LT Unlimited

Control Ribbon Height

In AutoCAD LT 2009 and 2010, all the built-in ribbon panels are the same height, so no matter which tab you're on, the overall height of the ribbon remains the same.

But if you make your own panels, you get to decide how tall they are by controlling the number of rows you use and the size of the icons. If you want a long skinny ribbon panel with just one row of tools, you can do it.

When the ribbon is undocked or floating, you can easily resize it just like you would any other palette. But when it's docked (as it is by default), changing the height is a little different.

In LT 2009, the ribbon automatically resized itself to accommodate the largest panel on the tab, whether it was one row tall or many. You didn't have any control over how much real estate it actually took up. In LT 2010, though, a new variable was introduced to keep the ribbon at a constant height, independent of the size of the panels.

This variable is called RIBBONDOCKEDHEIGHT, and it can be set anywhere between 0 and 500, where the number represents the height of the ribbon in pixels. The default is 100, which is a good size for accommodating the built-in set of panels. If you have a tabs with smaller or larger panels, though, you might want to experiment with different heights until your layout looks the way you want it to. (Note: the ribbon won't ever get smaller than necessary to accommodate the largest panel on the tab. So setting RIBBONDOCKEDHEIGHT to 50 doesn't have much effect on the built-in configurations, since the panels themselves are larger than 50 pixels.)

And if you'd rather just have the ribbon resize itself automatically, set the variable to 0.

Contextual Ribbon Tab States

When the ribbon was introduced in LT 2009, it included a limited number of contextual tabs, which are tabs that appear only when a certain command is active or a certain object is selected.

LT 2010 expanded on this idea, adding more built-in states and enabling you to personalize several others. Here's how it works.

In the CUI Editor, under the Ribbon node, you'll find a list of possible Contextual Tab States. Most of them are in the format "<Object> selected", although there are a few "<Environment> mode" and "<Command> in progress" states as well.

For each state, you can assign one or more tabs to appear, either as a separate tab or merged with whatever tab is active at the time.

As an example, let's take a look at the "Block Editor mode" state.

It has two tabs in it, the "Block Editor Contextual Tab" and the "Block Editor - Close Contextual Merged Tab". The first tab is set to display type "full". That means that it gets a separate green-shaded tab next to the others (like Home and Annotate), and hides its tools when it's not in use.

 The second contextual tab, though, is set to "merged", which means it gets tacked on to the end of the active tab. Notice that the "Close Block Editor" panel is still visible in the image below, even though the main Block Editor tab isn't active.

A bunch of states are pre-populated with tabs:

• Block Editor mode
• DGN Underlay selected
• DWF Underlay selected
• External Reference selected
• Image selected
• PDF Underlay selected
• Reference Editing mode
• Table cell(s) selected
• Test Block mode
• Text Editor in progress

But the rest are ready and waiting for you to define your own. And fortunately, doing so is pretty simple. All you need to do is drag-and-drop the tab you want onto the appropriate state. So I can drag the Home tab over to the "Arc selected" state...

...and like magic, the Home tab appears when I select an arc, no matter what tab was current before.

(Yes, it does actually appear twice. No big deal, since the green one will go away as soon as the arc is deselected.)

You can also easily create your own tabs to further personalize the tools in your contextual tab states. Just right-click on the Tabs node, select "New Tab", and drag-and-drop panels onto it until you have the tools you need. Then drag-and-drop your new tab onto a contextual tab state.

For example, I made a new tab that I called "Modify Properties", and added the Modify and Properties panels to it. (Creative naming, hmm?) I also set its Display Type property to Merge, so that it would combine itself with whatever tab is active, and dropped it into the "Circle selected" state. Now see what happens when I select a circle:

See how the two panels I added to my contextual tab just appear next to whatever panels belong to teh actual current tab? Pretty neat, isn't it? It's a super-quick and easy way to make the ribbon work for you.

Sticky Ribbon Panels in LT 2010

In AutoCAD LT 2009, you could drag panels off a ribbon tab to let them float in the drawing area, sort of like a toolbar. But when you changed tabs, the panel would disappear -- probably defeating your purpose in dragging it off the ribbon in the first place.

But in LT 2010, one of the many improvements to the ribbon is that dragging a panel off its tab makes it "sticky". This means that it'll remain visible no matter which tab is active. In this image, I've pulled the Draw panel off the Home tab, but I can still see it even though the Annotate tab is active.

When you want to put the panel back, just use the "Return Panels to Ribbon" button identified by the red arrow below.

The bars to the left and right of the main panel appear when you hover over it. You can click-and-drag them to move the panel around after you've pulled it off the ribbon. Also, in addition to the "return to ribbon" button, there's a button to toggle the panel orientation, so the panel name appears below the tools instead of next to them.

