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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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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.…
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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…
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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…
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I was playing around with some lights and noticed that the Align Cross-hairs with Ceiling command works once again as it used to. That means that once again it only takes one pick to find an Intersection in a ceiling grid (or any hatch pattern)! This ability disappeared with AutoCAD 2015. I had reported it as a bug…
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Each HydraLIST update makes dozens of new parts and hundreds of new part numbers available for importing into the HydraLIST database. However, many people don't know this. Here is how to import parts: In HydraLIST, pick the General Data button: In the Data screen, on the P/N Table tab pick the Import Data button: This…
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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.…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Occasionally we get contacted by a customer who states that something is wrong with his drawings, but when they are opened on another computer, they are fine. If one of the usual suspects is not to blame, we then compare the AutoCAD settings on the 'bad' computer to a 'good' computer. AutoCAD includes an Express…
The H-Factor 