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.

MSLTSCALE - Model Space Linetype

When you have a drawing where the dashed lines are not coming out dashed, there are a few things to check.

1. Check the ltscale (15)
   
2. Check the ltscale in the property palette of the specific object (1)
   
3. Re-install the linetype.

There is also another thing to check if none of those work. Your MSLTSCALE is probably set to 1. change it to 0 and your linetypes should show up correctly.

This is a new variable and something we might mess with later down the road. It is tied to annotation scales, which is another lesson.

What’s a Trojan Horse virus?

What’s a Trojan Horse virus?: "The Visa description continues with, 'A Trojan Horse is an email virus usually released by an email attachment.' Not so. A Trojan may be sent as an attachment in email, but it's certainly not an email virus. (In fact there are few true email viruses, but that's a whole other topic). So it may or may not arrive in email, and it's equally likely to have been downloaded from a website or resulted from a P2P file transfer. In other words, vector has nothing to do with whether something is or isn't a Trojan."

LAYMRG

Sometimes you may wonder if there is a way to merge two or more layers in a drawing that are not setup properly. Well, there is.

LAYMRG allows you to pick objects on the layer(s) you wish to be changed, and then you pick the object of the layer you want them to merge to. Very simple and very easy to use.

IMAGEFRAME

It seems in AutoCAD 2005, our options for the IMAGEFRAME command were ON/OFF. In 2008, our options are 0, 1 and 2. 0 = OFF, 1 = ON, and 2 displays the imageframe, but does not plot it. When working with images, it’s a lot easier to have the frame displayed, and I love the options of having it not plot. Just an FYI.

Allisa

Autocad 2008 Resources

Here are a few resources to check out to learn about Autocad 2008.

Lynn Allen is a great person to hear and learn from!
http://lynn.blogs.com/lynn_allens_blog/2007/05/autocad_2008_ti.html

Lynn also has a screencast to watch and listen.
http://www.adskhost.com/2007/04/1040/

Heidi Hewett is another great person to check out!
http://heidihewett.blogs.com/my_weblog/files/AutoCAD_2008_Preview_Guide.pdf

Viewports before 2008 could be locked by right-click menu option or the properties pallette. Now you can be in the viewport and lock it. There is a lock icon on the Status Bar, as well as the vp scale and the annotation scale (Annotation scale will be discussed later). The scale can be changed when the viewport is not locked.

Also, These features do not show up in the status bar until you are in the viewport.

Dimensions are in pieces? DIMASSOC to 1

Dimassoc turns on and off the associations of all the parts to a dimensions. Set to 0 will cause your dimensions to be just a bunch of lines, as if you exploded the dimension. Set to 1 gives you the ability to adjust the dimension in one piece.

OVERKILL

OVERKILL removes unneccessary objects by deleting duplicates.

Thanks to Allisa, I know have another command in my arsenal.

Oh yeah!

J for Join

J - The join command is just like the heal command except it can do more. You can join ellipitical arcs, circles, splines and lines together.

MAXACTIVEVP

When you have too many active viewports and a few begin to hide your drawing, use MAXACTVP and expand the number. Typically it is set to 16.

TJUST - Text Justification

If you would like to RE-justify your text without changing your text position


type TJUST or go to EXPRESS -> TEXT -> JUSTIFY TEXT. Select your text and then select from the options on the command line. START is the left justification point.