LT Unlimited

Looking for LT Users in the Bay Area

I'm looking for LT users in the San Francisco Bay Area who would like to chat about how they use the program, what they use it for, likes, dislikes, etc.

It doesn't matter what size your company is, or what industry you're in -- the more the merrier.

If you're interested, please e-mail me at [email protected].

Thanks~

Associative Dimensioning

I thought I'd try something a little bit different today: instead of writing a blog post, I recorded one. You know how a picture is worth a thousand words? Well, I've begun to realize that a video is worth a thousand pictures accompanied by a thousand written words. (Not that my regular blog posts ever have that many words or pictures, but you get the idea. Sometimes screenshots just don't cut it.)

So here's today's tip on Associative Dimensioning -- enjoy!

Copy/Paste a Viewport

Today's post highlights one of those feature improvements that isn't big enough to get a lot of mention in the product documentation, but can still have an impact on your day-to-day productivity.

Prior to LT 2009, when you used Ctrl+C to copy a viewport and Ctrl+V to paste it, the new viewport was turned "off", i.e. it didn't display the objects inside it. You had to use the Properties palette (Misc --> On --> Yes) or the right-click menu (Display viewport objects --> Yes) to turn it back on.

Now, though, when you paste a viewport, it's turned on by default. (Hooray!)

I hope that saves somebody a few seconds in their day -- even a few seconds over hundreds of copy-pastes can add up to a lot of time!

Data Files for Today's Webcast

Thanks to everybody who attended today's webcast, an Introduction to Macro Writing for AutoCAD LT. We had great attendance, and so far the feedback has been good too.

If you're looking for the handout that accompanies the presentation, or the CUI file used in the demonstration, go to AU Online and search for AutoCAD LT. You may have to register first, but it's free, and the site is full of all sorts of other valuable content, including materials from classes on the CUI, Dynamic Blocks, CAD Management, and much more.

See you at the next webcast!

Webcast Tomorrow! Introduction to Macro Writing

We have almost 500 people registered for tomorrow's webcast, Introduction to Macro Writing (January 22nd, 10 a.m. Pacific)! If you're not one of them, it's not too late. Just click on the link in the first sentence and sign yourself up. Tell your colleagues, too -- the more the merrier.

I'll be covering the basics of text-based macros, including syntax, special features, DIESEL expressions, and (perhaps most important) where to put them to reuse over and over.

Hope to see you tomorrow!

Drafting Settings Part 5 -- Quick Properties

All right, we've reached the last tab in the Drafting Settings dialog! Welcome to Quick Properties.

In case you haven't seen Quick Properties palette yet, it's a miniaturized version of the full Properties palette that pops up when you select an object in your drawing. It looks something like this:

Of course, you can customize this palette to best suit the way you work. If you couldn't change some settings, we wouldn't be talking about it, would we? So here are the Quick Properties settings:

Like every other tab we've seen, this one has an on/off checkbox right at the top. Right below it, though, is an interesting setting specifying precisely when it comes on. You can choose to have Quick Properties displayed for every object, or only for "defined" objects. A "defined" object is one that has some of its object-specific properties chosen for use as quick properties. Object types that are not "defined" would show only color, layer, and linetype.

Where you do you define these objects? Take a look back at the shot of the Quick Properties palette, and look for the icon in the upper-right corner, next to the object type name. That's the Customize button, and it takes you directly to the part of the CUI editor where you can select which objects have Quick Properties at all, and what those properties are. It looks like this:

 

So here, a selected circle will display its radius and area, but not its diameter, in the Quick Properties palette. To add one more level of customization to this, you can choose which object types appear in the left-hand list using the button at the top of the image above. You can probably identify which properties are most important to you in a short swing through this dialog.

Under "Location Modes", you can choose where on your screen you want the palette to appear. "Float" means that it will appear in the same place every time, just like a regular palette. "Cursor" means that it will pop up next to your crosshairs, whereever they are on the screen. If you choose Cursor, you can also further specify the position by quadrant (top-right, top-left, bottom-right, bottom-left) and by the distance (in pixels) that the palette will stay away from the cursor.

