LT Unlimited

Where'd My Viewports Go?

If you’re working in a layout in AutoCAD LT 2013, and go looking on the View tab for Viewport tools, you might get a bit of a surprise.

The “Viewports” panel there is now called “Model Viewports”, and as you might guess from the title, is only for arranging views in modelspace. All its tools are greyed out in a layout.

Instead, hop on over to the new Layout tab.

There you’ll find the new home for rectangular, polygonal, and object-based viewports, as well as naming, clipping, and locking tools.

So in case you were wondering what happened to your viewport tools, now you know!

Updated Command Line

Have you ever counted how many ways there are to access commands in AutoCAD LT? I count six: the ribbon, grips, the command line, tool palettes, menus, and toolbars. (Did I miss any?)

Of all those methods, the command line has been around the longest, so it’s probably the most deserving of an update.

This new & improved version now floats transparently in your drawing window, freeing up a few extra pixels of real estate.

But just because you only see one line now, that doesn’t mean that’s all you get. As soon as you start entering commands, a scrolling history appears above the command line. And this is where it really gets interesting. You won’t believe the number of new things there are to talk about just in this screenshot.

At the very left are the drag bar and the close button. Reposition the bar anywhere on your screen, or even dock it back at the bottom where it used to be.

Next up is the wrench icon for Settings, where you can control the AutoComplete display, the Lines of Prompt History (more on that in a second), the Transparency, or go to the Options dialog.

The next icon—the small square actually in the command prompt—brings up your most recent commands.

Let’s go back to the command-in-progress command line:

Notice that there’s now an icon and the command name itself displayed in the command line, to help you keep track of what you’re doing.

Also, the capital letters that indicate command options are now blue, and what’s more, they’re clickable, so you can activate them either by typing or with the mouse. (Does that count as a 7th way of accessing commands?)

Back to the prompt history. By default, you get 3 lines at a time, and they fade away after a few seconds of inactivity, helping to keep your screen clear. If you want to see more, you can press F2 or click the arrow at the far right of the command line. And if you want the full text window as in previous releases, that’s now Ctrl+F2.

I hope you enjoy this revamped command line—happy typing!

Hide or Display Model & Layout Tabs

If you like to set up your drawings with lots of layouts in them, you probably find the Model & Layout tabs along the bottom of the screen pretty handy.

But maybe you’re the type to only ever have Model and Layout1—nothing else. In that case, you might like to turn off these tabs to get them out of your way.

To do this, just right-click on a tab and choose “Hide Layout and Model tabs”. After you do this, the more observant of you may notice two extra icons on the status bar, sandwiched between the MODEL/PAPER toggle and Quick View Drawings and Layouts.

These are to help you quickly switch between model and paper space without the tabs. They’re also where you’ll find the setting to turn the tabs back on if you miss them.

The inspiration for today’s tip was provided by the April edition of the excellent Michael’s Corner newsletter—definitely worth a read if you’re not already a subscriber.

Facecast Tip

If you saw Lynn Allen’s Facecast on the AutoCAD Facebook page Wednesday, then you’ll know where I got this tip.

I’ve posted before about the ribbon cycle button, which lets you control how much space the ribbon takes up at the top of your screen, so hopefully you’re familiar with it.

But Lynn pointed out that double-clicking on the active tab name has the same cycling effect! Pretty neat. I’d actually seen this happen once before, but didn’t make the connection (I thought I’d clicked on something else).

If nothing else, this will provide a little more ammunition in your arsenal for tackling those “hey, wait a minute…” problems.

Thanks Lynn!

(And if you missed the Facecast, but want to see what else Lynn had to say, you can check out the archives here.)

Tweak to Snap Behavior

I know a lot of you reading this probably don’t use Snap (toggled by F9) much, preferring instead to rely on Object Snaps. But for those of you who do, you’ll notice a change to Snap behavior in AutoCAD LT 2012.

Now, Snap only kicks in when you’re specifying points. If you’re just moving the cursor around the drawing, you can move it as freely as you could if Snap weren’t on. But as soon as you’re ready to enter a distance or pick a point—whether you’re grip-editing something or using a regular command—Snap kicks in and restricts you to defined intervals.

This makes it easier to select objects in your drawing (since you don’t have to work as hard to get your cursor precisely over an object), while still giving you the Snap-based precision you need.

Change to Quick Properties

Quick Properties has been around since AutoCAD LT 2009, but it’s received a few tweaks since then, the biggest of which happened this year.

When you double-click an object, you now get Quick Properties instead of the full Properties palette (unless that object has a different double-click action already). In keeping with this change, the QP palette was also revamped so that it shows you the most relevant properties for that object.

Here’s what you get when you double-click on a circle:

By contrast, in AutoCAD LT 2011, you only saw color, layer, and linetype. All the other information was hidden by the sliding portion of the palette.

If you want to use QP the old way, just turn it on from the status bar. Then the QP palette will show up when you select an object, and close when you clear your selection.

