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
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…
| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | ||
about
Author: art
-
If you have a drawing with paragraphs of text all written in individual lines, you may find it troublesome to change the fonts, size of text, add formatting, or, heavens forbid, adjust the room the paragraph takes up. These individual lines are composed of old-school text tools like Dynamic Text (DTEXT), or regular text (TEXT). Multiline text…
-
Some couplings result in a 1/8″ or more pipe separation, after they are added to pipe. On long runs of pipe, the multiple separations accumulate, and result in a pipe that is too long overall. For example, a run of pipe with 16 couplings can result in the pipe creeping 1/8″ per coupling for a total…
-
Many companies keep their HydraLIST database pricing current, at least to the best of their abilities given how often prices change. If you enter a part number into HydraLIST, the pricing gets pulled up when the list is processed. If you use certain parts regularly, it makes sense to update the HydraLIST Database with those…
-
From a long-time customer and friend: ‘I had a question about center to center dimensions on pipe. We do tons of CPVC, and the ½” increments aren’t necessary. Can I force 1” increments on the center to center dimensions?” This can be done by setting the default drawing pipe dimension rounding to the nearest inch.…
-
I had no idea this command existed, but found it when looking for a better way to rename a layer after a customer reported an error while running an AutoList. The cause of the error was that the pipe block layer, SPRKDATA, was built in the drawing as sprkdata (lower case). While may of HydraCAD’s routines…
-
Say you need to select all 1″ riser nipples but don’t want to go through a large drawing looking for and selecting them individually. How to do that? This way: 1. Select all items in the drawing. Alternatively, you could just isolate the riser nipple layer and select those 2. Open the Properties palette by…
-
So, you want to have an area carved out around sprinkler heads so that other trades don’t impinge on your space (yeah, good luck with that!) but aren’t sure how. Well, It’s pretty easy – what you need to do is to edit some of our sprinkler heads and basically draw a ‘cylinder’ around them.…
-
A customer we were training recently wanted to know how to create 3/8 and 5/8 fractions for use in hanger details. The wanted to know if we have those in our fonts. We do not. However, AutoCAD can automatically generate those, and any other fraction you can dream up, using the MTEXT command (not TEXT). If…
-
Hanging from bottom of steel is not as prevalent as it used to be, but it is still done often enough. A change was made recently to HydraCAD to allow quicker use of the Steel Depth blocks added to steel (or any material) structures. If these steel depth blocks are inserted, the program can now…
-
Thumbs.db files are caches of the thumbnails of the pictures in a folder. They make it faster to display thumbnails when viewing a folder in thumbnail mode. They are near impossible to delete, often getting in the way when you delete the contents of a folder and cannot delete the folder itself due to the…
The H-Factor 