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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If you use the same types of sprinkler heads in your jobs, consider setting them up in your template so they are available for each new job you start up. 1. Pick the Open command2. Set files of type at the bottom to be Drawing Template (*.dwt). This will display all of our templates.3. Pick…
A common request is to put your own logo on the hydraulics printout cover sheet. This is pretty easy: Note: You may have to make any sizing adjustments to your bitmap for it to fit on the cover sheet. You can use a .jpg or .png file too, just rename it to a .BMP extension…
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: …
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. Right-Click on the tool palette and pick Customize Palettes… This…
In our last episode I told you how to make your own tool palettes. Here’s how you can do more with them. 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…
A quickee – A customer just had a problem where he clicks on an object to move it and types in 0,0 as its destination and the block doesn’t go anywhere. After some digging we found that the behavior seemed like he was typing in @0,0, indeed he saw this echoed at the command prompt…
A long time customer called today and he wanted to create pulldown menus to insert a bunch of block details that the guys on the alarm side of the business use. I suggested he use tool palettes instead because they are much easier to ‘program’ and for his application they fit the bill perfectly. To…
We’ve all done it – either permanently erased a drawing we were working on or worse – saved over a drawing we wanted to keep. How to get the drawing back? Restore the backup you made of the drawing. No, I’m not being sarcastic here – every night you should copy the drawing to a…
By now most of you are aware of three tools for eliminating z-coordinates from a drawing: 1. Eliminate Z-Coordinates Phase 12. Eliminate Z-Coordinates Phase 2 Both from our HcadTool->Tools pulldown menu and… 3. Flatten – the AutoCAD Express Tools command If neither of these gives you the results you want then try the following, written…
Many of you know this one, but many don’t – so I will show it here. If you are entering input manually one of the fastest ways to do it is to use the ENTER key to copy input from the line above. For example, if you have a line of input that looks like…
