The H-Factor

So, imagine more than 7500 AutoCAD geeks in one place and you have a good idea of what Autodesk University is.

Now throw in Las Vegas as the setting and the Venetian Hotel and Casino as the venue and it all comes together. Four days, 12 – 15 hours a day.

I am in the midst of my 6th (7th?) AU and the amount of stuff that revolves around AutoCAD still amazes me. There are more that 300 courses being offered this year, many are programming courses but many are classes for CAD managers, end users, and your regular Joe. Speaking of Joes, Joe and the boys from Aero Sprinkler are here, as is Dan from Ahern, Ken from Victaulic and a number of other familiar faces.

If you’ve ever wondered how to get the most out of AutoCAD, how to plot, how to do 3D or any of that stuff, this is the place to be. If you can’t talk management into letting you come, you should know that you can download all the courseware from the Autodesk website as long as you are on the AutoCAD subscription plan.

More later in the week.

A Question today from a customer:

Where do I switch from plotstyles
ending with *.stb to *.ctb?

Answer, from Greg here at Hydratec:

The normal HydraCAD
template is set to use “ctb” files. Load this template for
ctb

The “Hydracad_stb”
template is set to use “stb” files. Load this template for
stb

Next, there is a setting in
the AutoCAD OPTIONS – This is from AutoCAD 2007

Pick the Tools pulldown, then pick Options

Pick the Plot and Publish
tab

At the bottom right
pick Plot Style Table Setting

Note: with this setting
the Hydracad_stb template should load the stb files for you to
see.

As promised, the second installment of our exciting series. This will cover up to AutoCAD 2000i. For later releases and more on all releases check out the Unofficial AutoCAD History Pages for all the info!

Release 12   June 1992

AutoCAD Release 12 drawings are compatible with AutoCAD Release 11

This was a big deal. It was the first time AutoCAD kept file compatibility across version. They said it would be the last.

The AutoCAD main menu has been eliminated. After initial configuration, AutoCAD displays the graphics screen. The Main menu tasks have been replaced by commands. For example, the NEW command starts a new drawing, and the OPEN command opens an existing drawing.

Remember the Main Menu?

AutoCAD supports a cursor menu that contains Osnap overrides and point filters

First time for the Cursor menu, too

The new BHATCH command was added. Commands with the "DD" prefix bring up dialog boxes.

There were actually dozens of enhancements in this version the last DOS-only version

Release 13   November 1994

The AutoCAD interface consists of standard Windows user-interface components, similar to those used in other Windows applications. You can customize the size and placement of most components.

This release was available in only a DOS version, but a year later a Windows version was also released. Windows standards started creeping into the DOS version, too.

A floating toolbar is a collection of commands organized by category, for example. Flyouts allow you to choose several different commands from the same place on the toolbar.

It was necessary to educate AutoCAD users (and all users in general) to Windows terminology.

Purge at any time

Before this, you could only PURGE if you had not drawn anything during a drawing session – you had to end the drawing and re-open it.

Nonuniformly Scaled 
Block, Drawing Preview, Multiline Text Editing,Spelling Checker, TrueType Font Support, Dimensioning Styles, Annotation, Leaders, Access to Properties

All new!

Release 14   November 1997

Paper Space Added

AutoSnap Added

Plot Preview Added

Realtime Zoom and Pan Added

Match Properties Added

First Windows version released

Template Drawings Added

Lots of good things in here

Release 2000   November 1999

Name predicted by yours truly

First Windows only version. DOS, Unix, Mac, Solaris versions dropped

Many new 3D commands added

Express Tools added

Layout tabs added

Ability to have more than one drawing open at a time!!!

Visual Basic support added

Release 2000i   July 2000

This release was rushed out to ‘do internet stuff’. It cemented the old tale that one should ‘never buy an odd numbered version of AutoCAD’

Notice that nifty new zoom features in 2007? The one where you feel like you are flying down a roller-coaster? Don’t care for it either, huh? Type in VTOPTIONS (View Transitions) and uncheck the first box – Enable animation for pan & zoom. Or play with the Transitions speed to maybe make it more to your liking.

I am sure many of you that are new to AutoCAD take many of the features of AutoCAD for granted, but those feature weren’t always there. Just like things that will come in the future are here yet. If you know what I mean.

For example – some milestones that look pretty primitive right now:

Version 1.2 (Release 2)   April 1983              
             
            
            

A Dimensioning facility added as an extra-cost option.

Yep – you had to pay extra to be able to dimension!

Version 1.3 (Release 3)   August 1983           
            
            
            

Layer-to-layer move via CHANGE command added.

Before this you would have to erase and redraw in the correct layer

Version 1.4 (Release 4)   October 1983

ZOOM Previous added

But, you only got one!

Version 2.0 (Release 5)   October 1984
             
            
            

Added dot/dash linetype capability (LINETYPE, LTSCALE, and LAYER Ltype commands).

Layers extended to have user-chosen names, with no limit to the number of layers in a drawing.

Version 2.5 (Release 7)   June 1986

Setting of color and linetype per entity, independent of the entity’s layer added.

This seems like it you couldn’t live without it, now

Version  2.6 (Release 8)   April 1987             
            
            

The ZOOM, PAN, VIEW, and REDRAW commands allowed to be used transparently.

Before this you have to end a command to Zoom – think about that for a moment.

Release 9   September 1987

The MULTIPLE command modifier  added.

The new DDATTE command added to permit Attribute editing to be done using a dialog box.

Crossing object selection boxes drawn as dotted lines.

This was the first release to use dialog boxes! But they were clunky DOS ones. Windows was not yet out.

Release  10    October 1988

This was the first release to use a 386 computer

Release 11    October 1990

Release 11 was crappy

More tomorrow!

AutoCAD’s FIND command is pretty handy in way you might not expect. Here’s an example:

Say you want to change a bunch of hangers from #11 to #16 –

1. Turn off all but the Hangers layer
2. Type in Find
3. Type in 11 in the Find text string field (do not enter the # sign – that is a wildcard character)
4. Type in 16 in the Replace with field (ditto on the # sign)
5. Pick the Select objects button on the upper right and select all the hangers. This ensures that you don’t replace the attributes of other objects like pipe sizes by accident.
6. Pick Replace All

Ta-da!

Another example – say you need to submit a drawing that does not have the ½ or ¼ symbols in it.
Turn off all but the pipe sizes and hangers and replace \ with _1/2 and [[] with _1/4 where _ is a blank space.