LT Unlimited

Live & Virtual Events for Autodesk 2011 Products

We would have loved to invite all our customers to our launch event in San Francisco last week, but the Gallery just isn’t big enough to hold everybody. (Which is too bad really, especially because the Gallery was just put at the top of a list of the best free things to do in the Bay Area. But I digress.) So we needed other ways to introduce people to the 2011 family of products.

Our reseller partners are helping out, holding live events around the country that you can attend to see the new versions of AutoCAD, Revit, Inventor, and more up close. There are a ton of events scheduled between April 21 and May 13 – click here to find one near you.

But we also know that not everybody can attend an in-person event, so we’re also holding a virtual event on April 19th. There will be live and on-demand webcasts (including one from me on AutoCAD LT), live chats with Autodesk product specialists (again including one with me…guess the topic), and the opportunity to chat with Autodesk and partner representatives at virtual even booths.

To summarize the logistical details:

Who: You!

What: Autodesk Seize the Opportunity Virtual Event

When: Monday, April 19th, 2010, 7:00-2:00 Pacific/10:00-5:00 Eastern

Extra When – Live Chat with Kate: 8:30 am Pacific/11:30 am Eastern

Where: Your desk. Register here.

Why: Get all the information you need about the Autodesk 2011 product family in one place, and chat with Autodesk’s leading product experts.

See you there!

New features in AutoCAD LT 2011 -- where to start?

I hope none of you are keeping track of how many AutoCAD LT features I’ve called my “favorite” over the last few years…because I’m about to add a whole lot more to the list, starting with “Add Selected.”

This new function is available from the right-click menu when you have one object selected.

What’s that? You’re still using right-click-as-Enter? There’s so much functionality in right-click menus these days that it’s just silly to have them completely turned off, especially since time-sensitive right-clicks let you have the best of both worlds. Even if you’re not using AutoCAD LT 2011 yet, you need time-sensitive right-clicks.  Read this post, open up AutoCAD LT, and turn them on. Seriously, do it now. I’ll wait.

You’re back? Good, now we can move on. Where was I? Oh right, “Add Selected.”

This feature looks at the object you have selected and starts the command that will enable you to create an object with the exact same properties – layer, linetype, color, etc. If you select a circle, Add Selected will start the Circle command. If you select a line, it starts the line command…you get the idea. Add Selected even works with blocks, text and dimensions. It’s similar to Copy, but more flexible, because you’re actually drawing a new object.

Add Selected is just the first of many time-saving features in AutoCAD LT 2011 – there will be posts soon on many more!

Lots of info (and some fun) at the 2011 Launch event

We had an action-packed day yesterday at Autodesk's 1 Market office for the launch of the Autodesk 2011 family of products.

The day kicked off with a webcast led by Carl Bass and Amar Hanspal, introducing AutoCAD 2011, Inventor 2011, Revit 2011, and 3ds Max 2011. Our bloggers were in the audience, along with other press and some of our channel partners.

Next up was an in-depth session on AutoCAD 2011 for the bloggers. Heidi Hewett and Guillermo Melantoni showed off the new 2D and 3D features, and there are a LOT of impressive things there. If you've been thinking about a move to 3D, this would be a good time to try. However, all these 3D features took up more time than anticipated (not that any of us really minded), so the AutoCAD family presenters (me for AutoCAD LT, Jeff Agla for AutoCAD Architecture, and Adam Perry for AutoCAD Mechanical) had about 5 minutes each to show off our product. I've been working for the last 2 years on slowing down my delivery speed during presentations, but that all went out the window yesterday. :-) Our bloggers are a smart bunch, though, and kept up with me just fine. I think they agree with me that LT has a really robust, yet easy-to-use feature set, but we'll have to see what they post in the next few weeks. The Windows 7 features especially got some oohs and aahs -- I'll have to post on that next week.

In the afternoon, the bloggers had a chance to talk as a group to Autodesk executives and the product team about the present and future state of the AutoCAD family, and then individually to members of the team during the first-ever "speed dating" session. I had the pleasure of chatting with Dean Saadallah (frequent contributor to the AutoCAD LT discussion forum) about learning, training, and support for AutoCAD LT. I think we're taking steps in the right direction, but there's still a lot that can be done. If you have feedback too, you know where to find me!

The day wrapped up with a reception in the Autodesk Gallery and dinner at a nearby restaurant. Overall, I think the day was very successful, and hope that we're able to continue this tradition for future releases.

A lot of the bloggers are also twitterers -- for the play-by-play from yesterday, check out the Twitter feeds from @caddmanager (Mark Kiker), @MistresDorkness (Melanie Perry), @wkfd (Curt Moreno), @thecadgeek (Donnie Gladfelter), @bcbenton (Brian Benton).

Stay tuned next week for more feature-specific posts. (If you can't wait, watch the demo videos, or download the trial for yourself.)

Announcing AutoCAD LT 2011!

That’s right, the purpose of today’s webcast (9 a.m. Pacific, noon Eastern, http://www.autodesk.com/webcast) is to announce the launch of the AutoCAD 2011 family of products – including (of course) AutoCAD LT!

You can bet I’ll be blogging a lot in the upcoming days and weeks about all the new features, but here’s my top 5 list for today:

• Transparent objects and layers (way cool!)
• Grips for polyline editing (super fast!)
• Hatch grips and contextual tabs (dialog? what dialog?)
• Create objects based on existing objects (“current layer” could be practically obsolete!)
• Text in linetypes is always right-side up (so long to the “reverse” command)

If you can’t wait for me to blog about all these features, you can watch the demo videos on my YouTube channel.

