WorldCAD Access

Tip: Skins for AutoCAD 2009

Hidden away in AutoCAD 2009's Options dialog box is an item labeled Color Scheme. Currently there are just two choices, Dark (default) and Light. But I see this as a skinning mechanism and perhaps programmers more knowledgeable than myself might be able to create additional skins.

How about an architectural skin that's all right-angles and looks like glass. Or a mechanical one that is all curvey and looks like metal. A geo one that combines fluorescent orange with earth tones.

TIP: Trimming AutoCAD Drawings

A reader asks,

Which way I can trim part of the AutoCAD drawing and save it in new file?
- Victor, Russia

Like this:

1. Use the ExTrim command to trim the drawing with a polyline or other closed entity. (ExTrim is a Bonus tool included with AutoCAD .)
2. Use the WBlock command to save the result to a .dwg file. Alternatively, use the SaveAs command to save by another name.
3. Quit the drawing; do not save.

Victor replies: "But I can't trim the hatch."

You're right: the ExTrim command has problems with hatches. One solution is to explode the hatch. Another is to freeze the hatch layer, and then re-hatch the areas in the new drawing.

Follow Up: Annotative Text

Reader "bigamike" had a couple of questions about annotative text:

Q: Let's say I have a drawing (DWG 1) and I've used "Atext" in the model space and have viewports utilizing various scales in the paper space. Then the text automatically displays at the proper scale; any text not set as "Atext" or set with an indicator for scale of that particular viewport is not displayed. That's what I'm reading as the intended purpose.

A: You've got it partly right. Here's what happens to text:

* Normal non-annotative text is always displayed at any viewport scale, just as in AutoCAD 2007 and earlier. Its size changes as the viewport scale changes. (You can change existing non-annotative text to atext through the Styles toolbar or the Properties palette.)

* Annotative text is displayed when its scale matches the viewport's scale factor.

* Annotative text can have more than one scale factor assigned; it is displayed at more than one VP scale, but always looks the same size.

* A system variable (and a button on the new Infobar) lets you see all annotative text, no matter their assigned scale factors.

Q: If I have a drawing (DWG 2) in model space with "Atext" set with various scales. Then I Xref DWG 2 into the model space of DWG 3 and have various viewports of differing scales in the paperspace of DWG 3. Will the "Atext" work the same way xref'd as it does not xref'd?

A: Xrefs respect the settings of the viewport scale. If an xref contains several annotative objects at different scales, they are only displayed when the viewport scale matches. The scale of the xref insertion is ignored by atext.

For example, insert an xref at 1:1, and then set vp scale to 1:50. The 1:50 atext is displayed; the 1:20 atext is not; the non-annotative text is always displayed.

Q: I am looking forward to this release of AutoCAD. I work in the civil industry and sadly we don't use Civil3D. But aside from that, the Atext and multi-leader aspects of 2008 appear to be potentially very valuable additions. We've had drawings of highway intersections that overlap and are oriented in different directions and scales and these new tools should help us a lot in regards to those situations. The xref aspect really concerned me at first.

Another question. I'm assuming that you can save atext styles, and have them preset in DWT [template] files?

A: The Style dialog box has been modified, and now accommodates the annotative property. So, yes, Annotative styles can be stored in template files. In fact, the default DWT files for AutoCAD now include Standard and Annotative as two defaults.

Q: Oh wow!!!! I knew that was available in Civil3D but didn't know if it would get ported down to base AutoCAD. Whoo hoo. That will be much appreciated! Does this work with dimensions as well, or should I say does the annotative aspect of the text work with dimensions as well?

A: The annotative property applies to dimensions, multileaders, tolerances, hatch patterns, blocks, and attributes, and separately to linetype scales. In short, any object that's scale-dependent. Most commands and dialog boxes that relate to those entities have been modified to allow for annotation.

Futher Notes

Another feature that may be useful to you is the under-reported Orientation property. It keeps text properly oriented when the view is rotated. Works with text, attributes, and blocks. For example, use the 3dOrbit command to rotate the viewpoint any way you want, and oriented text is displayed facing you; regular text will be off at some angle.

