AU Early Bird Discount and a Dynamic Blocks Tip

Are you all registered for AU? If not, and you're planning on it, you might want to do it today -- the $500 early bird discount expires at the end of the day. If you go, be sure to find me to say hi -- I love meeting blog readers. :-)

I learned something new about Dynamic Blocks this week, so I thought I'd share it with you. You probably know that you can use the Properties palette to change the custom properties of inserted dynamic blocks (like picking an option from a lookup table, or entering a value for a linear parameter). But did you know that you can use the Properties palette to change those settings before you pick your insertion point?

Try it: Begin to insert a block (from a menu, tool palette, or with the insert command), but before you pick your insertion point, open up the Properties palette. Look for the section called "Custom" -- this holds the parameter-based properties for your block. Change one of them, and watch the preview of your block update before you place it.

Anyway, I thought that was a pretty neat tip. I hope some of you find it useful!