But either way, double-clicking still brings up Quick Properties instead of Properties. To change this, head for the CUI and the “Double Click Actions” section.

I’ve expanded two items here to show you a couple of the options.

Notice that when you double-click an arc, you get Quick Properties.

But when you double-click a block, you get “Block – Double Click” (which happens to be BEDIT).

To change an object’s double-click action, just find a new command in the command list (just below the portion of the CUI shown here) and drag-and-drop it onto the object name. An object can only have one double-click action at a time, so dragging-and-dropping automatically replaces the old command with the new one.

You can use this method to replace all the Quick Properties with Properties if you want, or with other relevant commands. (You could set it up so double-clicking on an arc launches the Rectangle command, for example, but I wouldn’t recommend it.)

Some object types have pre-defined non-QP double-click actions. These include:

• Attributes
• Blocks
• Dimensions
• Images
• Polylines
• Splines
• Text
• Xrefs

Others that you might expect to have non-QP double-click actions actually don’t, because they have a contextual ribbon tab that’s activated by a single click or selection instead. The two that I’ve found in this category are:

• Arrays
• Tables

I hope you like the new behavior, but if you don’t, at least you know now how to set it back.

Update to Selection Windows

Time to update an old post today, on mouse clicks and selection windows.

In AutoCAD LT 2012, the PICKDRAG system variable has a new default option – 2. (Previously available were 0 and 1.)

The new setting means that you can start a selection window either by clicking once and letting go, then clicking again somewhere else and letting go; or by pressing and holding the left mouse button, moving the mouse, then letting the button go.

In older versions of AutoCAD LT, you had to choose which method you want to use, but now they’re both available all the time.

If you still use the two-click method, you’ll also notice that Fence, Window Polygon, and Crossing Polygon are now available even when you’re not inside a command. (Before, you had to have a command active to see those options.)

Recently-Used Files

One of the most convenient places to find your recent AutoCAD LT files is in the Application Menu.

(If you’re running Windows 7, of course, there are also jump lists.)

By default, you see the 9 most-recent files in the list. But why stop there? In the Options dialog, you can increase that number all the way to 50, if you want.

Make sure you change the “Application Menu” setting, not the “File Open” setting. “File Open” applies to the old File pull-down menu, and that one maxes out at 9.

Improvements to the UCS Icon

I don't have an April Fool's post for you today, just some "magic tricks" you can do with the UCS icon in AutoCAD LT 2012.

For my first trick, I will hover my magic wand (okay, the cursor) over the UCS icon.

…Aaaaand, it’s yellow!

Next, I'll click on the icon.

…Ooh, those grips came out of nowhere!

Then I'll hover over a grip.

…A multifunctional menu appears...like magic!

Yes, you can now select the UCS icon to move the origin or change the direction of the X and Y axes. (There’s a Z-axis too, in case you run into drawings with 3D elements.)

For my final trick, I will convince AutoCAD LT to display a dynamic preview of the UCS icon as I move the mouse to choose a new direction for the X axis. Actually, there's no secret to this one. It happens automatically. (Shh...don't tell.)

There’s also a right-click menu with more options like Named UCS and Show UCS at Origin.

Also, the only way to select the UCS icon is to click on it directly, so you don’t have to worry about accidentally selecting it while you’re working on a drawing. Because the only magic we want to happen with your drawings is what you create on purpose, right?

Auto-Complete Commands and System Variables

Let’s say you want to use a command or system variable, but you can’t quite remember which one, or how to spell it. In AutoCAD LT 2012, you don’t have to press TAB to see all the options one by one (and then grumble when you realize you tabbed too fast and went past the one you were looking for). Instead, just start typing.

AutoCAD LT automatically pops up a list with all the matching commands, command aliases, and system variables for you to choose from.

You can use the mouse or arrow keys to pick one, or you can keep typing. Once you run out of two-letter command aliases, the command names start filling themselves in at the cursor and you can press Enter to accept it.

If this is making any of my keyboard fans nervous, I can guarantee that it won’t slow you down. It never takes the focus away from your input window, so you can type as fast as you like. If you press Enter fast enough, you might never even see the list at all. It’ll only show up when you stop to think.

The best part of auto-complete, though, is that it remembers your choices. Once you pick a command from the list, it’s highlighted by default the next time it’s available.

Let’s say I type in QS. I get two options: QSAVE and QSELECT.

I want QSELECT (I already use Ctrl+S for QSAVE), so I’ll press the down arrow and then press Enter. Now, the next time I type QS, QSELECT shows up instead!

It’s like I created my own personal command alias…without editing the PGP file. Pretty cool, isn’t it?

Auto-complete also works for your own custom aliases:

Unfortunately, you don’t get the command name in parentheses like you do with the built-in aliases, but it’s still nice that they’re there.

And this is AutoCAD LT we’re talking about, so of course you have options:

You can turn off the list itself, or just the icons, or just the system variables. You can also set the delay time, which is how long you have to stop typing before the list shows up. Personally, the defaults have worked great for me so far, but if you have other combinations that work best I’d love to hear about them.