Blocks and attributes can be oriented independently, so the block could orient but the attribute text not, and vice versa. Or both together. That could lead to some interesting situation, when you consider that a block can be anything.

(I notice, however, that the oriented text looks coarser after righting itself to face you. Another point: orientation is not new to AutoCAD, because the LsNew command did it for many releases, before being pulled from AutoCAD 2007.)

There is an interesting effect when changing vp scales. The multi-scale atext changes its size, and then the smooth zoom occurs.

I think that atext will be like paper space: it will take users a while to figure it out.

AutoCAD 2008: New Direct, Interactive Moving

AutoCAD 2006 and 2007 feature a hidden shortcut that let you copy and move objects directly -- without using the Move/Copy commands or the tedious grips editing method. You select an object, and then drag it by the right mouse button. When you let go, a shortcut menu appears that lets you chose from Copy Here, Move Here, Paste as Block, or Cancel.

AutoCAD 2008 does the same thing. But if you use the left mouse button, it moves the object (without the shortcut menu appearing):

1. Select an object.
2. Grab it on a non-grip location with the left mouse button (avoid the grips).
3. Begin dragging the object. Notice that there is a slight delay, and then the object begins moving with the cursor.
4. Let go of the mouse button. The object is in its new location.

You can benefit from learning more about AutoCAD 2008 in my "What's Inside? AutoCAD 2008" ebook, available for US$16.50 from www.upfrontezine.com/wia8. Plus, you receive a free update of this ebook -- which I am working on right now -- with added information after AutoCAD 2008 ships.

New Longest Command Namein AutoCAD History!

If nothing else, you may want to upgrade to AutoCAD 2008 just to be able to type in the longest command name in the 25-year-old software's history:

customerinvolvementprogram

At 26 letters, it's as long as the alphabet! Oh, and its an undocumented command, as well. It's purpose is to get to you agree to allow Autodesk to anonymously collect information about your computer and use of its software.

Painful: Tracing 3D to Create 2D!

A reader writes:

I have a 3D model as reference file and from the viewport in Paper Space where we do our 2D drawings. It's just like we're tracing the lines to produce the 2D drawings. A portion of the drawing that we would like to show is in an angle plane and Clip Command only works perpendicular to the camera view. How do you clip angle?

This method of tracing the 3D to create 2D in paper space for me looks more like going backwards, because we're double drafting. Is there a way to save time with re-tracing these lines from 3D. Can I just export the 3D file as 2D?
- AL

Oh my goodness. You should NOT be tracing the 3D models to produce 2D drawings! The whole point to MCAD software -- like Solid Edge, SolidWorks, Inventor, and so on -- is to automatically generate 2D plans from 3D models. These 2D plans update themselves automatically when the 3D model is changed.

I recommend you download (or get the CD) of each vendor's demo version to see which one works best for you, and then make the purchase. The software is typically US$5000 each (plus annual maintenance) but will probably pay for itself in the first year.

AutoCAD has a poorly-documented triple set of commands for doing this properly. These commands generate 2D "profiles" of 3D models, including hatching of sliced open parts and hidden lines for hidden edges: SolView, SolDraw, and SolProf.

You shouldn't be using AutoCAD for this work at all. But if your drawings are simple, then the SolView-SolDraw-SolProf trio might be sufficient.

If you are using AutoCAD 2007, then it has the FlatShot command that you might find useful. It creates a 2D profile of the 3D model at the current viewpoint angle.

A reader asks:

How can I get freehand style linetypes rather than the dead straight? Someone did this for me about 100 years ago and I need an 'artisan' look for a set of drawings.
- I.P.

If you want the entire drawing to look handdrawn, there is software called Squiggle that converts drawings into a variety of hand-drawn looks. 15-day trial at Palisades Research.

10-Year Plans

Communist leaders used to have their five-year plans, where their planned economies would make Great Leaps Forward(tm). Except that the economies didn't. The problem with perfect plans, of course, is that humans are involved, as noted in the movie, "The Minority Report."

