LT Unlimited

Maintain Text Orientation Relative to Layout

Have you ever needed to rotate a view in a viewport, but wanted the text in that view to stay horizontal relative to the paper? If you're using annotative text styles, making this happen is as simple as checking a box.

In the Text Style Manager, an annotative text style can be set to "match text orientation to layout" -- in other words, no matter what the angle of your view is, the text will always stay horizontal.

This property can also be set on the fly for individual annotative text objects. When it's set to Yes, you can see that the Rotation property has been grayed out, because the orientation is now determined by the view angle.

The screenshot below shows two views of the same plan area, with the view on the right rotated 90 degrees. "Den" has been set to maintain orientation, while "Office" has not. (Note: this works best if you use the UCS and PLAN commands through a layout viewport. If you try to work with this in modelspace, you won't be able to rotate the text, but you also won't necessarily see the text at the correct orientation. Makes sense, really, since it's the layout and not the model that determines the rotation.)

Well, this is it -- the last post of 2008! Autodesk traditionally takes the week between Christmas and New Year's off, and the way it worked out this year, we'll be off all the way to January 5th. So, Happy Holidays to all my blog readers, and look for more tips, tricks, and news in the new year!

Calculate Area Enclosed by Objects or Points

AutoCAD LT includes a number of "inquiry" tools to help you pull information out of a drawing. One of these is the AREA command, located on the Inquiry panel of the Tools tab, or under Tools-->Inquiry-->Area.

When you start the command, you're prompted for corner points. Just keep clicking in the drawing until you've defined your polygon, then press Enter to see the area and perimeter in the current units.

If the object whose area you want is already drawn, you can use the Object option instead (very helpful when the object has a lot of corners).

And if you'd like to see the sum of multiple areas, you can use the Add option. Keep in mind that you have to know in advance that you'd like to add areas -- if you pick a point or object first, the command will end with the results of that object. There's also a Subtract option, which you can use either if you make a mistake adding objects, or if you'd like to see the net area defined by smaller objects within a larger one.

Set Object Snaps to Ignore Hatches

Object snaps are wonderful things, but occasionally you don't actually want to use them. For example, intersecting lines in a hatch pattern probably aren't part of your design, and you'd rather not have them appear as an option when you're looking for intersections.

Fortunately, removing hatches as object snap targets is simple. Just go to the Options dialog, Drafting tab, and check the box marked "Ignore Hatch Objects" under "Object Snap Options". (You can also use the system variable OSOPTIONS.)

New AU Online Now Live

AU Online, the year-round home for Autodesk University content recently received a makeover, and launched on Tuesday with a brand-new look.

It's a great place to find class materials, keynote recordings, and all the news and announcements you could possibly want. Maybe it's not quite as good as being there, but it's the next best thing!

The login procedure has changed with the new site, so you may need to re-create your profile (a fairly painless process).

Change Viewport Scale

A question came up on the discussion groups today, and I thought it would make a pretty good blog post.

Somebody wanted to know what happened in 2009 to the pull-down that you could use to change the scale of a viewport. It's still on the Viewports toolbar, if you want to turn that on, but at first glance it doesn't appear to be in the new Ribbon-based environment. (Another reason why second glances can sometimes be very helpful.)

It turns out that the viewport scale control is another context-sensitive bit of the user interface, like the mtext and Block Editor Ribbon tabs. When you have a viewport selected, or when you double-click inside it, a control appears on the right-hand side of the status bar.

In the image above, the viewport scale is 1" = 1'-0". If you look for this without having a viewport active, it won't be there, so pay attention!

Also, if you have Quick Properties turned on, one of the default listings for a viewport is its scale -- another quick and easy place to make the change.

Back to the real world..

Well, I'm back home again, after 6 days in the alternate reality that is AU in Vegas. When you combine a 3-hour time change, the super-busy schedule of classes and events, and the fact that the casinos don't want you to know what time it is, your time-sense gets a little warped. If I hadn't put my schedule into a color-coded Excel spreadsheet (I know, I'm a nerd), I never would have been able to keep up.

I had intended to post more to the blog while I was away, but time just got away from me. (Hmm, wonder how that happened?) Now everything's back to normal, though, so we're back to the regular schedule of tips, tricks, and announcements. Speaking of which...

You've probably seen plenty of messages in LT pop up with a check box for "Don't show me this again". After a few times of seeing them (or maybe just once), you probably got tired of it and checked the box. But what if you need to get it back, either to change the setting you accepted or to see what the message actually was?

LT 2009 includes a setting to access these very messages, cleverly called "hidden messages". It's in the Options dialog, under System.

Once there, you can expand a tree of messages, grouped by category, to re-activate the ones you want to see. In the image below, I'm turning on the messages about Drawing Recovery, but leaving Annotation Scaling messages off.

After you get tired of your re-activated messages, of course, the "Do not show this again" option will still be there.

AU Day 2

It's Day 2 of AU, and I'm taking a short break from talking to people to get some other work done. Day 1 was a great success. I assisted in four very well-run labs, and met a lot of people at the AutoCAD booth during the Opening Reception.

The booth is focused this year on 3D printing, with models of buildings, mechanical parts, and even a full-size motorcycle and giant shark! Everything on display in the booth was created in a 3D printer.

Today I've been doing interviews with LT customers (if you want to be interviewed, let me know!), and am looking forward to the keynote address by Eddie Paul (who designed the shark in the booth) later in the afternoon.

After that, there's one more lab, and then the famous AUGI Beer Bust. I'll be staffing the AutoCAD booth instead of wandering the floor, but it's still a good time. :-)

AU Day 1

Today the fun begins! I'm headed off to the first session of the day, where I'll be assisting in a lab on title blocks. After that, three more labs, theb the +pOpening Reception. It'll be a busy day! Yesterday, I was asked (on camera) what my number one tip was for LT. After a little stammering, I said, "Watch the command line." What's your favorite LT tip?