The H-Factor

Reducing Entropy

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Welcome

Recently our previous blog service (Typepad) ended their business – so, we have a new home. It will take a bit to get images back and displaying properly, but we are working on it! Final pageview count of original Typepad blog: 387,232

Using a Non-Standard Pipe Type in HydraCALC

A customer called today asking how to enter a 1″ black plastic underground pipe for the calc. This particular situation sounded unique enough that I did not tell him to add that pipe type to our database, as I would have if he expected to see this pipe type used repeatedly. I told him to…

Using the Hydratec Software Download Area

Hydratec uses ShareFile to distribute our software installs and updates. New customers, or those without access, must request access to be able to get at these downloads. Access is only available to customers with a Hydratec subscription or those on an update plan. You can access the download area and request access by picking the…

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In V50 we have created tool palettes to not only allow you to drag and drop details and blocks onto your drawing, but to also make it easy for you to add your own blocks. In the past it was difficult to do this because we used slide files and menus – both were not at all user friendly.

From a blog entry a couple of years ago:

To make your own tool palettes:

1. Press CTRL+3 to open the tool palette (if not already open)
2. Right click on the tool palette and pick New Palette. Give it a name you like, i.e. My Blocks
3. Now open up the Design Center using CTRL+2
4. Navigate to the folder where you have the blocks you want added to the palette
5. Select a block and drag it to your palette and let go

That's it! When you want to insert a block just drag it off the palette into your drawing or click on it.

Controlling the scale, rotation angle and properties of your palette blocks:

You can control a number of things about how your block gets
inserted from a tool palette. Right click on your block and pick
Properties. This will give you the properties you can control. Scale,
Rotation and Prompt for Rotation are found in the Insert section. In
the General section you will find options like Color, Layer and
Linetype to set specific for those (otherwise they adopt the current
layer and color settings).

Props

Create as many palettes as you like. Next I'll show you how to group them and Export them to some one else's machine


Saving and sharing your palettes
:

Once you have your palette(s) set the way you want them, you may want
to be nice and share them with others. This will require and Export
from you and an Import to them. But first you may want to combine them into a Group.

Groups
Right-Click on the tool palette and pick Customize Palettes… This
will bring up a two-columned dialog box. On the left are the palettes
in your AutoCAD – Note this is not a per-drawing thing – you only have
ONE set of tool palettes. On the right you can right-click and pick New
Group. Name this Group.

Now drag the palettes you want from the left into the right. Once
this is done, right-click on the Group you created (or on the left
right-click on just one palette if that is all you want to export) and
pick Export. Give your Group a name and location you can later find.
Copy this file to a network location or somewhere on another users
computer. The file extension will be .xtp if you Exported a palette and
.xtg if you Exported a Group.

To place the palettes on another computer, bring up the tool palette
on their computer (CTRL+3) and pick Customize Palettes… and pick
Import. Now right-click on the left or right depending on whether you
are Importing a palette or a Group of palettes.

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