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
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…
| 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 | ||||
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…
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…
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…
Tired of defining the same sprinkler heads over and over again? Then do it in your template once and get it over with. Open up the template you use most often and hit cancel if asked for sheet size and scale. This preserves this option for when you start a new drawing. Next, define the…
Is the Architect/Fire Marshall insisting that you use specific layer names? Try using the LAYTRANS tool that comes with AutoCAD 2007 and later. You can type it in or find it under Tools->Cad Standards->Layer Translator… 1. Once open, pick the New button and type in each new layer name you want2. Pick a layer on…
In AutoCAD 2008 some of you might have noticed that you do not get a Startup dialog box and there is no longer a setting for it in the Options. Great, huh? In their wisdom, AutoCAD removed that ‘feature’ and now we are relegated to typing it at the command prompt, so type in STARTUP…
The H-Factor 