The H-Factor

I consider myself a pretty good
touch typist, but it never fails that at some point in the day, I’ll press the
F1 key when I attempted to press ESC.  It could be my subconscious trying to tell
me I need some’ help’, but I choose to ‘suppress’ that notion.  Anyway, I wouldn’t be the
first one to suffer from fat fingers as I’ve heard of a user or two who
physically removed the F1 key from the keyboard to prevent the Help window from
popping up.

So, with a little help from Lynn
Allen of Autodesk, we have a solution which isn’t so
extreme nor difficult to setup.  Basically, the idea is to re-assign the F1 key
to some other command.  In this case, I’ll choose to change it to the Escape
key… well, it makes sense to me
anyway.

1. In AutoCAD 2007, click on
Tools » Customize »
Interface

2. In the Customize tab, select
acad.cui from the
‘Customizations in Main CUI’ section in the upper left
corner.

3. Select the + sign next to
‘Keyboard Shortcuts’

4. In the Command List
section found in the lower left corner, locate ‘Cancel’. If you have more than one, use
the one which has an Element ID of ‘ID_Cancel’ (you will see this on the lower
right section named ‘Information’.

5. Drag the Cancel command up to the
Keyboard Shortcuts>Shortcut Keys option.  This will add an option called
‘Cancel’ under the Shortcut keys. 

6. Select the new Cancel option
under Customizations in Main CUI.  You will now see a ‘Properties’
section in the lower right corner.  In there, under Access, you will see a
Key(s) option.  Select the ellipsis (…) and a new window will pop up.  On your
keyboard, press the F1 key then select the OK button.

7. Press OK again and you will be
all set.

If you actually need some AutoCAD help, you
can always type in HELP at the command prompt, or select it from the pulldown
menu.

And I think that’s everything, thanks for your time and I hope to
talk to you all again soon. George.

PS – Since this was my first contribution
to the H-Factor, now is probably the best time to bring this up.  After viewing
the photo of Art that appears on the left-hand side, I now realize I shouldn’t
get on his bad side since it’s clearly obvious he’s attended Hogwart’s
Academy… *rimshot*

Today we got a drawing that would crash because the designer had duplicate pipes right on top of each other. There is a quick way to check for and fix this.

The AutoCAD Express command OVERKILL will delete duplicate objects, among other things. Either type in OVERKILL at the command prompt or pick it from Express->Modify->Delete Duplicate Objects.

After you select your objects, this brings up the following dialog box:

Notice that you can have it ignore certain settings when deciding if objects are identical. I can't think of any situations right off the top of my head where I might use this, but no doubt there are some you might think of.

I don't recommend checking any of these options, so uncheck them all.

Play around with it and feel free to report anything you have learned about it.

Almost daily I get calls from customers saying that when they type in Open they don't get a dialog box but a command line asking for a file name, or their pipe sizes come in with the word -LENGTH- instead fo the actual length. AutoCAD variables are usually at fault.

Here are the most common offenders and their correct settings for this and similar problems.

The following list is taken from our Frequently Asked Questions page in the Updates and Support area of our website.

Variable:          Recommended Setting:     Problem:

     FILEDIA               1                             Dialogs do not appear when New, Open or Save is done

     ATTDIA                0                            Shows dialog every time block inserted

     ATTREQ              1                             Does not use attribute value you picked

     PICKADD              1                            Cannot pick more than one item

     ATTDISP           Normal                       Cannot see attributes, or can see all of them

     DRAGMODE        Auto                         Cannot see dragged objects

     PDMODE               1                            Points show up as X’s or other shape

     INSUNITS              0                            Blocks/Xrefs come in at the wrong scale

     INSUNITSDEFSOURCE   0                      Blocks/Xrefs come in at the wrong scale

     INSUNITSDEFTARGET   0                      Blocks/Xrefs come in at the wrong scale

We hear from a number of customers who have trouble with one of three related things in AutoCAD 2006:

1. A regen causes machine to lock up
2. Switching between layout tabs causes machine to lock up
3. Previewing a plot causes machine to lock up

While these three things are not limited to the 2006 version of AutoCAD, they do seem more prevalent on that release. Inevitably these problems all point to the graphics card. Either there is not enough memory on it or more likely the card is not compatible with AutoCAD 2006 or later.

An easy way to verify if your card is okay with AutoCAD is to visit their Graphics Hardware List and look up your card to see if it is fully approved. If it is not approved then I recommend that you get a new graphics card. Which one? any one that is Autodesk Certified will do you well. The graphics card we are using on our newer machines is the NVIDIA Quadro FX 1400 and yes, it does work well.