The H-Factor

Reducing Entropy

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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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Author: art

  • 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…

  • 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…