The H-Factor

Reducing Entropy

Little known secret – Autodesk’s programmers hid ‘easter eggs’ in various versions of AutoCAD

In AutoCAD 2004:

  • Start the Color dialog (e.g. with the _COLOR command).
  • On the Index tab, Ctrl+Left click on the color box 152 (the "Autodesk blue").
  • And, voila – Autodesk developer team presentation will run

In AutoCAD 2005:

   

  Start the new Layer Manager dialog (e.g. with the LAYER
command). Press and hold the Shift+Ctrl keys and click on the "Inverse
filter" option (lower-left corner). And voila – the Autodesk team
presentation in a "Matrix style" is launched. You can control the
playback using mouse right-click. 

There were no easter eggs in 2006 or 2007, making us think these were gone for good, but it appears that some folks at Autodesk do like having fun and they put an easter egg in 2008.

In AutoCAD 2008:

  1. Set the rendering environment to the photometric lights mode (LIGHTINGUNITS=1 or =2) 
  2. Display the Sun properties palette (the SUNPROPERTIES command) 
  3. Click on the spyglass icon in the Sky properties field 
  4. In the "Adjust Sun&Sky Background" dialog go to the "Sun angle calculator" field
  5. Set the date to 23.3.2007 (AutoCAD 2008 release date) 
  6. Click on the Time value and hit the Home key (resets time to midnight)
  7. While holding the Ctrl key press twice the Down-arrow key
  8. The presentation is launched, with music and all…

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