LT Unlimited

Help select classes for Autodesk University!

Autodesk wants your help in deciding what classes will be presented at Autodesk University 2008.

All the submitted sessions (over 600!) have been organized into 19 tracks by either industry or product. We're asking you to take a look through the tracks and vote for your 15 favorites. I know, choosing 15 out of 600 is hard, but it will really help the AU team decide which classes will be the most beneficial to attendees.

I submitted two classes this year, both focused on working in mixed-program environments. Many offices now are using multiple Autodesk products, whether LT, Design Review, some other flavor of AutoCAD, or one of the Revit programs, and there are things to know about all of them to get them to play nicely together.

In the Customization track: Customization 101 -- AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT
In the CAD Management track: CAD Management in a Mixed-Program Environment

The first is dedicated to cross-platform customizations (CUI, macro, tool palettes, etc.). The second will focus on broader CAD management issues, like licensing & installation, as well as more specific customization topics.

Please take a minute to vote! The survey will be open until May 3, 2008. Vote now!

Registration for AU will start on August 15th, and one week earlier for AU members. Class schedules will be available for review by August 1st.

Autodesk Experience Tour DC

I'll be at the DC (well, northern Virginia) stop of the Autodesk Experience Tour tomorrow -- if you're going too, come say hello!

LT 2009 Tip #2 -- In-place Spell Check

If you've done any annotating in LT 2009, you've probably noticed the in-place spell check. If you haven't seen it, start typing some text and deliberately make a typo. See the dotted red line?

Right-click on the underlined word to get a shortcut menu of suggestions. You can also choose to ignore the word, or add it to the dictionary. Added words go into your custom dictionary (see Options for the file location).

Not on LT 2009 yet? The SPELL command is still available to you; you just have to run it manually.

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.

Follow-up: Trim Hatches

After I posted about trimming hatches, terbgrave asked, "Why does this only work some of the time when you are trying to trim solid hatches? and it works sometimes when you pick in the perfect spot but nowhere else on the hatch?"

I agree, solid hatches can be a bit temperamental when you try to select them. My best guess would be that it's because solid hatches don't have "lines" or "points" the way other patterns do. You may have to be a little patient & hover your cursor over different spots until you get the hatch, but it will eventually show up.

I also just received a comment asking about this feature in previous versions of AutoCAD, but I believe it wasn't introduced until LT 2007.