The H-Factor

If you have a dry system to calculate you might have gotten frustrated by AutoCalc setting up C=120 piping. A really quick way around this is to create new pipe types in HydraCALC/Utilities/Fittings that have the same properties as Sched-10 and Sched-40, but with a C-Factor of 100. That way you can set your schedule to these in AutoCalc and have them ready to go

Hydratec delivers four plot style files with our software: Hydragray.ctb, Hydracolor.ctb HydraLayerGray.ctb (all color dependent plot styles) and Hydragray.stb (named plot style). These are found in the HES\HydraCAD\Ver50\Programs\Version5# folder, depending on your version of the software. 

To use these files it will be necessary to copy them into the AutoCAD plot styles folder and then choose the one you want to use.

1. Use My Computer or Windows Explorer to navigate to the HES\HydraCAD\Ver50\Programs\Version57 (or Version56) folder
2. Locate the following highlighted files

        2a. Select the four files and then right-click and pick Copy

        3. Right-click on the AutoCAD command line and pick Options… (another little tip!)

       4. Pick the Plot and Publish tab. Then, pick the Plot Style Table Settings button

       5. Pick the Add or Edit Plot Style Tables button. This will open up the Plot Style Manager (STYLESMANAGER) and the folder where AutoCAD stores it's own plot styles. Right-click in that folder and pick Paste. Close the Plot Style folder. Pick OK to leave this dialog and OK again to close Options.

        6. To assign plot styles to either Model space or Layout tabs, right-click the tab you want to configure for and pick Page Setup Manager (PAGESETUP). If you are in Model space you will see *Model* as an option. If you are on a layout tab you will see each layout tab as options. Pick the option you want and pick Modify. You can then pick Plot style table (pen assignments) to select the one you want.

More, from AutoCAD's help:

Color Dependent Plot Styles

Uses color-dependent plot styles in both new drawings and drawings created in AutoCAD Release 14 or earlier. Color-dependent plot styles use the numbers from the AutoCAD Color Index to create a plot style table with a .ctb file extension. Each color is defined by a name or number ranging from 1 to 255. You can assign each color number to a different pen on a pen plotter to achieve different property settings in the plotted drawing. If this option is selected, a plot style is created for each color setting. You can also select this option by setting the PSTYLEPOLICY system variable to 1.

This setting is saved with the drawing. Once a drawing is saved with Use Color Dependent Plot Styles as the default, you can convert it to Use Named Plot Styles using the CONVERTCTB and CONVERTPSTYLES commands.

Named Plot Styles

Uses named plot styles in both new drawings and drawings created in earlier versions of AutoCAD. The drawing is plotted according to the property settings that you specify in the plot style definition. The plot style is defined in the plot style table attached to the layout. Named plot style tables are files with the file extension .stb. You can also select this option by setting the PSTYLEPOLICY system variable to 0.

This setting is saved with the drawing. Once a drawing is saved with Use Named Plot Styles as the default, you can convert it to Use Color Dependent Plot Styles using the CONVERTCTB and CONVERTPSTYLES commands. However, once you use CONVERTPSTYLES to convert a drawing from using a named plot style table to a color plot style table, you cannot use CONVERTPSTYLES to convert it back to using a named plot style table.

Doesn't make a lot of sense, does it?

Simply put, a ctb lets you map objects of a particular color to a pen. That pen can then have a color assigned to it. We have Red, White and Magenta object all mapped to Pen1, which is Black, for example, in the Hydracolor.ctb. In the Hydragray.ctb, the same thing happens except that the pens are all mapped to different shades of gray instead of colors.

The stb file lets you define a particular style and map certain layers to that. Styles can be mapped via the Layer Manager dialog box.

Next I will talk about how to edit those plot styles. Right now I am bushed from typing so much.

This is a quickie – Sometimes you want to refer to a point that just
doesn’t exist. In the example below there is no intersection between
the two lines drawn. Or is there?

