LT Unlimited

Autodesk Design Review 2010

I've already said quite a bit here about the new stuff in AutoCAD LT 2010 (and I'm not done yet), but of course LT isn't the only product that will be getting an update this spring.

Another of our popular products with an upcoming makeover is Autodesk Design Review, the digital markup and reviewing tool. If you haven't used it yet, check it out, because not only is it a great product for electronic reviews, it's also FREE. Which means you can download it today and start getting a feel for it, without worrying about paying for an upgrade in a few weeks. Because upgrades are FREE. (Can you tell I'm a fan?)

Highlights of the Design Review 2010 include:

• An updated interface consistent with other Autodesk products (including LT)
• Converting PDF to DWF files
• Highlighters and line-formatting tools
• The ability to export a summary of markups to an Excel file

For more, hop over to the DWF blog, Beyond the Paper, run by the ever-knowledgeable Volker Joseph. He's got a couple posts with text and video overviews of the new features, in addition to a wealth of other DWF information.

Dynamic Block Troubleshooting

If you create a dynamic block and it doesn't work the way you expect it to, the first thing to check is your selection sets.

For example, you have a block that contains a rotate and a stretch action. You use the rotate grip, and notice that your stretch grip is now off in space somewhere.

This is probably the most common problem I see in dynamic blocks, and it's caused by including actions in the selection set for another action. Including parameters is okay, and usually good, but including actions almost always produces unexpected actions.

In the rotate and stretch example, the weird behavior is because the stretch action was accidentally  included in the rotation action's selection set. Take it out, and you're up and running again.

So if you've got a misbehaving dynamic block on your hands, look at all your selection sets and make sure you don't have any actions sneaking in where they shouldn't be.

Fun Stuff from Autodesk M&E

(Okay, so this is about as far from LT as you can get and still be in Autodesk, but it's too much fun not to share.)

Not everybody is aware that Autodesk has a Media & Entertainment (M&E) division to go along with the rest of our industry groups, but they do some amazing work! Products like 3DS Max, Maya, Flame, MotionBuilder, and a whole host of others are used in projects from games to television to film to stage to create astonishing special effects.

Did you watch the Oscars on Sunday? (I did. Stayed up to the end, too...that's a long show!) Did you know that the movie that won for Best Visual Effects (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) used Autodesk products to help create those effects? Six other nominees in four categories also made use of products from our M&E division. Read all about it here.

We also have another article up on www.autodesk.com about movies that came out over the holidays that made use of Autodesk products in one way or another. Movies as diverse as Madagascar 2 and Twilight wouldn't have been the same without our M&E division.

Anyway, I just wanted to share with you some of the other cool stuff that Autodesk does. It's easy to get caught up in lines and circles, and to forget that there's a whole different world of animation out there. But the end results are so incredible that it's impossible not to be fascinated with it once you've found it. At least, I'm fascinated. :-)

Thanks for bearing with me through this diversion -- we'll be back on track tomorrow.

Save Changes to Xref Layer Properties

If you use xrefs in your daily drafting work, you've probably seen the following situation at least once:

1. Start a new drawing.
2. Attach a DWG file as an external reference.
3. Make lots of changes to the xref's layers, setting color and linetype to emphasize the areas you need.
4. Do some work on top of the xref.
5. Save.
6. Close.
7. Re-open the drawing later.
8. Realize that all the layers you changed in the xref have reverted to their original state.
9. Sigh.
10. Put all the layers back.

Familiar, yes? I know it's happened to me more times than I can count. Fortunately, there's an easy way to keep all your changes without having to redo them every time or use some other workaround.

Like so many other settings, this one's in the Options dialog. On the Open and Save tab, there's an area for External References. Look for the checkbox labeled "Retain changes to xref layers." When this is checked, any layer property changes you make will be remembered for future sessions. If you want the layers to always keep their original properties, uncheck the box.

The DWG icon next to the checkbox indicates that this option is saved per drawing, not per computer. In recent versions at least, the box is checked by default, but you can always set it to your preferred option in your template file. Then you'll always know what to expect.

(And for all you command line fans, this variable is known as VISRETAIN. Set it to 1 to remember layer settings, and to 0 to forget them.)

Edit Non-Associative Hatch Objects

AutoCAD LT 2010 is stuffed full of what I like to call "little big" features -- things that don't take very long to explain or learn, but which will make enormous differences in your day-to-day work.

One of these "little" features is the ability to edit the boundary of a non-associative hatch object.

Let's say that I have a hatch object that for whatever reason isn't filling its boundary the way it should:

Until now, if you selected that hatch object, all you got was one (unhelpful) grip:

And your only choice was to erase the hatch and start over. Let's see what happens when I select that same hatch in LT 2010:
 
Look at all those grips! The large square ones can be used to move corners, while the rectangular ones in the middle of each side can be used to add vertices or convert sides between line and arcs. Check it out:

Now, that's not getting as much attention as the PDF improvements (or as parametrics and freeform over on the AutoCAD side), but it's still an impressive time-saver!

Create a Viewport with Holes

Now that AutoCAD LT has the ability to create non-rectangular viewports, I thought I'd share a way to create viewports with "holes", or empty spaces.
 
Let's say you want a triangular viewport with a circular hole in the middle.

The first step is to turn the objects into regions with the Region command, available on the Draw panel of the Home tab. Just start the command, and select the two objects. When you're finished, they don't look any different, but when you select them you'll see that the grips have changed, and if you try to grip-edit the shapes they'll move instead of stretch.

