The H-Factor

Many of us use Copy and Paste in AutoCAD. Often when using Paste, we try to eyeball and line up the block we are pasting, or use OSNAPS.

But there are better ways!

The Edit drop down menu in AutoCAD has more than one command to copy and paste:

 Cut is cut

-but-

Copy is copy without a specific base point. This makes it hard to align and place properly

Copy with Base Point allows you to select a base point, making it easy to line up the block between sheets or other objects

Paste asks for a placement point, you have to eyeball it or make sure you used Copy with Base Point so you can line up properly

Paste as Block brings in all that was Cut or Copied as a single entity

Paste to Original Coordinates is handy, as it does not require that you specify a base point. Say you need to copy the plan view of a stairway detail from one drawing to another, and naturally, you want to keep the valve and piping arrangement in the same relative position on each drawing. This is where Paste to Original Coordinates comes in handy

Note: You can also use the Copy with Base Point command from the same drop down. Select a common reference point, like the corner of the stairway. Then use the Paste command and you will see that your cross-hairs reflect that point.

In even a regular-sized drawing it can be hard to determine what is a main, what is a wall, what is a partition, etc. Some people use the Pretty Pipes command to help with this, but that has a few drawbacks, especially when it makes it hard to select objects.

Lineweights can make that easier, it updates automatically as new piping is drawn and it does not add any drawing elements, making selection easier.

 In this small drawing, note the unremarkable look of the Lines and Mains at left:

With Lineweights turned on, it looks like this:

The lines and mains pop out and are easy to recognize. Underground and Armovers also stand out, if present.

Lineweights are defined by layer. Opening up the Layer palette, note the Lineweight column.

These are the default HydraCAD layers, as defined in our templates and layer scripts. If you do not see the Lineweights defined, you may be using an old template.

 The LWDISPLAY command applies these Lineweights to the drawing elements.

Type it in, and answer ON to see the lineweights, or select the Show / Hide Lineweight button on the bottom of the AutoCAD screen.

If you do not see this option, select the Customization button at far right and select LineWeight to turn it on

 

HydraCAD and AutoCAD both have methods of creating typing shortcuts/aliases to commands. HydraCAD does not deliberately use the same key sequences as AutoCAD. I say usually, because sometimes AutoCAD adds new shortcuts which share our Aliases. We don’t change ours to stay out of their way. HydraCAD aliases take precedence because of the way each program is loaded.

The AutoCAD aliases can be easily changed. Many people (including myself) change ‘C‘ to be COPY instead of the default CIRCLE, for example.

The AutoCAD aliases are stored in the ACAD.PGP file in the \Program Files\Autodesk\AutoCAD 20##\UserDataCache\en-us\Support folder, where ## is the last two digits of the version of AutoCAD you are using. You can best edit this file by using the AutoCAD Express tool Command Alias Editor from the Ribbon or dropdown menu, or by typing in ALIASEDIT.

HydraCAD aliases are in a different file, named HC_ALOAD.LSP, located in the \HES\HydraCAD\Ver50\Programs\Version## folder, where ## is the version of HydraCAD you are using. It can also be customized by using a text editor (like NOTEPAD), but you must be more careful when editing this file than with the ACAD.PGP, as ours uses actual programming language.

Opening HC_ALOAD.LSP, you will see we use LISP functions to create them.

Example:

You want to use the key sequence RT as an alias of ROTATE. RT already used by HydraCAD for Roomtags, so you will have to Add RT to the AutoCAD alias list (ACAD.PGP) and either remove it from the HydraCAD list or rename the existing HydraCAD sequence to something else.

Before you open the HC_ALOAD.LSP file, save a backup copy of it, in case something goes wrong.

Locate the RT alias in the HydraCAD list. Now, change RT to be RMT. Save the file. Next time you open AutoCAD, RMT will start the Roomtags command.

Open the ACAD.PGP file using the express tool mentioned above.

Scroll down to the Rs. Notice that RT is not being used for any other AutoCAD command.

Pick the Add button. Type in RT in the Alias field and begin to type ROTATE or scroll through the list of commands available in the AutoCAD Command: field.

Pick OK. Pick OK again. Close AutoCAD/HydraCAD and reopen. Your alias should work now.

PS – A complete list of HydraCAD aliases can be found by picking the List of HydraCAD Shortcuts command from the HydraCAD pulldown menu. You can edit this file to update this list to reflect your changes. Future updates will probably replace this file and the HC_ALOAD.LSP file, so make sure you have copies of your work to bring back if necessary.

A Customer asked me the following question (paraphrased):

Q: I am currently designing an apartment bldg using sidewall sprinklers for the top level. And this is also a BIM project so our piping is imported into Navis Works. If you look at the attached sidewall 2D photo. You will see that I have the sidewall attached to piping inside of the wall. (this is so HydraLIST will list the fitting as a 1 x ½ CPVC sprinkler elbow). However in my model the piping and sprinkler are hidden inside of the wall. … (I would like to) make the sidewall sprinkler protrude from the wall so it is visible in the Navis Model.

