD
AutoCAD Electrical Trial version CD
AutoCAD Civil 3D Trial version CD
AutoCAD Map 3D Trial version CD
AutoCAD Raster Design Trial version Download
AutoCAD Raster Design Trial version CD
Many more FREE Autodesk trial version downloads are listed here
Labels: AutoCAD 2008, Civil, Notices, Raster Design
PermaLink Posted 4/23/2007 07:48:00 PM Comments (0)