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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…