I removed a wall panel in Navis so you can see the pipe and sprinkler in the attached sidewall model photo:

A: The solution here is not to modify the piping arrangement in 2D so that the 3D model looks the ‘right’ way. The key is to instead modify the 3D Sprinkler Head Block. When you define a sprinkler head, one is already chosen for you as a default. You have the option to specify which 3D head will be used:

If you pick ‘Choose 3D Head Block <‘, you will be directed to the \HES\HydraCAD\Ver50\Programs\HEADS\3dHeads folder. There, you will find two or three dozen 3D heard representations. These are assigned to each defined sprinkler head type when created. They show in the 3D model generated when you raise the building up.

Find the representation closest to the head style you want and then open that drawing directly in HydraCAD. Modify it as you see fit and do a SaveAs to give it a new name (so you don’t replace any of our default values).

There are two overhauled commands in AutoCAD 2020 that are used pretty often. One of the is the PURGE command. The other is INSERT, which I will mention in a future post.

A customer had trouble getting the rings and other elements of hangers to show up properly when they ran 3D Hangers. I am still not sure how the problem occurred, but the gist is the hanger rings were somehow defined as other objects. My co-worker, Bill McKenna, suggested that might be the problem, so I used the new Purge command to track them down. Here is how I figured out which blocks were mis-defined and fixed them.

In the drawing, I typed in PURGE. It takes a little while to load up, because it does a great deal of drawing scanning

Note the selection tree that shows up. Kind of cool.

I picked Find Non-Purgeable Items to see what Blocks might be candidates 

I then picked the + next to Blocks. 

Many of the first few defined blocks really stand out; 60 is the part number category for Hangers, making these likely candidates.

Picking the first one shows what is wrong right away. The hanger ring (10 being 1 inch) is somehow defined as a ski-pole. The solution is to erase all seven ’60’ blocks (one for each size) and purge them out. Except, they cannot be purged because they are inserted in the drawing.

So, I turned all the layers on using the AO (all on) command. I then type in DL for Delete Layer and selected one of the ski-poles inserted where the 3D hanger ring should be. This deleted over 4000 items from the HCAD-3d_Hangers layer.

Now I could to a PURGE again and be able to select the mis-defined blocks and purge them.

i checked each of the seven ‘bad’ blocks and picked Purge Checked Items. I was now able to create the 3D Hangers properly.

AutoCAD has a Dark Color theme and a Light theme. In all, there are four basic configurations. Dark and Light, regular and large buttons. These are accessed via the OPTIONS command (type in or right-click on the Command: line). They are found on the Display tab.

The default is the dark theme with regular-sized buttons, which some find hard to read, so they choose the large buttons. Or they choose Light with either large buttons or not. These four look like:

Light Theme / Large Buttons

Light Theme / Regular Buttons

Dark Theme / Large Buttons

Dark Theme / Regular Buttons

For a large monitor, the large buttons work best. For a laptop, I’ve found the regular size to be best, as the large are too large to all fit. Personally, I recommend large dark over regular dark, as I find the regular dark to be almost unreadable. If you are going to go ‘regular’, I recommend the Light theme.

Also notice the Ribbon buttons do not get larger by selecting Large.

From a Customer: “Where is the setting to get the inch prefix when I am using the change pipe diameters?  Every time I have used this command with 2019 it takes away the inch suffix when I select a pipe size to change.”

Answer: The place to set it is there when you start a new drawing. You can also access it by picking HydraTools->Options->Access Drawing Unit Setup:

Note: This does not have anything to do specifically with 2019, but it can be easily changed, more or less permanently.

Put a “ in the Suffix field

The next time you go up to 3D and back to 2D, the suffixes will be updated to reflect your choice.

Note: The Prefix option is more or less only used by our Metric friends in Europe. They sometimes use it to put a nominal diameter symbol in front of the pipe diameter, i.e. ø25

Also: This command can also be used to change the drawing scale if you set it up wrong

You might be in a situation where you want to move some riser nipple tags and want to keep them together, so that they line up nicely. There is a tool to do this with pipe tags and hanger tags, but not with riser nipple tags. Which is where Grips come in. Grips have dozens of uses, but most people only use them for one or two things. Here is how to use them to move multiple items together.

Example – Move three riser nipple tags together

Step 1: Select riser nipple tags. You can do this one at a time or by using any selection method:

Step 2: Hold the SHIFT key down and pick the grip associated with the text of each riser nipple. The grip will turn Red after selection. This i known as a ‘hot‘ grip. Release the SHIFT key after you have selected the three grips:

Step 3: Pick any one of the hot (red) grips. You will notice that all three riser nipple tags move in unison with the one selected:

Step 4: Pick the new placement point. Note in the example that the tag is being moved to the other side of the main:

Step 5: Hit the ESC key to cancel the grips. You are done!