Finally, you can control the size of the palette with the Auto-Collapse option. If you turn on Auto-Collapse, you only see a few rows of the palette -- you can choose how many -- until you hover your cursor over it. If Auto-Collapse is off, you see all available quick properties immediately. If you are more likely to use Quick Properties to view object information, you might find Auto-Collapse helpful, but if you are more likely to use it to make changes to object properties, you may find that Auto-Collapse is more cumbersome (because you have to wait for it to unroll before you can make your changes). In the end, it's up to you.

Well, I think that's the end of what I have to say about the Drafting Settings dialog. Thanks for hanging in for the full tour. I hope you learned a few new things (I did!), and that you'll be able to use a few of them to be more productive.

Drafting Settings Part 4B -- Dynamic Input, Cont.

Last time on LT Unlimited, I continued the tour of the Drafting Settings dialog with the first half of the Dynamic Input settings. And now, the conclusion. (Of Part 4, that is. There's still Part 5.)

I'll pick up again with the "Settings" button for Pointer Input.

There are two pairs of options regarding the format of input for "second or next points", such as when you begin the Move command, pick your first point, and are asked for the second. You can choose between Polar (distance,angle) or Cartesian (x,y) input. The default is Polar, but personally, I'm more likely to know the X and Y values of my distance rather than the distance and angle, so I switched it. Your method may vary. You can also choose here whether you want AutoCAD LT to assume the numbers you're giving it are relative coordinate, or absolute. It defaults to relative, so if you want to move something to (0,0) or another actual coordinate point, you need to preface the input with the pound sign (#). Now you see why you don't have to type @ any more to force relative coordinates!

The second category is about when the input tooltip is visible. The default is that it will show up whenever you're asked for a point, but you can also choose to delay its appearance until you start typing, or force it to display all the time.

The final dialog in the Dynamic Input tab is the Settings dialog for Dimension Input.

Here, you can choose how many input fields you want to see at a time. There are five possible input fields: Resulting Dimension, Length Change, Absolute Angle, Angle Change, and Arc Radius. The default is to see 2 fields at once, but you can also show only one, or any combination of the five.

No matter which visibility setting you choose, you can cycle through all available fields by pressing TAB. Remember than not every field applies in every command or for every object. For example, Arc Radius doesn't apply to lines.

All right, that's it for Dynamic Input! Next up, last but not least...Quick Properties.

Drafting Settings Part 4A -- Dynamic Input

I realized, looking at the Dynamic Input tab of the Drafting Settings dialog box, that it's the most complicated of all the tabs. Not because the topic itself is particularly confusing, but because there are three sub-dialogs in addition to the main window. So this tab will be split up over two posts, in order to minimize information overload.

Dynamic Input was introduced in AutoCAD LT 2006 as a way of moving important command information up into the drawing area, so that you don't have to look down at the command line all the time. It puts floating boxes with command options, prompts, and coordinate information right next to the cursor where it's easily seen.

The main Dynamic Input tab has three areas:

Everything in this main tab has to do with turning Dynamic Input features on or off. First, in the upper left-hand corner, is "Enable Pointer Input". When it's on, you get boxes next to the cursor where you can type in coordinate values.

Next is "Enable Dimension Input". When this is on, and you're creating or grip-editing geometry, the boxes you get are for geometric properties of the object, like length or angle. Dimension Input isn't always available for every command, though, which is why it's often used in combination with Pointer Input.

Both of these options have their own dialog of special settings, but I'll save the details for the next post. (See, now you have to keep reading!)

Last up is "Command prompting and command input". This turns on the tooltips for command-specific prompts and options, such as "Specify next point." When this is on, you can also use the down arrow to see all the available command options on the screen, instead of at the command line. Note: You must have either Pointer Input or Dynamic Input (or both) turned on in order to see the command prompts. It doesn't work all by itself.

The one extra settings dialog I will get into today is the Drafting Tooltip Appearance dialog.