Lets say you want to pick the Intersection of the two red lines in
that picture. When prompted for a point, pick the Intersection osnap.
Then hover over one of the lines. You will notice an ‘X…’ followed by
and ellipses (three dots). Pick the line. Now pick the other line.
AutoCAD will wait for you to pick two lines if you use the Intersection
osnap!

How nice of them.

If you use the same types of sprinkler heads in your jobs, consider setting them up in your template so they are available for each new job you start up.

1. Pick the Open command
2. Set files of type at the bottom to be Drawing Template (*.dwt). This will display all of our templates.
3. Pick either Hydracad.dwt or Hydramet.dwt (metric) to open it.
4. When the Drawing Setup dialog appears, choose your Scale/Sheet Size.
5. Pick SaveAs and save this template to a name of your choosing. Give it a description as well
6. Now define your sprinkler heads and Save the template when you are done

PS – You can also do this to preset the HydraCAD font style you want new drawings to use

Little known secret – Autodesk’s programmers hid ‘easter eggs’ in various versions of AutoCAD

In AutoCAD 2004:

• Start the Color dialog (e.g. with the _COLOR command).
• On the Index tab, Ctrl+Left click on the color box 152 (the "Autodesk blue").
• And, voila – Autodesk developer team presentation will run

In AutoCAD 2005:

There were no easter eggs in 2006 or 2007, making us think these were gone for good, but it appears that some folks at Autodesk do like having fun and they put an easter egg in 2008.

In AutoCAD 2008:

1. Set the rendering environment to the photometric lights mode (LIGHTINGUNITS=1 or =2) 
2. Display the Sun properties palette (the SUNPROPERTIES command) 
3. Click on the spyglass icon in the Sky properties field 
4. In the "Adjust Sun&Sky Background" dialog go to the "Sun angle calculator" field
5. Set the date to 23.3.2007 (AutoCAD 2008 release date) 
6. Click on the Time value and hit the Home key (resets time to midnight)
7. While holding the Ctrl key press twice the Down-arrow key
8. The presentation is launched, with music and all…

Once you have your palette(s) set the way you want them, you may want
to be nice and share them with others. This will require and Export
from you and an Import to them. But first you may want to combine them into a Group.

Right-Click on the tool palette and pick Customize Palettes… This will bring up a two-columned dialog box. On the left are the palettes in your AutoCAD – Note this is not a per-drawing thing – you only have ONE set of tool palettes. On the right you can right-click and pick New Group. Name this Group.

Now drag the palettes you want from the left into the right. Once this is done, right-click on the Group you created (or on the left right-click on just one palette if that is all you want to export) and pick Export. Give your Group a name and location you can later find. Copy this file to a network location or somewhere on another users computer. The file extension will be .xtp if you Exported a palette and .xtg if you Exported a Group.

To place the palettes on another computer, bring up the tool palette on their computer (CTRL+3) and pick Customize Palettes… and pick Import. Now right-click on the left or right depending on whether you are Importing a palette or a Group of palettes.

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 control. Scale, Rotation and Prompt for Rotation are found in the Insert section. In the General section you will find options like Color, Layer and Linetype to set specific for those (otherwise they adopt the current layer and color settings).

Create as many palettes as you like. Next I’ll show you how to group them and Export them to some one else’s machine

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 even though he didn’t type in an @ sign. He then said he was using Dynamic Input and it worked properly when DI was turned off. Hmmmm. So I went hunting in the SETVARs and found a few pretenders until I hit upon this one:

Controls whether pointer input uses relative or absolute format
for coordinates.

Weird! He set it to 1 and it worked as he expected, but this is contrary to the way AutoCAD sets it by default. I have no idea why it defaults to 0

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 make your own tool palettes:

1. Press CTRL+3 to open the tool palette (if not already open)
2. Right click on the tool palette and pick New Palette. Give it a name you like, i.e. My Blocks
3. Now open up the Design Center using CTRL+2
4. Navigate to the folder where you have the blocks you want added to the palette
5. Select a block and drag it to your palette and let go

That’s it! When you want to insert a block just drag it off the palette into your drawing or click on it.

Tomorrow I’ll talk more about controlling the insertion of block from the palette and how to save the palettes and transfer them to another machine.