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Autodesk begins its annual week of rest today, so the blog will also be taking a few days off.
I’ll leave you with a little engineering- and holiday-themed humor: the engineer’s Christmas tree.
It’s been around for a few years at least, but is still good for a laugh or two.
Happy Holidays, and I’ll see you back here in 2011!
When you’re putting notes on a section or detail, it’s not technically necessary for all the leaders to line up. I mean, this conveys the information pretty well:
But some of you out there would really prefer for everything to align nicely – your CAD Manager may even require it. Enter “Multileader Align”.
Start the command, pick your leaders to align, then either choose one to use as the basis or investigate your options further:
Here’s what the above leaders look like after applying “use current spacing”, choosing the third leader down as the basis, and specifying a vertical alignment:
And just for fun, the above group after applying “make leader segments parallel” (in other words, they’d just been aligned vertically) and choosing the second leader from the top as the basis:
A little prettier now, don’t you think?
One of my favorite parts of AU (and all events, really) is meeting blog readers and Twitter friends in person. It’s just so nice to know that there are real people out there!
One reader I had the pleasure of meeting recently is Dave, who traveled to AU 2010 all the way from Hawaii. But Dave had a font problem.
A certain SHX file was working fine on one computer with AutoCAD, but refused to display properly on another computer with AutoCAD LT. It was in the proper support path and wasn’t being swapped out by FONTMAP or FONTALT. So what was wrong?
As much as I hate to admit it, I was stumped. I couldn’t think of what might cause this behavior. Fortunately, Dave continued investigating when he got back to Hawaii, and e-mailed me with the solution.
He’d noticed that some font files displayed as blue in Windows Explorer, instead of the usual black.
Turns out that those files have been compressed, using option in the “Advanced” section of the file properties.
The trouble with that is that compressed SHX files can’t be used by AutoCAD or AutoCAD LT. The good thing is that fixing the problem is as easy as unchecking the box.
So if you have fonts that mysteriously won’t appear in your drawings, here’s one more place to look.
And if it solves your problem, send your thanks to Dave. :-)
I’ve posted about this feature before, but it was at the end of a longer post, and it’s such a neat feature that I decided it deserved its minute in the spotlight.
In AutoCAD LT 2011, hatches have a new property: Layer. You’ll find it on the expanded portion of the Properties panel on the Hatch Creation tab.
By default, it’s set to “Use Current”, but you can choose any layer in the current drawing to use instead.
Once you set it, it sticks, at least in that drawing, so you don’t have to set it every time.
And if you set the hatch layer (also known as the system variable HPLAYER) in your template drawing, you’ll never have to set it again. No more putting hatches on the wrong layer!
I love features that help you save time and help enforce CAD standards all at once.
For AUGI Members...
The Board of Directors is the governing body for AUGI. They are involved in long range planning, vision casting, high level management and most importantly, member interactions. The board is responsible for the overarching direction of the organization. The Board possess a passion for Autodesk products and services and they are committed to sharing knowledge amongst the AUGI membership.
It is time to cast your vote for candidates running for the single open position on the AUGI Board of Directors. Click here to become familiar with the candidates and vote. The ballot is a Ranked Ballot. The candidate who receives the most votes will be elected to the Board. You have a maximum of one (1) yes vote to cast for one person. Each name is voted on individually. Elected candidates will serve for a three-year term from January 2011 through December 2013.
Voting closes on December 16, 2010, so please don’t delay. Vote now!
In order to cast a ballot in the annual Board of Directors election, a member must have been a member in good standing for 30 days prior to the close of nominations (which happened on Oct. 20, 2010). You must also log in to the site to vote.
Well, Autodesk University 2010 is now in the books and I’m home again. In most ways things are back to normal – I’ve mostly readjusted to the Eastern time zone, I’m caught up on e-mail, and I no longer feel a compelling need to drink a glass of water every ten minutes – but really processing all the things I learned & saw last week will take a little longer.
As of my last post, I’d caught you up through Tuesday, so now it’s on to Wednesday and Thursday.
Day 4 of my AU 2010 kicked off at 9:30, helping out with a lab on tables run by Jeanne Aarhaus. After that, I should have gone to an AutoCAD for Mac lab and then to observe an AutoCAD LT focus group, but instead I ended up pinch-hitting as an interviewer for some customer videos for the AutoCAD Exchange. I had a great time talking to Jay Mezher about Parsons Brinckerhoff and the virtual city they’ve created for Seattle, then to Yoshi Honda about elements of CAD Standards and how they have evolved over the past few years. Then I filmed some tips on my own, about AutoCAD LT and Windows 7. Look for all of these on the Exchange in the near future.