At the top, you can see a preview of what your tooltips will look like -- this applies to all the prompts (Pointer, Dimension, and Command). The "Colors" button launches the same Drawing Window dialog that you can get from the Options dialog, just with the tooltip settings already highlighted. There, you can pick whatever colors you like best for the text and background of the tooltip.

Next are two sliders for size and transparency. The default for both is 0, which means a normal size and an opaque background.

The last setting here asks whether you want all your tooltips to look the same, or whether you want some of them to take their properties from your Windows settings. If you choose "use settings only for Dynamic Input", then your Polar and Object Snap Tracking tooltips will take their colors based on other Windows tooltips, instead of the colors you've set yourself. Like all the settings we've talked about, this is purely a matter of personal preference.

See you next time for more on the options for Pointer and Dimension Input!

Drafting Settings Part 3 -- Object Snaps

Part 3 in our tour of the Drafting Settings dialog box is all about Object Snaps, or "osnaps" for short.

Just like the other two tabs we've seen already, the Object Snap tab has on/off toggles at the top for both the snaps themselves and tracking.

Object Snaps enable you to precisely grab a point on an object, such as an endpoint of a line or the center of a circle, to make sure that geometry that you create or modify ends up exactly where you want it to be. Nothing's more frustrating than receiving a drawing, opening it up, and realizing it that whoever created it didn't use any object snaps. It can mean that "intersecting" lines don't actually touch, or that lines that are supposed to be precisely 6" apart are some fractional amount off from that. That can create some real headaches. (If you've ever seen a drawing like this, you'll know what I'm talking about. If not, be grateful.)

Osnaps can be activated as a one-time snap, or set to be on all the time. The checkboxes in this tab are for the "all the time" osnaps, or running osnaps. The screenshot above shows my personal preference for running osnaps. One osnap that I never set as running is Nearest. There are times when it's an appropriate snap to use, but mostly I'm concerned that instead of grabbing an endpoint or midpoint as I want, I'd end up with a "nearest" point instead. I'm not trying to say that Nearest should never be used as a running osnap, just...be careful.

If you only need a particular object snap once in a while, there are two ways you can get it without turning it on permanently. First, you can type its command line shortcut, usually the first three letters of the snap name (END, MID, CEN, etc.). Or you can hold down SHIFT and right-click, and pick your osnap from the shortcut menu that pops up.

The icon next to each osnap name is the shape you will see when that particular snap is active. The example below shows the endpoint and midpoint icons. To cycle between nearby locations for running osnaps, press the TAB key until you see the icon you want.

Now, when you hover over an osnap location long enough for its tooltip to appear (as I did in the above image), something special happens. That point has now been "acquired", and you can track from it to find another point in the drawing aligned with that one. It's called Object Snap Tracking (or otrack for short), and it's very similar to Polar Tracking -- see Part 2 for more on tracking angles.

To see how this works, imagine that you wanted to draw a line that started at the center of a rectangle. Instead of drawing a construction line from corner to corner, snapping to its midpoint, drawing the line, and then erasing the construction line, let's use Object Snap Tracking instead.

First, I'll hover over the middle of one side of the rectangle until the midpoint icon appears. Then I'll move the cursor up until a dotted line appears, telling me that otrack is active.

Next, I have to go get the other side. Notice that there's still a small "+" at the location of the first midpoint, identifying it as a tracking point.

Finally, when I move my mouse close to the intersection of these two dotted lines, they BOTH appear. I can then left-click to begin drawing my line.

That may seem like a complicated explanation, but I promise you it takes 10 times longer to explain it than it does to use it.

Well, that's enough about Object Snaps and Object Snap Tracking for today. Next up: Dynamic Input!

Amazon.com Names AutoCAD LT 2009 to its '25 Best Software Titles of 2008' List

Amazon.com just released their list of "Best Software of 2008" , and it includes AutoCAD LT 2009!

They don't say much about their criteria, only that the list is chosen by their editors based on customer reviews.

We're in some pretty good company too, although I'm not sure I thought I'd ever see LT on the same list as Fishdom and Rosetta Stone. :-)