One of today's headlines is, "Gates: Beating Asia Piracy to Take 10 Yrs." (It was wrong for Reuters reporter Ben Hirschler to use the word "beat" in his headline, which implies that piracy would be eliminated in Asia.)

In more detail, Gates claims that it will take a decade to bring rates of priacy in India and China down to North American rates. It reminds me of Autodesk ceo Carol Bartz's claim that converting most 2D users to 3D will take ten years.

Leaders and their 10-year plans.

The real reason behind reducing piracy and 2D use is to make more money, naturally. Wanting to make more money 's human nature, just as it is to spend less money. Everybody loves a bigger paycheque and everyone loves a sale. Hence piracy and 2D use will continue. It's because humans are involved.

And the reason for declaring 10-year time horizons is to create deadlines so far in the future that by 2016 no one will remember (hopefully). And remember this 10-year prediction follows other failed predictions by Gates, who should stop making prophecies: one month to fix all security problems in Windows; all spam eliminated by this year; tablet PCs to be the most popular PC this year; and 640KB RAM sufficient for PCs.

TIP: Backing Up Backups

Most software programs, include CAD, provide automatic backups. As you work on drawings, the software silently and automatically saves your drawings every 10 minutes or so. This is fabulous, because you will lose only 10 minutes of work (at most) when Windows crashes. (I set other, less intensive software, such as word processing, to automatically backup every 1 minute.)

The drawback, however, is that the backup files are stored on the same hard drive as the program (and probably your original drawing files). That's the default setting, because the programmers can only assume your computer has a single hard drive. Should that hard drive break, you lose your orignal drawings and the backup copies.

The solution is to tell the software to store backup copies on another drive. For me, that's an external hard drive hooked up to my desktop computer through a high-speed FireWire (or USB 2) connection. I like to have external hard drives for two reasons:

* If my computer screws up (ie, Windows really mucks itself up, or the internal hard drive fails), I can simply move the external hard drive to another computer (even a notebook computer), and keep working.

* If a disaster befalls the office, I can easily grab the external hard drive(s) and remove them from the area.

Alternative approach: some firms store the original drawing files on a central server computer, and keep the backups on the local desktop computer. In any case, go into the software's backup options (probably found under Tools | Options) and change the location of the drive on which backups are stored.

Should you worry about hard drives breaking? Yup. Amongst the seven computers (and 11 hard drives) in our office, we typically have one hard drive go each year. Some people have expressed the conjecture that external drives break down faster than internal hard drives due to heat, because the external ones are not ventilated well enough.

29 Flaws in CUI

AutoCAD 2006 made a huge change in the customization of toolbars, menus, mouse buttons, and so on. The new environment is called "Customize User Interface," or CUI for short.

Working with CUI for my "Tailoring AutoCAD 2006" e-book, I found dozens of bugs and irritants. Here's my list:

1. The TbCustomize command prevents tampering with the user interface. It disables the Customize and Toolbar commands, but not the CUI command. (By disabling the Customize command, it prevents access to tool palette groups, and locking out Toolbar makes no sense, because it is an alias for CUIl.)

2. Commands are listed illogically:
- some are listed by name, as they should be, such as AcisIn.
- some commands are missing, such as AcisOut.
- some commands are listed by a description, such as 3D Pan, instead of 3dPan.
- several commands are listed by the same description, such as "Center" for Zoom Center, Ellipse Center, Center osnap, and DimTEdit Center. You can only tell which is which by examining the macro.
- some commands are listed with an option first, such as "4 Viewports," instead of Vports 4.

3. The Customize User Interface dialog box is hugely complex, so it is strange that the Find command is "hidden" in shortcut menus, instead of on the dialog box's toolbar.

4. CUI loads slowly. It takes 10 seconds to open the dialog box on my 2.4HGz computer with 1GB RAM and 300GB of diskspace. When debugging macros, this 10-second delay really cuts into ROI [return on investment]. Makes me pine for the days of editng the acad.mnu file with Notepad.

