EDGEMODE - an assistant to Trim and Extend

Sometimes you forget how important commands are that you set until your computer dies and you have to get a brand new workstation. Well, that has happened to me and I had forgotten how much I use implied intersections to extend and trim.

EDGEMODE is defaulted at 0. What this does variable when set to 0 is require that your lines touch in order to fulfill a trim command. For extend commands, it requires the line you want to extend to be in the line of sight to intersect with the line to extend to.

With EDGEMODE set to 1, my favorite, you get a much more implied trim and extend. To extend, lines don't have to be touching. They only need to be coplanar and have a implied intersection. Same with trimming. The line needs to have an implied intersection, but it doesn't need to be touching the line to be trimmed to.

Tablets

Something to know

For those who like to make groups in their drawings, instead of blocks, here is a interesting tidbit of information.

 

I drew 6 lines in a drawing (a box with lines making an X inside).  I then made an array of these objects at 100 x 100.

I did the same by making the 6 lines into a block form, then also into a group.  Saving each in its own file, here is what I had:

 

1)       The six line file:  1,918 kb

2)       The 6 line block file:  338 kb

3)       The 6 line group file:  2,412

 

Using groups can be very handy in small doses. 

But if you have a 1000 groups in your drawing, you could have a much larger file that is slower to open.

The blocks cut down on the size of the file drastically.

 

I thought it was interesting to know.

Autocad Tip: How to remember a command

I learned something very cool this week from the Cadalyst Magazine

 

Ralph Harrison in Cadalyst Magazine writes, "If you can't remember a typed-in command, enter the first letter (or as much of the command name as you can remember), then use the Tab key to cycle through all the AutoCAD commands that begin with the characters you entered. Once you find the command you want, press Enter to activate”

 

Cycling Through Drawings

I would imagine that there are different ways that people go between open drawings. Just in case people don’t know all their options, here they are:

1. One way is to up to the Window pull-down and select the drawing they want to open. I use this mostly when I have a bazillion drawings open……Yes, I know.
2. You can minimize each drawing and hopefully select the right one you are looking for….probably the hardest way to switch between drawings.
3. Another way to switch between drawings is to go to the Windows pull-down and Choose Cascade or Tile. I’m not sure when you would want to Cascade, but Tiling can sometimes be beneficial if you only have 2 drawings open only and you need to do some copy and pasting or some comparison work.
4. Also, there is a system variable that you can type in at your command line called TASKBAR. Set that to 1 and it will place all your open drawings on your windows taskbar. It isn’t opening additional versions of autocad, but placing an icon there.
5. My favorite way, personally, is to hold down CTRL key and press the TAB key to cycle forward through your drawings. You can also hold down CTRL + SHIFT key at the same time then press the TAB key and it will cycle backwards through the drawings.

Lynda.com - Training Tutorials

If you would like to learn more about all the programs we use, except autocad and ETMS, Try this out. They are probably in there.

Lynda.com is a great website to watch ONLINE tutorials of programs such as Photoshop and Illustrator. Heck, they even have Outlook, Excel, Powerpoint and Word tutorials. There are a limited amount of free tutorials for each program. Enough free tutorials to learn something. Then there is a subscription service (like $25.00/mo) for the rest. There are so many hours worth of tutorials that you couldn’t possibly have a life and watch them all in a month. The subscription allows you to access ALL the tutorials, no matter the program.

Check it out.

AECTOACAD - Helping those with older versions of Autocad

“Custom objects provide additional capabilities to the program and related products. When the application that created the custom object is not available, a proxy object is substituted in its place.” - Autocad 2008 User guide

As autocad provide new features and we implement those features, saving down the old fashion (“save as”) way can leave custom object issues for older version of Autocad, i.e. it won’t open the file. AectoAcad command is there to take up where “save as” leaves off. This command explodes and removes the custom objects, instead of recreating custom objects to work in older versions.

Type in AECTOACAD and this line below will pop up. Don’t press it yet, but if you press ENTER, it will ask you for a filename.

Export options [Format/Bind/bind Type/Maintain/Prefix/Suffix/?] <Enter for filename>:

Type F for FORMAT.

Enter file format [r14/2000/2004/2007] <2007>:

Type in the Format. Then you will be back at the first set of options. Now you can press ENTER.

Export options [Format/Bind/bind Type/Maintain/Prefix/Suffix/?] <Enter for filename>:

Save it as a different file name from the original. It will not allow you to save it with the same name. The file will save down to the version you set without giving problems to lower versions.