And if that’s still not enough, you can download a free 30-day trial and try out the new features for yourself.

In addition to the webcast, we’re having an all-day event with some well-known AutoCAD bloggers:

• Michael Beall ~ http://www.cadtutor.net/corner/
• Brian Benton ~ http://CAD-a-Blog.com
• David Cohn ~ http://cadman-do.blogspot.com/
• Donnie Gladfelter ~ http://www.thecadgeek.com/
• Mark Kiker ~ http://www.caddmanager.com/CMB/
• RK McSwain ~ http://cadpanacea.com/
• Melanie Perry ~ http://mistressofthedorkness.blogspot.com/
• Curt Moreno ~ http://www.kungfudrafter.com/
• Barry Ralphs ~ http://www.opendcl.com
• Dean Saadallah ~ http://LTisACAD.blogspot.com

That means there will soon be plenty of independent reviews of AutoCAD 2011 and AutoCAD LT 2011 up on the internet for your perusal. (Autodesk may have sponsored our bloggers’ visit, but as always they’re free to say whatever they think about our products.)

I’ll have more on the event tomorrow, but if that’s not soon enough for you, I’ll also be twittering throughout the day with updates, news, and whatever else I think might be interesting.

So, get ready for AutoCAD LT 2011! I think you’ll like it!

Headed to San Francisco

No tip today, since I’m getting on a plane to San Francisco for an event on Thursday. (Maybe you’ve heard about it?) You can be there too…virtually, at least. There will be a live webcast Thursday, March 25, with Autodesk CEO Carl Bass & Senior VP Amar Hanspal at 9a PDT/12 EDT – register today here: http://www.autodesk.com/webcast

I’ll have a post from the event tomorrow, though, and if you’re not following me on Twitter yet, now might be a good time to start…and you might want to follow Lynn and Shaan while you’re at it.

Until tomorrow!

Sample Drawings available online

AutoCAD LT and AutoCAD used to include sample drawings, but lately they’ve been moved online. They’re a little buried, though, so here are the links:

AutoCAD Samples

AutoCAD LT Samples

There’s a lot of overlap between the two lists, but there are some differences so I figured I’d post both.

Enjoy!

AU 2010 Call for Proposals now open

Think you have what it takes to teach a class at Autodesk University? Now’s your chance to find out – the call for proposals opened this week and runs until May 14th. (The conference itself is November 30 to December 2.) The organizers are specifically looking for brand-new content, so if you have a brilliant idea for a session, send it on in!

Check out the Call for Proposals site to get all the details. The AU team also offered a suggestion for new speakers: “Use the classes on the AU website to help you develop your proposal. Look for highly-rated classes (4 stars or more) in the appropriate track to use as your model. The class handouts and presentations from these classes can provide you with great examples.”

You still have a while to get your proposals in, but be sure to finish your submission by May 14th.

A St. Patrick’s Day CAD Tip

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, today’s tip is on the Design Center. Where’s the connection, you ask? St. Patrick’s Day = Green = Recycling = Reusing Content = Design Center. (Hey, just go with it.)

At the folder level, Design Center shows you whole-drawing information, such as who last saved a file. From here, you can insert an entire drawing as a block, or as an xref.

At the drawing level, though, you can explore all the blocks, layers, annotation styles, layouts, linetypes, and even xrefs that are contained in that drawing. The options in the right-click menu change too, depending on which objects you’re viewing.

Blocks:

Layers:

So, the next time you need to borrow content from another drawing, don’t waste time opening it to copy-paste – just head for Design Center and save yourself some time and effort. Maybe that’ll even translate into some ($$) green!

Any 3ds Max users out there?

The 3ds Max team is looking for customers who use 3ds Max and AutoCAD LT -- if that's you, we'd love to hear from you. Drop me an e-mail at [email protected].

Multiple Rotate and Copy

A question came in yesterday through the AutoCAD LT feedback e-mail, asking about multiple radial copies -- like multiple copy, but with rotation. It got me thinking about how many ways there were to accomplish this.

1. There's the Copy option in the Rotate command, but that's only good for single copies.
2. There's the Polar option in the Array command, but that's only good for equal angle intervals.
3. There's the Rotate option when grip-editing.

I think that last one deserves a little more attention.

When you select an object and left-click on a grip,  you enter the Stretch mode. Press Enter or the space bar once, and now you're in Move. One more time, and now it's Rotate. (After that it's Scale, then Mirror, then back to Stretch...but we're stopping at Rotate today.)

Within the Rotate mode, there are several options at the command line: Base point, Copy, Undo, Reference, and eXit.

Enter C for copy, and every time you enter an angle or left-click, a new copy is created. The advantage that this has over Array is that you can enter different angles or intervals every time; you're not limited to a single value.

The Base point option means that you're not limited to the grip position as your center of rotation. Enter B at the command line, and you can select a new point in the drawing to serve as the center point. You can even continue to specify new base points as many times as you like, without ever exiting the command.

How's that for several ways to answer a simple question?

(This question is also a perfect reminder of how important terminology and semantics are in AutoCAD LT...how many of you instantly thought of "array" when you read "multiple radial copies"? I didn't...option #2 was actually the last option I thought of.)