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…
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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 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…
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…
HydraCAD has a tool to generate a hanger point file to be loaded into a total station, and that file can include seismic brace locations as well. The command is located within the Create 3D Hangers command, found on the Hangers toolbar: Pick the Create 3D Hangers button to get to the Generate RTS Points…
HydraCAD’s templates have layers built into them, as you are already aware. These templates specify properties of the layers such as color, linetypes, plot status, and line-weights, among other things. Many users are content with using the layer properties we have set as defaults, but what if they want to change them? What if they…
Last year we added a new feature to HydraCAD that allows users to add Fittings, Valves and Backflows to the drawing in order that they may be picked up in AutoCalc and brought over to HydraCALC. The command is Add Calculation Fittings from the Calculation toolbar: Pick this command. This will display a dialog box…
My coworker Bill wrote this up, based on frequent requests for help with Pressure Reducing Valves: There are two types of PRV valves, so there are two ways to handle the calculation: Type 1 – Fixed PRV Three calculations are required for a factory set or field adjustable PRV: Static at PRV, System Demand at…
This idea is from long time customer and frequent good advice giver, Larry Howell at L & K Fire Protection in Marion, Illinois “I wanted to share windows file explorer libraries with the blog users, as I just discovered their usefulness. When choosing a place to save calculations and stock listing files, the default does…
The H-Factor 