July 2010

  • Top AutoCAD new features

    Submitted by rkmcswain on Wed, 07/28/2010 - 18:31

    You may have read here and other places where I have been critical of some of the new features in AutoCAD over the years. Things like the Ribbon, the Action Recorder, Infocenter, Quick View Drawings instead of simple tabs, etc.

    But the purpose of this post is to discuss some things that really make AutoCAD better, some real time savers. Here is my Mt. Rushmore of new features. Read more »

  • New technologies from Autodesk

    Submitted by rkmcswain on Mon, 07/26/2010 - 21:08

    You may have seen this on other blogs by now but if not, here is a quick peek at a couple of new technologies from Autodesk Labs. If you don't know about Autodesk Labs, then head over there and check out all of the projects. You'll probably find something you can use. There are tools for Inventor, Civil 3D, AutoCAD, cloud applications, and more.

    Project Photofly

    Project Photofly is essentially a cloud app that allows you to upload photographs that are then processed into a point cloud. There are some guidelines available for how to shoot photos for the best results, and if you don't want to sit online waiting on the results, Photofly will email you when it is done. The home page for this project is at http://labs.autodesk.com/technologies/photofly/, and Shaan Hurley has many more details over at Between the Lines...

    Project Neon

    Project Neon is essentially your access to a rendering farm where you can upload your DWG files and let a rack of servers do the rendering for you. Here is a a demo video, and more details on the project home page. You don't have a DWG to render, but you still want to see the results? There are some samples on the project home page above. Read more »

  • 100 Free tools for CAD users

    Submitted by rkmcswain on Thu, 07/22/2010 - 10:04

    Various Cadalyst readers and contributors have helped to compile this list of 100 FREE tools for CAD users. Chances are you will find something in this list that you were not aware of.

    Also, the Summer 2010 edition of the print magazine is now available in two custom tailored versions; AEC and Manufacturing. Read more »

  • What Layer Manager do you use? (AutoCAD 2009 or later)

    New Layer Manager Palette
    33% (22 votes)
    Classic Layer Dialog with OK button.
    67% (45 votes)
    Total votes: 67

  • Closed Polylines

    Submitted by rkmcswain on Tue, 07/13/2010 - 18:09

    Over the years, I have seen some confusion over the definition of a "closed" polyline in AutoCAD. Let's try to clear it up...

    If you start drawing a polyline and at the end, snap back to the original endpoint, you have not created a closed polyline. It is closed in the sense that it forms a closed area, but AutoCAD does not consider it closed.

    To check this, run the ._PEDIT command and select the polyline. Notice that the only choice for the Open/Closed option is Close, meaning that this polyline is OPEN. If you close it now, you will have two vertices at the same point.

    Try this again and when you are ready to close the polyline, use the "C" option. This will create the final closing segment and correctly "close" the polyline.

    You may be thinking... "Why do I care... as long as it looks closed?" - and for some cases that can be true. But I have seen some 3rd party applications that require closed polylines for certain operations, hatching can do strange things with open polylines that only appear closed, and area calculations could be affected. I understand CNC machines are particular about closed polylines also.

    For the lisp gurus, examine the group 70 DXF code for POLYLINE and LWPOLYLINE entities. If the 1 bit is present, then it is a closed polyline. Read more »

  • Inserting a circular raster image

    Submitted by rkmcswain on Sat, 07/10/2010 - 08:13

    If you are a long time, experienced user of AutoCAD, how many times have you stepped back and looked at the program from a novice point of view? Think about some of the tasks that seem trivial to you and then consider how you might perform them if you were new to AutoCAD.

    I ran into this case recently, when the question was brought up "How to bring in a raster image in the shape of a circle?" Easy, right? But think about being a new AutoCAD user and not knowing about the various commands used to do this, or even how to go about finding them. I have not search Help, but I doubt this particular task could be found in the User's Guide.

    On to the problem. Read more »

  • Layer Freeze Tip

    Submitted by rkmcswain on Fri, 07/02/2010 - 05:50

    When freezing layers inside of a viewport using the ._LayFrz command, pay attention to the Settings before clicking an object. One of the available settings is whether or not you want to freeze the layer just in this viewport or freeze the layer overall for the entire drawing.

    Command: ._layfrz
Current settings: Viewports=Vpfreeze, Block nesting level=Block
Select an object on the layer to be frozen or [Settings/Undo]: _S
Enter setting type for [Viewports/Block selection]: _V
In paper space viewport use [Freeze/Vpfreeze] :
Select an object on the layer to be frozen or [Settings/Undo]:
 Read more »

  • Polygonal viewports not clipping raster images?

    Submitted by rkmcswain on Thu, 07/01/2010 - 15:47

    We have some Windows 7, 64-bit systems running Nvidia FX580 display adapters with Civil 3D 2011 and Land Desktop 2009. Almost immediately, complaints started rolling in about raster images not being clipped by polygonal viewports.

    I figured out that if we disabled hardware acceleration (using the 3DCONFIG command inside of AutoCAD), it solved the problem. But this seemed like a workaround at best. Further searching led me to recently released Nvidia "AutoCAD Performance" drivers for 2011.

    The Release Notes did confirm that this issue was fixed with version 18.1.4 of this driver - which I confirmed myself after installing the driver.  Read more »

 

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