LT Unlimited

Live from AU!

First of all, I hope my American readers had a wonderful Thanksgiving yesterday, and that you don't read this until Monday because you took the whole long weekend off. (For my international readers, happy Friday...or happy Saturday, depending on where you are when this hits the feed readers.)

Second, if it's after Thanksgiving, that must mean it's time for AU! That's right, Autodesk University 2008 kicks off next week in Vegas. If you're there, I hope you'll come find me at the AutoCAD booth to say hello--I'd love to meet blog readers.

If you can't make it this year, remember that session materials will be posted on AU Online after the conference. Many of the sessions are being recorded, so you'll be able to listen to the presentations and watch the demos. But you don't even have to wait that long to see an actual AU session!

Several classes are being broadcast LIVE from AU -- and there are a couple LT-friendly ones in there too. Specifically, Matt Murphy's Blockbusters: Unleashing the Power of Dynamic Blocks in AutoCAD®—Revealed! and AutoCAD® 2009 Tips and Techniques, taught by the unequaled Lynn Allen. Just click on the link in this paragraph and join the action.

Finally, the usual tips will be taking a break next week as I try to make sure that I see everyone I need to see and get everything done that I said I would at AU. Instead, I'll be experimenting with mobile posting (my Blackberry says it can post to TypePad, so now's the time to try it out) to give updates on the happenings at AU. Although if I run across a tip or two -- and it's AU, if you can't find tips you're not paying attention -- I'll put them up too.

Hope to see you in Vegas!

Space Points Equally Along a Path

If you need to space points or objects equally along a straight line or simple arc, the Array command can provide a quick and easy way to do that. But what if your path isn't a line, arc, or circle?

The Measure command (available at the command line, under Draw-->Point-->Measure, or on the extended Draw panel of the Ribbon under the Point pull-down) places points or blocks at specified intervals on an object.

In the next image, I ran Measure on the spline with an interval of 3. PDMODE is set to 35, so you can see the points.

You can also use Measure to place blocks instead of points. You can choose to have the blocks be inserted with no rotation...

...or rotated so that their horizontal lines are tangent to the path at that point.

Clip Referenced Files

Okay, so you can't clip externally referenced drawings in LT 2009 (although you can modify the boundary of a clipped xref), but you CAN clip every other type of referenced files, including DWF, and DGN, and images.

The commands are DWFCLIP, DGNCLIP, and IMAGECLIP, and they're all handily grouped on the Blocks & References tab of the Ribbon.

To show you how it works, I'm going to clip a pictures I took a few months ago in San Francisco (I still can't get over how steep some of those streets are.)

When you start the command, you're asked to pick the image to clip, then whether you want to turn an existing boundary on or off, delete the existing boundary (if there is one), or create a new one. I entered N for new, then P for polygonal. (It's more interesting than rectangular.) You can then pick points to create a polygonal boundary. The boundary will always be closed, similar to defining a polygonal selection window, and it can't be bigger than the image itself. When you're done, press enter, and the image will be cropped to your boundary.

Chances are you'd crop your images in a more logical and less random way, but this at least will introduce you to the possibilities.

Change Size of Quick View Previews

If the size of the Quick View Drawing or Layout previews are too big or too small to efficiently display the drawings you have open, it's really easy to change the size.

All you have to do is hover your cursor over one of the preview images, hold down Ctrl, and roll the mouse wheel up or down.

So the preview images go quickly from the default size...

To smaller previews...

Or larger.

Edit Xref Path

In LT 2009, it's not necessarily obvious to how to change the saved path of an external reference. As you see in the screenshot below, the "Saved Path" field is grayed out -- you can't type in that field.

What you can do, though, is change the "Found At" path. When you save that path, it becomes the new Saved Path.

But wait, you say -- there's no "save" button. Nope, but that's not a problem. All you have to do is press Enter after you finish editing the "found" path, and it saves it for you.

Offset an object through a point

If you don't know the exact distance that you want to offset an object, but you do have a point that you want the new object to pass through, you can use the Through option.

Let's say I have a circle and a triangle.

I want to offset the triangle so that one of its sides passes through the center point of the circle. Here's what that command sequence would look like (bold is for user input):

Command: OFFSET
Current settings: Erase source=No  Layer=Source  OFFSETGAPTYPE=0
Specify offset distance or [Through/Erase/Layer] <Through>: (press enter)
Select object to offset or [Exit/Undo] <Exit>: (select triangle)
Specify through point or [Exit/Multiple/Undo] <Exit>: (select center of circle)
Select object to offset or [Exit/Undo] <Exit>: (press enter to exit)

And here we have it:

Now, I could also have done this by specifying the offset distance first. Here's what that command sequence would have looked like:

Command: OFFSET
Current settings: Erase source=No  Layer=Source  OFFSETGAPTYPE=0
Specify offset distance or [Through/Erase/Layer] <Through>: (select center of circle)
Specify second point: (select perpendicular point on triangle)
Select object to offset or [Exit/Undo] <Exit>: (select triangle)
Specify point on side to offset or [Exit/Multiple/Undo] <Exit>: (select point on inside of triangle)
Select object to offset or [Exit/Undo] <Exit>: (press enter to exit)

The end result would have been exactly the same.

