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Coming this Wednesday, July 28! Same time, same place! This month’s discussion will be about Annotative Scaling and Dynamic Blocks in AutoCAD. As usual, snacks and soft drinks will be available for those who are interested. Please join us and bring a friend or colleague! See you there! **Updated 4/1/09 to version 1.9.5 – fixed date issue – when appending date to local file name, date now updates day-to-day; fixed open local file menu prompt – selection stays; fixed disable logo link menu option – now can actually disable logo link.** Paul Kirill has added a VB.NET application to the downloads page – the Local File Creator. This application eases the chore of creating your Revit local files. Once installed, you simply configure your local file and folder standards (you only do this once) and select a central file to copy. The program will rename the local file and even create local subfolders if that is your preference. Once copied, you will even be prompted to open the file in Revit. It keeps track of your central files in a list so you only have to find the central file that first time. It should work with all versions of Revit, and both 32 and 64 bit versions of XP and Vista. You can find it on our Downloads page. Give it a shot and leave a comment!
More details can be found at Paul’s website here: http://tech.kdcad.com/?p=151 As our our members know, RAM meetings are typically the last Wednesday of every month. We do occasionally shift the date due to holidays or severe weather – but we do strive to be as consistent as possible. It is always amazing how fast that last Wednesday sneaks up on you! So here’s a little something to help us remember. The link below opens an iCalendar file that when saved, will insert a recurring appointment into your calendar program. It works with Outlook and a variety of other calendar programs. All you need to do is: * Using Internet Explorer, click the link, click Open to open the iCal file in your default calendar program and then save it. Pretty simple! (For more info on iCalendar files, check out these links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICalendar, http://www.icalworld.com/news.html) Object Cycling has been around since R13, but isn’t a widely known ability, perhaps because it’s not a command. Whenever you are at the ‘Select Objects’ prompt and have overlapping objects, simply hold down the Ctrl key as you pick a location. AutoCAD will cycle through the objects at that location, highlighting each one until you accept one and move on. When you have two or more paper space viewports that overlap or are contained within another, it can be difficult to impossible to switch with the mouse pointer. Therefore the keyboard command for this can be indispensable. The keyboard command sequence is Ctrl+R This tip can be used in other places then offset, but for the purpose of an example the offset command is used. If offsetting around a centerline symmetrically, type at the offset distance prompt; 50/2. Click the centerline and click on a side to offset. The centerline will be offset 25. Handy tip, but only works with whole numbers. Example: If you entered 50.5/2 at the prompt, AutoCAD will prompt you again for the distance. When prompted for pick point, type ‘CAL then MEE, then pick opposite corners of the rectangle. MEE is “midpoint between two endpoints” (CAL automatically grabs the endpoint when you pick corner of rectangle). Of course if you are using AutoCAD 2006 you can just hit SHIFT+RIGHT CLICK and select Mid Between 2 Points. Toggle between OSNAPS by pressing the TAB key. Example: At a ‘T’ intersection there is a end point, an intersection and possibly a mid point. Users can toggle between the three types by press the TAB key. Note: You can only toggle through OSNAPS that are “active”. If you only have the intersection and midpoint OSNAPS checked in the OSNAPS settings. In the above example, when you press the TAB key it would only cycle between the intersection and midpoint OSNAPS. Have you ever looked back on a web-based email, forum post or blog entry and been amazed/embarrassed at how many typos were in there? There is a solution and it’s free. You need to check out ieSpell. It works with both Internet Explorer and FireFox (I actually think it works better in FireFox). It does operate a little differently depending on which browser you are using and what type of web-form you are in. In some cases (like Gmail in FireFox), a small red underline appears dynamically under a misspelled word. In other cases, you can right click on a form or field and select the ieSpell option. Worst case, you need to select ieSpell from the Tools menu in IE. There are some other web based spell checkers out there – ranging in price from free to $295! Of the free version I’ve found, I like ieSpell the best because it has the look and feel of the Office spell checker interface and, in fact, uses the Office dictionary by default (although you can specify a different one if you want). So if you are a “blogger” or use web-based email – give ieSpell a look. You can find it here: http://www.iespell.com. By now I’m sure most folks are familiar with the “tab switchers” available for use in AutoCAD. There are five that I know of:
So anyway, these are nice, but not really the reason I started this article. The real tip here is for those folks who work in multiple drawings in multiple sessions of AutoCAD. I find myself doing this more often than not in order to take full advantage of my dual monitors. I recently became frustrated with the realization that – since my OS is XP Pro and not Vista Ultimate – I spend a lot of time clicking thorugh taskbar items to find the drawing I want. So I went on a quest for a better solution for cycling through open applications. Here is what I came up with:
So ultimately I settled on using two apps – TaskSwitchXP and Visual Task Tips. Together they give the me flexibility to flip through my open AutoCAD windows and get a good idea of which one is which. Along the way I found others that either didn’t work, or were too expensive for me. I should also mention that nothing worked if you have the AutoCAD TASKBAR Variable set to 1 (displays all drawings open in a single session as separate items on the taskbar). If you know of any good tools out there that you’d like to share, drop me a note and I’ll give them a go. In the mean time, give some of these a try and let me know how it goes! |
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