5. CUI is supposed to control how toolbars appear when AutoCAD 2006 starts, but most of the options don't work.Properties such as Orientation and Default Location have no effect.

6. When creating a new toolbar, it does not appear until you exit CUI and then explicitly open the toolbar. Perhaps this bug is linked to the bug in #5.

7. When working with toolbars, CUI displays a non-operating mockup of the toolbar. All it does is display buttons that make a depressing motion; nothing else works, mockingly.

8.The Description area has incorrect wording. For example, the description for a toolbar's Name is: "Displays the name of the menu item." It should say, "Displays the toolbar name in the tooltip."

9. Ironically, there is no icon for the CUI command, nor does it appear on any toolbar. Related to this, numerous other commands also lack icons.

10. You can no longer drag commands from CUI to the Tool Palettes -- useful for adding commands to the palettes. No commands can be dragged out CUI to anywhere, as was possible before.

11. The Customize command should be an alias for CUI; instead, it displays a stripped-down version of the Customize dialog box that deals only with Tool Palette groups and their import/export.

12. AutoCAD 2006 uses eleven commands to do the work of 2:

* (1) CUI displays the the Customize User Interface dialog box.
* (2) CuiExport, (3) CuiImport display the Transfer tab of the Customize User Interface dialog box; could be replaced by CUI +1.
* (4) CuiLoad, (5) CuiUnload, (6) MenuLoad, and (7) MenuUnload perform the same action as the Load Partial Customization File button in the Customize User Interface dialog box.
* (8) Toolbar, (9) TbConfig, and (10) Workspace Edit are hardwired aliases for CUI.
* (11) Menu opens .cui and .mnu files.

Of the eleven, only CUI and Menu are unique.

13. A bug that has existed since menu macros were introduced: macros start with two ^C but should start with three, as in ^C^C^C, to handle deeply nested commands, such as PEdit. IntelliCAD uses 3 ^Cs, why not AutoCAD?

14. Several toolbar options were relocated from the Customize dialog box to the hugely-complex Options dialog box; why not keep thiings together in the CUI dialog box?

15. When selecting a .bmp file to use as an icon, CUI does not immediately display it. Instead, you need to scroll to the end of the list of icons, and then select it.

16. CUI remembers every .bmp file you load for icons, so if you are just playing around, be forewarned that there is no way to remove icons you don't want.

17. When creating a new icon in CUI, you cannot start with a blank icon. You have to select an existing icon, erase its bitmap image, and then draw the new one.

18. The Button Editor lacks a floodfill tool. Filling areas with color requires picking every pixel.

19. When working with menus, the Properties pane lists the Large Image option, even though they are not used with menus.

20. Menus seem to show shortcut keystrokes automatically -- sometimes. The pattern seems to be that Ctrl-keys are included automatically, but F (function) keys are not; they have to be hand-coded.

21. CUI displays a list of shortcut keystrokes. Attempting to print the list crashes AutoCAD. This bug was not fixed in Service Pack 1. Update Autodesk found the problem occurs when a Web browser other than Internet Explorer is the default browser.

22. When creating new keyboard shortcuts, you cannot right-click and then select New Keyboard Shortcut from the menu -- as with most other customizations in CUI. Instead, the menu shows "New Temporary Override."

23. Buttons cannot have macros added from scratch. The Properties pane is blank until you drag a dummy command into it, and then edit that command's macro.

24. When you drag a command onto a button, the button's existing macro is replaced; there is no undo.

25. As with toolbar properties, the Workspace properties for toolbars have no effect.

26. Not all customizations are centralized in CUI yet. Among the missing are aliases and tool palettes.

27. While the documentation implies that only .lsp files can be added to the LISP section, you can include .vlx and other files as well.

28. Speaking of documentation, it is dismal for CUI -- although I do understand the frustration of documentation writers working with unfinished software.

29. The .cui file, while in ASCII XML format, is harder to read and edit than the previous .mnu format. Indeed, comments in the .cui file warn agains editing it directly, an irritant to third-party developers.

Other flaws have already been reported by users and fixed by Autodesk -- such as the .cui file becoming corrupt.