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Recent Posts
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
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If you forget which gold keys go with which computers it can be frustrating when it becomes time to uninstall them. There is a way to figure this out, however by using Windows Explorer. First, you must make sure the Hidden Files and Folders are shown in Windows Explorer (its in the Tools->Folder Options-View area).…
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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…
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Longtime customer Aidan Downey is here visiting from California and he asked me to find out if there are any podcasts out there that cover AutoCAD-type hints, tips or tricks. I really couldn’t find much – unfortunately most out there are sales or marketing tools (probably done just to say – "Hey – we have…
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I am often asked if you can run AutoCAD on a home machine as well as on an office machine. The answer is yes – there are two ways to do this. The first is to be on AutoCAD subscription. This will allow you that second registration on your home computer. The second is to…
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Some of you have noticed that our HydraCAD shortcuts have a -p Hydratec or -p SMaRTools in the Target field of the desktop Shortcut and have asked what those mean. Others have asked how to call up a Profile that a user has created by using the desktop Shortcuts. Here you go: 1. Set up…
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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…
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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…
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A customer called this morning saying he is about to bid on a project that requires that all drawings be submitted in MicroStation (.dgn) format. Over the years we have heard of similar requests and in the past all we could say to the customer is to send a .dxf file. But, there is finally…
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In AutoCAD 2008 Autodesk made a change in how they display drawing entities in layers that are locked. Entities in these locked layers show up as dimmed images compared to those entities in unlocked layers. As always, there is an AutoCAD variable that can control the amount of dimming or turn it off entirely. The…
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This one comes via Robert Matteson of Dynamic Fire Protection Systems, Inc – Texas: When selecting objects using a window or crossing window, I am sometimes hindered from selecting all items that I want quickly due to the rectangular constraint of the window or crossing window. I found out today, that by entering WP (window…
The H-Factor 