Sticky ribbon panels...just another one of the "little" things in LT 2010 that make a big difference in productivity.

P.S. Be sure to check back tomorrow for some big AutoCAD & LT news! (And no, it won't just be about the 2010 products.) :-)

LT 2009 Tip #1 -- Search Menu Browser

I do plan to keep up with the general LT tips (I know not everybody has 2009 yet), but this latest version does have lots of new stuff that's worth talking about. So here's the first in a series of tips on new LT features!

Search the Menu Browser
The keyboard shortcut ALT+S will put you right into the search bar of the Menu Browser, so you can start typing your search term without ever moving the mouse. Then you can use the up/down arrow keys or your mouse to select the desired command.

Preview Your Selection

New in AutoCAD 2006 was the ability to "preview" selected objects -- in other words, if you hover over an object, it gets a little thicker and dashed so you can see that it would be selected if you left-clicked there. There are lots of options to control this display; experiment to see what combination suits you best.

To globally turn this on or off, go to Tools-->Options-->Selection tab, under "Selection Preview".

To see more options, click the "Visual Effects Settings" button. Now you can set previewed objects to dashed, thickened, or both, and set the "area preview" (your crossing and window selections) color and effects.

Still not happy with how it works? Click the "Advanced Options" in the Visual Effects box. Now you can choose which objects are affected by the selection preview. Personally, I exclude xrefs and objects on locked layers from the preview. Many people exclude hatches as well, since they can be a little distracting if they're large and are constantly flashing on and off.

One final tip for taking advantage of the Selection Preview effects: If you have two objects on top of each other, and hover over them, one will highlight. If you'd rather select the other, use CTRL+Space. This cycles through all objects available for selection. I find this to be the biggest advantage of the selection preview.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For the command-line fans out there, here are all the system variables that control the above-referenced effects:

• SELECTIONPREVIEW
• PREVIEWEFFECT
• SELECTIONAREA
• WINDOWAREACOLOR
• CROSSINGAREACOLOR
• SELECTIONAREAOPACITY
• PREVIEWFILTER
  

Input History Mode

Most AutoCAD keyboard junkies (including me) learned a long time ago that hitting the "up" arrow retrieved the last thing you typed. (Handy for correcting typos!) With the advent of dynamic input, though, that seemed to have disappeared. Enter the system variable INPUTHISTORYMODE.

This is a slightly complicated variable, dealing with the recent coordinate input as well as recent command input. It can have any value between 0 and 15. The default is 15, so hitting the up arrow displays recent coordinates if you're in a command, and recent commands if you're not. Recent Input sections are also displayed in shortcut menus and the dynamic tooltip (if it's on). Values from 1-14 control various combinations of shortcut menu and command line displays; see the help file if you're curious. Setting INPUTHISTORYMODE to zero means that no recent input is displayed, and when you hit the up arrow, you get the last thing you typed.

Personally, I set it back to 0 as soon as I realized this variable existed.

Customize Places List

When you open a file from AutoCAD, there’s a blue bar along the left, known as the Places list, with icons for My Documents, Favorites, FTP, etc. You probably see it every day. But did you know you can customize those shortcuts?

Simply select the folder in the explorer view, left-click, and drag it over to the Places list. Alternatively, right-click in the Places list and select “Add current folder.” You can rename the new shortcut by right-clicking on it and selecting Properties.

If you don’t like your changes, right-click on the icon and select Remove, or “Restore Standard Folders” to put it back to normal.

This doesn’t affect any other programs – actually it doesn’t appear to work at all in any other programs, which is too bad. If you know of an exception, send it on in.

TAB to find Commands & Variables

If you remember the first few letters of an AutoCAD command or variable, but have forgotten the rest, the TAB key can help. Just type what you do remember, and hit TAB repeatedly until the one you want pops up.

(Another tip for 2006+ users...)

Combine Multiple Tooltips

Setting the variable TOOLTIPMERGE to 1 (the default is 0) allows you to show more than one line in the dynamic display. For example, when drawing a line, you can see both “Specify next point” and distance entry boxes. It’s convenient for showing text that appears on the command line, but that gets overridden by the dynamic distance display.

(This tip is for 2006+)

TOOLTIPMERGE = 0

TOOLTIPMERGE = 1

Command Options

When executing a command, options are accessible in three ways: at the command line, in the Dynamic Input drop-down (for you folks on 2006 or above), or through the right-click shortcut menus. You can have your menus always off, always on, or available with a time-delay. (These settings are located in Tools-->Options-->User Preferences.) I like the time delay, personally...sometimes you feel like a menu, sometimes you don't!