WorldCAD Access

Ribbons and Tool Palettes

A reader asks:

I bought your ebook "Tailoring AutoCAD 2010 CUI." Great information and very clear. I am using AutoCAD Architecture 2010. I have some custom tool palettes with tools that I would like to get into the Ribbon.

I can't seem to find a way to link the tools from the host drawing into the Ribbon. Do you know of a way to do this? 

     - JSB

I am unfamiliar with Architecture, but your question fascinated me. I had never thought of this situation. I tried it out in AutoCAD 2010, and found it is not possible. Tools from the Tools palette cannot be placed in the Ribbon. Perhaps this is the reason that the Tools palette has its own customization command (Customize); it is independent of CUI.

  The only thing you could do is to customize the Workspace so that the appropriate Tools palette appears when you start AutoCAD and/or Architecture. To do this:

1. Start CUI command.

2. Open Workspaces node.

3. Open an existing workspace, or create a new one.

4. Over in the Workspace Contents area, open the Palettes node.

5. Open the Tools Palette node.

6. Down in the Properties section, click the Default Group droplist, and then choose the name of a Tools palette group.

To customize Tools palette groups, use the Customize command. It lets you group individual tabs (aka palettes) by named groups.

 

TIP: Acad 2010 Alt-Shortcuts

A lot of Windows software has Alt-key shortcuts to access items on dropdown menus. For example, you can hold down the Alt key, and then press F and S to save a document (File menu, Save item). 

AutoCAD 2010 turns off the menu bar, but today I noticed that Alt sequences still work, but in different areas from menu bars.

Press the Alt key, and tooltips appear near buttons in the Quick Access toolbar and tabs in the ribbon, as shown below:

Press key(s) to access the items, such as 1 for New Drawing and R for the Render tab.

Then AutoCAD displays tooltips with keyboard shortcuts for each item in the tab, such as XR for a button, VS for the droplist, VY for the panel extension, and VM for the options dialog box. (Shown below are the tooltips for the Render tab.)

Antz on Your AutoCAD 2010 Screen

One of AutoCAD 2010 undocumented commands is named after the movie "Antz" (In unrelated news, Autodesk's Maya software was the secondary computer graphics app used for the movie Antz.)

The Antz command controls some aspects of the ViewCube and SteeringWheel -- user interface elements that Autodesk also has in Maya. After loading gstest.Arx with AppLoad, enter the following command:

Command: antz
[ViewCube/SteeringWheel/Refresh]:

ViewCube 

Click on ViewCube part or [?]: 

Enter in an integer; this causes the ViewCube to rotate to that position, such as Top and BackTopRight -- kind of like a command-line interface to controlling the ViewCube and standard views in the drawing. It would be used by macros.

SteeringWheel

[Show wheels/SImulate operation]:

The Show wheels option displays all seven SteeringWheels on the screen. SImulate operation animates sample operations like Oribt and Dolly.

Refresh

This option doesn't seem to do anything.

(PS: GsTest.Arx contains many undocumented commands for testing the graphics system, which I have documented in the past.)

Linking Google Earth with AutoCAD

Scott Sheppard has a well written tutorial on Working with large models and the Google Earth Extension for AutoCAD in his It's Alive in the Lab blog. It turns out that models can be too big to publish to Earth, as described by the blog entry.

His entry also has a link to the user guide that teaches you how to:

• Import Google Earth images into AutoCAD.
• Publish 3D AutoCAD models to Google Earth.
• Drape Google Earth images onto AutoCAD 3D meshes.
• Attach time span information to models.

Reading Your CEO's Lips

How can you tell if you might be a victim of the economic climate change we are experiencing these days? Nicholas Carlson tells us phrases CEOs are using these days to gloss over the damage suffered from losing one's job:

• "We are living in a time of unprecedented economic challenges."
• "Our best chance of getting through this rough time." 
• "I made the decision to go very deep, very quickly so we won't have to do it again."
• "We are making aggressive moves to strengthen our leadership positions in [insert name of industry niche here] to competitively position our company for long-term growth."

Here's something I like to see: the ceo and other executives taking 10% pay cuts to at least make it appear that this economy-thing is affecting them as well. 

The above it's-not-your-fault reasons do ring more nicely than what human resources at AOL apparently said:

The people who were let go all knew why and it was because they weren't pulling their weight.

TIP: Open "Any" File with Acrobat Pro Ext 9

In working with the beta of Adobe's updated Acrobat 9 Pro Extended (nee Acobat 3D) I found that it can import many kinds of supported files -- even though it doesn't look like it can. Here's how:

1. From the File menu, choose Open.
2. In the "Files of Type" droplist, the only file types available are PDF and All Files.  Choose All Files.
3. Navigate to a folder that holds CAD files, such as STEP, PRT, or DWG. Select one and click Open.

Acrobat converts and opens the file. Using this method, I was able to view the Pro/E files provided by Via's Open Notebook initiative.

(Warning: IGES files take a long time to open, and can bog down the system.)

# of Ways to Quit AutoCAD

After Visa balloned the number of ways to shut down the operating system, I wondered how many ways there were to end AutoCAD -- especially after seeing the new Exit AutoCAD button in the new menu browser.

1. Quit command.
2. Exit alias.
3. Press Ctrl+Q.
4. Press Alt+F4.
5. From the menu browser, choose File | Exit.
6. From the menu browser, click the Exit AutoCAD button.
7. From the menu bar, choose File | Exit.
8. On the title bar, click the X button.
9. Right-click the title bar, and then choose Close from the shortcut menu.

TIP: Use Memory Cleaner with AutoCAD 2009

Working with AutoCAD 2009 the other day, it suddenly complained of a lack of memory. The Vista computer upon which I am running it has 2GB RAM and 92GB free disk space.

Earlier, I found a memory cleaner that frees up memory that's being hogged by applications. When I ran it, it reduced the amount of used RAM from around 1500MB down to the normal 1000MB. After that, AutoCAD was happy again.

I now run Memory Cleaner just about every day after using AutoCAD 2009. You can get a copy of the utility from www.vasileios.gr/freesoft. (Strictly speaking, it is a graphical frontend for Vista's own FreeMem command. Mr Vasileios also has a version for XP.)

TIPS: New in AutoCAD 2009

I downloaded the 30-day eval version of the AutoCAD 2009 shipping version, and found three more new items:

* SkyStatus - new sysvar.

* LayerDlgMode - toggles which layer UI is displayed by the Layer command: dlg box or palette.

* Text Find -- new toolbar.

TIPS: Adorable Toolbars

The redesigned toolbars in AutoCAD 2009 are just adorable -- cute and tiny. Just one problem: how to get them to show up when the ribbon is the user interface.

In the past, the usual shortcut manner of accessing toolbars was to right-click a toolbar. This worked well, because there were usually a couple toolbars open. With AutoCAD 2009, zero toolbars are open by default.

The new workaround is to right-click the Quick Access toolbar (found on the title bar), and then choose Toolbars | AutoCAD.

(There is another method that should work, but doesn't: when I choose View | Toolbars from the Big Red A, AutoCAD 2009 displays the Customize User Interface dialog box -- which is useless for toggling the display of toolbars.)

The other method is to click the Workspace button (moved to the status bar) and select "AutoCAD Classic" as the user interface. All the familiar menus and toolbars return. Yet another method is to use the -toolbar command, but for this command you have to know the name of the toolbar.

Bonus tip: The new, undocumented MenuBar system variable toggles the display of the menu bar. This lets you have the traditional (legacy) menu bar just below the title bar -- even with the ribbon UI active.