LT Unlimited

Select Similar – Examples Wanted

I was presenting AutoCAD 2012 at an event yesterday, and demonstrated “Add Selected” and “Select Similar.” The audience seemed to think they were useful features, until one woman asked me for an example of why you would use “Select Similar.”

I’m embarrassed to say it, but I drew a blank. :-\ Fortunately somebody else suggested putting incorrectly drawn objects—like dimensions or blocks—on the correct layer.

But I *know* there have to be other examples, so I’m turning this over to you. When do you use “Select Similar”? Help me out, so I can answer this question properly the next time it comes up. :-)

Got ideas? We want to hear them!

The AutoCAD product team has had lots of practice coming up with good ideas for new features, but some of the best ideas come from you (PDF underlay, anyone? Transparency? Hide/Isolate?). This only makes sense, since you’re the ones using the product every day.

While the AUGI Wishlist has long been one of the best ways to get those ideas in front of the team, now there’s a new way too.

Ideas for AutoCAD is an experimental website based on Google Moderator where you can submit ideas or vote on other people’s ideas.

Here’s what the team has to say about it:

The AutoCAD Design team is experimenting with new ways to get feedback from our users.

Your suggestions help make AutoCAD (Mac & Windows) better, so let us know what would make AutoCAD easier to use, more enjoyable and help you be more productive.

The Design team might drop in from time to time to get inspired, and we may use the data submitted to help drive customer activities such as focus groups at our offices, AUGI CAD Camps,and events at Autodesk University.

On the main page, you’re asked for a display name and location, but although they’re nice to have, they’re not required to view or submit suggestions.

So if there’s something you’ve always wanted to see in AutoCAD LT, now’s your chance! Speak up and let us know about it!

Block Editor Hotfix Posted

A new hotfix is available for the AutoCAD 2012-based products (including AutoCAD LT 2012) that addresses an occasional problem with the Block Editor – saving a drawing while in the Block Editor would sometimes overwrite the drawing contents with the block contents instead. (Oops.)

Get 32- and 64-bit versions here. And as always, read the ReadMe first.

More ways to try AutoCAD LT 2012

There’s always more than one way to accomplish anything in AutoCAD LT, right? Of course. Often there’s more than two or three ways, too.

Today that’s even more applicable to test-driving AutoCAD LT 2012. The classic download is still available from our website, but you’ll notice a big “Try Now” button there too – no download required!

And in case those two options weren’t enough, the instant trial is now also available from Amazon and CDW. Just look for the “special promotions” section on the Amazon page, and for the “free trial” box on the CDW page.

Bandwidth restrictions do apply for the online trials; if your connection isn’t fast enough, you may not see the option there at all.

This pilot was done in partnership with Autodesk Labs. If you think this is neat, you should really check out all the other cool projects that the Labs have available for testing.

Copy Named Objects from Xrefs

AutoCAD LT 2012 introduced the NCOPY command, which lets you bring objects from referenced files into the host drawing.

But what if you just want to grab a dimension style (not a dimension object) from an xref? Try a much older command: XBIND!

XBIND (which is not the same as BIND) is most easily available at the command line. It lets you import named objects—layers, dimensions styles, text styles, blocks, linetypes—from a referenced DWG into the current file.

Bound items bring in their drawing prefix; the layer imported above would become “MapBuildings$0$_EDIFICIOS”. If you want to get rid of that, you can always use the RENAME command.

Maximize Viewport

You probably know that you can double-click inside a viewport’s boundary to activate and edit the items in model space.

But have you ever double-clicked on a viewport boundary?

If you try it, you’ll see that your screen suddenly looks a lot like model space, except with a diagonal red border all the way around the outside.

What you’ve done is maximized your viewport—you can edit, pan, zoom, etc., and when you’re done you can go back to paper space without having affected the scale or view area of the viewport.

Which brings us to the next logical question: How do you get back?

Look for the red-bordered button on the status bar.

Click it, and it minimizes your viewport, taking you back into the layout. The arrows on either side let you maximize different viewports. The view might not change unless you’ve got viewport overrides like layer color or visibility settings.

For my keyboard fans, the commands for this feature are VPMAX and VPMIN.

AutoCAD Facecast on Monday

The AutoCAD product team is hosting another Facecast on Monday, June 13 at 1:00 Pacific / 4:00 Eastern.

I’m not sure yet if you’ll be able to watch it here, but you can go here for the Facecast on Facebook, as well as for recordings of previous events on AutoCAD WS and AutoCAD for Mac.

The topic so far is a mystery, even to me, but they’ve promised some hints on Twitter…guess you’ll have to tune in to see the news!

A little AutoCAD humor

It’s not every day that AutoCAD makes me laugh out loud, but reading Architexts makes those days happen more often than they used to.

This was Monday’s entry:

If I still worked in an engineering office, I would totally use this. :-)

Join Objects

The JOIN command is another feature in AutoCAD LT 2012 that isn’t new, but that’s been tweaked so it’s more useful than ever.

The basic idea behind Join is that you can combine two or more objects into a single object. Here are some possible combinations:

• Collinear lines (with or without gaps) –> line
• Non-collinear lines (without gaps) –> polyline
• Single arc –> circle
• Multiple arcs (same center & radius) –> arc or circle
• Lines & arcs –> polyline
• Lines & arcs & splines –> spline

Generally speaking, the most complicated object wins. So if you join lines, arcs, and a polyline, the result is a polyline. If your set includes a spline, the result will be a spline.

The change for 2012 is that you can select your objects for joining in any order, or even select multiple objects at once with a crossing or selection window. AutoCAD LT will automatically figure out which objects can be joined and what the resulting object type will be.

Object Snap Enhancements

AutoCAD LT 2012 includes a small improvement to the Perpendicular and Tangent object snaps that I think might go unnoticed if it weren’t pointed out, but could still be helpful for those of you who need it.

When you’re grip-stretching a line or polyline and using the Perpendicular object snap, you now get two options for the snap point.

First, you can make one of the segments perpendicular to another line.

  

Or you can make the stretching vector perpendicular to another line.

In earlier versions, you’d only get one or the other, but now you can have both.

A similar principle applies to tangent snaps too. You can either grip-stretch a line so that it becomes tangent to the arc or circle, or the stretching vector can be the tangent instead.