The H-Factor

Reducing Entropy

Month: April 2008

  • Does anyone have any experience with any of the PDF to DWG converters out there? I have not been able to find any reviews of the half dozen or so converters that came up in a Google search. The ones I have found are: AutoDWGAnyDWGaidecadpdf2cad These are all about $180. Sounds like a little cartel…

  • A customer emailed today with the following question: "We do a lot of work in the field, doing lots of measuring and drawing/checking the buildings where we are working.  I would like to be able to enter the data we generate directly instead of copying to paper and then copying from there into AutoCAD back…

  • This one came via a customer for subscribes to Steve Johnson’s blog Cad Nauseam From Steve Johnson, blog nauseam, April 10, 2008. "If you’ve noticed some normal drafting operations are much slower in AutoCAD 2009 than in earlier releases, try turning off the new Layer Palette and see if the problem goes away. For example,…

  • You wouldn't be the first (or last). It helps to think of an armover as having three parts:   A. The 'Up' piece (riser nipple)  B. The Arm piece  C. The Drop piece Item C – The Drop piece is already handled because Drops already go into a separate branch line section in HydraLIST named…

  • Autodesk has advanced programming topics that are recorded and can be downloaded and viewed on their Developer Center site. The site lists upcoming classes (fee based, free in some cases). A couple of weeks after those classes take place, you can see a recording of the class. Put on your geek hat for these!

  • Logitech makes nice mice. The problem is that they are configured like MS mice when shipped. This always causes problems with the Wheel and Panning in AutoCAD. This from the great website: CAD Forum     Turn off any special mouse wheel settings with the mouse icon in the Windows Control Panel. Under the Buttons…

  • If you are like me, you haven’t had time to upgrade your Microsoft Office to the 2007 version. But that hasn’t stopped people from emailing you 2007 files with extensions like docx and xlsx. What to do? I Googled on a colleague’s recommendation and found this: Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint…

  • A had a customer call  recently that didn’t like that AutoCAD displayed a tooltip when drawing a line with ORTHO on (see below) To turn this off: Go into OPTIONS. Pick the Drafting tab and uncheck the box on the right that says "Display AutoTrack Tooltip"