The last class on Wednesday’s schedule was my Product Clinic for AU Virtual. Attendance was a little low, but I’ll attribute that to the fact that it didn’t start until 7 pm Eastern. I hope that everyone who was there enjoyed the presentation, though. Finally it was off to the exhibit hall, where once again I talked about AutoCAD WS until I was hoarse. It was great to see such a good reaction to it, though! Especially when we started with the live demos of real-time collaboration: add a circle to a drawing on one iPad, and a few seconds later it showed up on the other iPad! Even when you know what’s coming, it’s still really neat to see.
Wednesday was also when I met Betsy Weber, Chief Evangelist for Techsmith (makers of Camtasia and Snagit, software I use on a daily basis) and joined the official Techsmith Spork Club.
The spork is almost invisible in this photo, thanks to another new acquisition – a kookaburra from my Aussie friend Bill Adams. (You may remember the echidna from last year – Bill gave me that one too.)
Sadly, I don’t have any pictures of me with any of the other friends, new and old, that I saw at this year’s conference. Many of them do, though, so perhaps I’ll have some time soon to browse through the AU Flickr stream and find some of them to post. I met a lot of blog readers, some twitter followers, and plenty of people that I only knew electronically before this year.
I had expected Thursday to be my most stressful day at AU, with two live presentations and three lab-assisting sessions. As it turned out, Thursday went great and it was Wednesday, with all its last-minute schedule changing and rearranging, that was the week’s steamroller.
The plotting lab I taught in the morning went pretty well, although I’ve already received several comments that I went too fast. I had been worried about the pacing, trying to strike a balance between getting everything in and making sure people could keep up, and it seems I might have to tweak that a little for next time. But overall the reviews were positive.
Two of the labs I assisted in were on dimensioning, and the third was AutoCAD for Mac. That one was especially fun to watch, as people explored the new interface and learned about the similarities and differences between the Windows and Mac versions.
My last AU task was the live version of “Hey, I Never Knew That!” that I’d already presented as a virtual class. It was a different kind of presentation for me, since I used PowerPoint exclusively instead of demoing in AutoCAD. Since I wasn’t switching applications, I put my notes on my iPad and used that to present instead of sitting at my computer. It worked great, except when a Twitter alert showed up! Somebody in the class put up a tweet that tagged me, so it popped up on top of my presentation notes. I just closed it (no one but me could see it) and moved on, but it was pretty funny to laugh about afterwards. Next time, I’ll remember to turn on airplane mode before I present.
I’ll leave you with a couple pictures of some of the goodies that came home with me from AU. Trade shows in general are just stuffed with giveaways, and AU is no exception. As an employee, I don’t pick up as much as I used to, but I did get a couple of nice things anyway.
You already saw the kookaburra and the spork, but I also got two keychains from my Brazilian friends Assis Haubert and Luciana Klein.
I’ve never been to Brazil, but I wonder if I could arrange a trip…hmm…
The AutoCAD team started an “I <heart> AutoCAD” campaign earlier this year, and the buttons were such a big hit that we had to do it again at AU.
The team wore the small silver buttons, and we used various sizes of the white buttons as our booth giveaway. They were (of course) very popular!
I also picked up one of the famous AUGI beer mugs from the annual Beer Bash – it has the 20th anniversary logo on it, which makes it even more special. Twenty years…congratulations, AUGI!
I’ve already put my last gift into use, replacing yet another boring black business accessory. (If you saw my computer bag and iPad case, you know I’m over black…bring on the colors!)
It’s a 4-port USB hub, and if you think it looks like a toy, you’re right – it’s a Tangle Hub, modeled after the popular Tangle toys. Each color on the hub can twist around to face a different direction – you can make a circle, or a straight line, or almost anything in between. Isn’t it great when practical things can be fun, too?
Well, I guess that’s about it for AU 2010. But just because the conference is over doesn’t mean the learning is! AU Online is stronger than ever, and the 2010 classes will be added to the archives soon. Anyone can download the handouts for free, and Subscription customers and AUv Premier Pass holders can watch screencasts and other recordings all year.
What a week it was – hope to see you in Vegas next year!
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