To get the hole in the middle, you'll use the Subtract command, to subtract the circular region from the triangular. This command is a little sneaky, since it's only available at the command line. (Of course, you could always put it on a button if you want.) You'll first pick the object to subtract from (the triangle), and then the object to be subtracted (the circle). Again, at first glance, nothing seems to have changed, but when you hover over the region boundary you'll see that it's now one object instead of two.

Now you're ready to turn the region into a viewport. To do this you'll use the "Create from Object" function from the Viewports panel of the View tab. This enables you to convert an existing object -- a closed polyline, an ellipse, a spline, a region (hint, hint), or a circle -- into a viewport. Just start the command, select the region, and there it is.

The region has become a viewport. You can pan, zoom, and set the scale just like you would with any other viewport. The only catch is that you can't edit the boundaries like you would with a polygonal viewport. To change it, you pretty much have to erase it and start over. (Sorry.) It can still be pretty handy, though!

Drawing Recovery Manager

I mentioned the Drawing Recovery Manager in a recent post, but only in passing. Today seemed like a good time to come back to it, because I needed it yesterday!

I was in Orlando to help out at an event by Imaginit, where Lynn Allen gave her popular "60 AutoCAD Tips in 60 Minutes" presentation. Although the agenda was pretty full, we managed to find 20 minutes that I could use to give a super-short demo of the new features in AutoCAD 2010.

I was halfway through my first topic, freeform modeling, when AutoCAD crashed. :-( Actually, what happened is that the program froze -- I had to use Task Manager to kill it and restart AutoCAD. (In my several weeks of beta testing, this is the first time this has happened, honest!)

But it turned into a great opportunity to show off the Drawing Recovery Manager. As soon as AutoCAD restarted, the DRM was right there with all the files I had open at the time of the crash. No searching, no worries, and I was right back up and running. Whew!

The Drawing Recovery Manager will show you the following file types (if available), listed from newest to oldest:

• DrawingFileName_recover.dwg
• DrawingFileName_a_b_nnnn.sv$
• DrawingFileName.dwg
• DrawingFileName.bak

You can choose to open any of these and re-save them to continute working. When you have your file back, you can right-click on the drawing in the list and select Remove.

One catch: if you haven't saved your drawing at all, it won't be included in the Drawing Recovery Manager. You have to have saved it at least once to recover it.

Even though you have this great safety net, there's still no excuse for not saving your drawings. So save early, save often, and remember the Drawing Recovery Manager!

Synchronize Attributes

Here's another video post, this time one one of the new-to-LT features in AutoCAD LT 2010.

For the YouTube fans out there, I put it there too, but I know a lot of you have YouTube blocked at work, so I'm trying a new thing and embedding it here. Hope it works. :-)

Synchronize Attributes

Wipeout!

So I promised you in my last post that I wouldn't get carried away talking about all the fun new stuff in AutoCAD LT 2010, and I'm sticking to that. In fact, today's topic has been around since at least AutoCAD LT 2006. (That's the oldest version I have access to right now. If someone with an earlier version has other information on when it showed up, please let me know.)

Wipeouts do just what you would think -- "wipe out" part of your drawing -- although it's not quite as devastating (or permanent) as it sounds.

A wipeout is simply an object that can cover other objects with a blank area, either to make text more legible or to cover up unwanted portions of a drawing. It doesn't erase anything, just covers it up. You can control exactly what is covered with the Draw Order command.

For example, let's say I needed to cover up part of this line of shrubs/bushes.

I'll start the Wipeout command (either from the ribbon, the Draw menu, or the command line) and choose enough points to define the shape I need. A wipeout is always closed -- the command always draws the last side of the polyline for you. I could also use the Polyline option of the command to choose an existing closed polyline to convert to a wipeout.

The wipeout is automatically created so that it covers up all my existing objects.

If I don't want that, I can use the Draw Order command to bring some of the objects on top of the wipeout.

Finally, if I don't want the frame of the wipeout to print, I can use the Frames option of the wipeout command to turn them all off. This option has two limitiations: You can't select a wipeout if its frame is off, and you can't turn off specific frames individually. It's all or nothing.

AutoCAD LT 2010 is here! (Well, almost.)

Okay, so AutoCAD LT 2010 hasn't been shipped yet. (Expect it sometime around the middle of March.) But we've been released from our NDA, so we're allowed to talk about it now!

You may have seen that the big new features of AutoCAD 2010 are parametric drawing and free-form modeling. If you want to see them in action, check out the demo videos that Heidi Hewett has posted on her blog. Now, I have to tell you, those two features won't be in LT 2010. (There has to be a reason it costs less, remember?)

HOWEVER, despite that, I think that this is the best release of AutoCAD LT to hit the streets in a long time. And I've been using LT since release 2000! There are so many new, improved, and imported features that you won't believe your eyes.

Over the next few weeks, I'll have more detailed posts on all the new stuff mixed in with the regular tips & tricks. For today, here's a quick hit list of my favorite features in AutoCAD LT 2010:

• Improved User Interface: The ribbon, Quick Access toolbar, and Application Menu are even more flexible and intuitive.
• PDF Tools: Output has been dramatically improved, with searchable text and smaller file sizes. PDF files can now be used as snappable underlays too, just like DWG, DWF, and DGN files.
• Block Attribute Tools: Easily add or remove attributes from block definitions.
• External Reference Tools: Clip, open, and edit external references.
• Align: You asked, we answered.

If you just can't wait for the blog posts on all these features (and many more), check out the demo videos on YouTube.

Until next time!