But let's look at the differences in the processes. The first way, using Through, I only had to select one point and one object. In the second scenario, I had to pick three points and an object. That's two more steps using distance instead of Through. When you have to do fewer steps to complete a command, you're working faster.

So you might want to consider adding Offset Through to your LT arsenal.

Break Table Into Columns

Tables can be split up into columns while remaining one entity, just like mtext objects. The easiest way to do this is with the light-blue triangular grip at the bottom of the table. (It's the one in the middle of the row pointing upward. The other two re-size the table's rows or columns.)

If you don't like the way the default break looks, the Properties palette is full of options.

• Enabled just means that table breaks are turned on. If you set it to No, the table goes back to one big long column.
• Direction (right, left, or down) controls the placement of the additional columns.
• Repeat top/bottom labels controls the display of header rows (so that the extra columns get headings too). See this post for more on that.
• Manual positions lets you decide whether the columns can be moved independently of one another.
• Manual heights lets you decide whether each column can have its own height or whether they should all be the same (although the last one may be shorter).
• Break height is the height of the column (if Manual heights is set to No).
• Spacing is the distance between columns.

With all these options, you should be able to get your long tables to fit in any space you need them to.

Rotate View

I see a lot of questions out there (in fact, I got one by e-mail just last week) on how to rotate a view now that DVIEW is no longer available. Fortunately, it's still easy to do.

The two commands you'll need are UCS and PLAN. UCS stands for User Coordinate System, and is both a noun (i.e. "the current UCS") and a command name (i.e. "use the UCS command).

The most common scenario I see for this is that "north", which is typically "up" in model space, needs to point in a different direction on a sheet, usually to accommodate the shape of a building or site. In this case, "north" would correspond to the direction of the Y-axis in a 2D coordinate system.

So in order to rotate our view, we need to rotate the X and Y axes to a new direction. The easiest way to do this to rotate the UCS about the Z-axis. The Z-axis is perpendicular to both the X and Y axes, so in a 2D system like LT, that means it points straight out of the screen. (It's the same axis uses by the Rotate command, in case the previous sentence didn't help.)

Conveniently enough, there's a button on the UCS panel of the View tab of the Ribbon that will do exactly that. So if you want "north" to point right instead of up, click the "Z" button (or type UCS-->Z) and enter 90 (remember that positive rotations are counterclockwise). Now we have a rotated coordinate system.

Notice that the little square at the intersection of the axes has disappeared. That's becuase the current UCS no longer corresponds to the World UCS. But you'll also notice that your view hasn't changed. We've only changed the UCS, not the view.

That's where the PLAN command comes in. PLAN aligns the current view to a coordinate system, either the current one, the world one, or a previously-saved named one. It's available from the command line or through the Menu Browser, Tools menu, but not from the Ribbon.

Using it is simple. Just start the command and press enter to align the view to the current UCS. Notice that although the axes are back in their "normal" orientation, the square that indicates World UCS is still missing. This is a helpful visual cue to show you that you're in a different UCS.

If you've run this sequence in a viewport, I highly recommend locking it after you've finished panning and scaling your view. This just helps avoid any unexpected changes.

Also, if you need to continue working in the drawing, you'll probably want to set your UCS back to World (there's a big button on the Ribbon to do this) to put the axes back to normal.

Select Hatch and Boundary

Last in the series on unexpected selection behavior is Associative Hatch -- and it's probably not the kind of associative you're thinking of.

Typically, when we hear that a hatch is associative, we understand that to mean that when the boundary of the hatch is modified, the hatch will update to fill the new area. In the context of selection behaviors, though, it means that when the hatch is selected, its boundary is too.

Like the previous two settings, Associative Hatch is also on the Selection tab of the Options dialog. (It's also the PICKSTYLE variable.) The effects of checking this box are noticed most often in trying to delete a hatch. You select the hatch, press Delete, and suddenly the bounding object has been deleted too. If that's not what you wanted, all you need to do is undo, then hop into the Options dialog and put the setting back to normal.

First Object De-Selects When a Second is Selected

I thought I'd follow up the last post with another selection behavior oddity that I see all the time on the discussion groups.

With this problem, you select one object or group of objects to modify, but when you go to select another object or group, the first de-select, leaving you to wonder what happened.

The answer is usually in the "Use Shift to add to selection" setting on the Selection tab of the Options dialog box. (Also known as PICKADD.) When it's checked, or when the variable is set to 0, the only way to add objects to your selection set is by holding down the Shift key while you click on them.

With the box unchecked, as it usually is, you can simply click on objects to add them to your selection set, and hold down Shift while clicking on objects to de-select them.