After downloading a file, it is often Blocked. You must right-click on it, pick Properties and then check the Unblock item: But doing a dozen or more files gets old, real fast. I just learned a way to Unblock a batch of files at once. It involves using PowerShell, a Microsoft tool that is a…
If you want to use a new type of hanger, or are a fab shop that gets a job from a contractor that uses a hanger type that you do not have, it is easy to add that new hanger type to your own machine. A hanger is an assembly, and an assembly is just…
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
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Need a handy tool for editing attributes within all blocks at the same time? AutoCAD has a great tool built right in – BATTMAN You can get at all the defined blocks in the drawing that have attributes, and you can get at all the atts within a block. You can change all kinds of…
I just had a customer who noticed that when he went to a Layout tab that all of his objects were gray. AutoCAD was apparently applying his Plot Style (Hydragray) to the objects in the Layout (and no, he wasn’t doing a Plot Preview). What to do? Apparently (after much Googling) there is an option…
More and more often we are hearing from customers that cannot submit a drawing file that uses ‘foreign’ fonts, just those that AutoCAD ships with. We added an option in the HydraCAD updates from a few months ago that can fix this for you. Pick HcadTool->Modify->Attribute->Expand Fractions or type in EXF This will start a…
From a question posed by a customer: Question: Is there a way to lock and password protect drawing layers so I can email them to someone and them not be able to change the drawing. Also is there a easy and preferably “free” way to make a drawing into a pdf. I use primopdf for…
Ever need to the layer of all the attributes inside a block? Try: MODIFY > OBJECT > Attribute > Block Attribute Manager > select the block > EDIT > Go to the PROPERTIES Tab > Change the layer name > OK > APPLY Thanks to Robert at Northstar for this one Also, If you need…
Some great Google stuff from Joe Oliver: Google Is a Calculator When you can’t be troubled to reach over and pick up the handheld calculator sitting on your desk, you can use Google as a high-tech web-based calculator. All you have to do is enter your equation or formula into the standard Google search box,…
Many (most?) of you may have run into the problem where you use Windows Explorer to search a file for text the YOU KNOW IS IN THERE BUT $%^@# WINDOWS CAN’T FIND IT – grrrrrrr Here is how you get it to do that, straight from Microsoft (method 2): 1. Click Start, and then click…
If you have a dry system to calculate you might have gotten frustrated by AutoCalc setting up C=120 piping. A really quick way around this is to create new pipe types in HydraCALC/Utilities/Fittings that have the same properties as Sched-10 and Sched-40, but with a C-Factor of 100. That way you can set your schedule…
Hydratec delivers four plot style files with our software: Hydragray.ctb, Hydracolor.ctb HydraLayerGray.ctb (all color dependent plot styles) and Hydragray.stb (named plot style). These are found in the HES\HydraCAD\Ver50\Programs\Version5# folder, depending on your version of the software. To use these files it will be necessary to copy them into the AutoCAD plot styles folder and then…
This is a quickie – Sometimes you want to refer to a point that just doesn’t exist. In the example below there is no intersection between the two lines drawn. Or is there? Lets say you want to pick the Intersection of the two red lines in that picture. When prompted for a point, pick…
