LT Unlimited

Update to Snap Command

Last year, I told you about a change to the Snap behavior in AutoCAD LT 2012, where it would only go into effect if you were picking points, not selecting objects.

The idea behind this was that we think snap can be too restrictive if you’re trying to grab something that’s already been drawn—trouble was, not all of you agreed with us!

So we added a new Legacy mode to the SNAP command in AutoCAD LT 2013, and tossed in the system variable SNAPGRIDLEGACY in the Service Pack 2 for AutoCAD LT 2012.

When Legacy is set to Yes (or when SNAPGRIDLEGACY is set to 1, for those of you on 2012), snap will be active all the time, not just when specifying points.

New Variable for Wipeout Frames

If you regularly use wipeout objects in your drawings, you’re probably familiar with the longstanding dilemma: Frames on or off?

If a wipeout’s frame is on, you can edit its shape, but it will also plot—possibly defeating the point of having a wipeout in the first place. If the frame is off, it won’t plot, but it’s a lot harder to see & select if you need to.

In AutoCAD LT 2013, this dilemma has been removed, because wipeouts have joined the cast of objects (like images) that can have visible, non-plotting frames.

Simply set the new system variable WIPEOUTFRAME to 2, or use the Frames option inside the Wipeout command itself.

Design Feed in AutoCAD WS 1.5

I hope you’ve been keeping up with the Autodesk news enough to notice our release of AutoCAD WS 1.5 a couple weeks back. (If you got distracted by the Olympics, though, I don’t blame you.)

The best way to hear about the new features is to watch last week’s Facecast, if you’ve got 30 minute to spare. But if you’re short on time, I thought I’d put up a few screenshots and explanations to help you get the idea of the most intriguing new feature: the Design Feed.

The Design Feed is found under the new “newspaper” icon at the top of the WS screen.

The next image shows the options you have after selecting the Design Feed icon and choosing “Create Post.”

1. Space to write whatever you have to say.
2. The option to mark an area or a single point on the drawing to place your note.
3. People to “tag” in your note. These can be people you’ve already shared the drawing with, or who you want to share the drawing with. Anybody you tag like this will get an email notification that they can use to go directly to the file and see the note.
4. The option to add a photo to your note.

Those four things are pretty cool all by themselves, but it doesn’t end there. When you’ve finished creating your post, you’re taken back to the Design Feed.

Here, you can see how many posts are in a particular thread (1, in this case), reply to a post, or mark it resolved. When you mark an issue resolved, it disappears from your Design Feed (unless you turn it back on in the settings). This helps keep your feed from being cluttered with closed issues. And you can always re-open a closed issue if you need to.

Overall the Design Feed is a new and innovative way to keep comments attached to drawings—I think it’s got a lot of potential for streamlining the review process. What do you think?

Control your tray settings

I was printing a drawing the other day (repeatedly), and finally got tired of closing the little “successful plot” notification window:

Fortunately, I remembered there’s a way to make the bubble disappear all by itself. I right-clicked on the Status Bar and chose Tray Settings.

In that dialog, I changed the setting from “display until closed” to “display time 5 seconds”.

Ahhh, success. Now I still get the little windows/bubbles to let me know that everything worked (this also controls notifications for situations like changes to an external reference), but they’ll fade quietly away after I’ve had a chance to see them.

If you’d like a shorter or longer display time, you can choose from anywhere between 1 and 10 seconds, or you can even turn notifications off entirely. (A “notification” is the bubble window; an “icon” is, for example, the little printer icon that appears in the status bar while a plot job is processing.)

Twitter Tip of the Day: Lines tangent to circles

Today I've got a link for you to another blog post, but I initially saw it come through on Twitter, so that counts, right?

Josh Jones, a.k.a. @lazydrafter, wrote up a tip for connecting two circles with a line tangent to both of them.

Read and enjoy!

Getting the most out of the Properties palette

I've got a quasi-guest post for you today, courtesy of Paul Munford of The CAD Setter Out. ("Quasi" because I'm going to give you a link, not quote the whole thing.) Last week, after I mentioned using the Properties palette to modify text masks, Paul sent in a link to his in-depth exploration of the Properties palette.

My favorite tip was about undoing the changes you make with the palette:

If you make a lot of edits with the Properties palette, and then go back into AutoCAD and run the ‘undo’ command, all of your edits may undo at once. To undo one change at a time, remain with the Properties palette open, right click anywhere over the palette and choose ‘Undo’.

But there's plenty more where that came from–read the whole thing to brush up on all this palette can do!

Viewport Macros

Looking for some time-saving shortcuts for your everyday work? CAD Notes has a post today from Paul Munford of the CAD Setter Out with 11 macros for working with viewports.

Read the article

Paul suggests putting the macros on a tool palette, as seen on the right, but of course you can put a macro on all kinds of interface elements, including ribbon panels, toolbars, and pull-down menus.

Got your own click-saving macros you’d like to share? Send ‘em on in, and I’ll feature them here too.

Unable to Modify Objects

I’ve posted about PICKFIRST before, but it’s one of those annoying variables that’s hard to find if you don’t know what you’re looking for. So I’m putting this up in the hope of providing some SEO-friendly keywords (that’s “search engine optimized”) for people who find themselves yelling at their drawings.

If you can select objects, but not modify them (they get deselected when you start a command), check your PICKFIRST setting before you’re tempted to throw your computer out the window. :-)

Another random system variable

A couple weeks ago I got an IM from a colleague with an AutoCAD puzzle: Hatches refused to show up in a drawing. The command looked like it worked just fine, but the end result was nothing. All layers were on & thawed. Hmm…

I finally landed on the answer: FILLMODE. It had been set to 0, causing hatches, polylines, and 2D solids to appear empty. It took me a few minutes to figure it out, mainly because I forgot that FILLMODE can affect hatches—I thought it was only for polylines.

But I eventually remembered, and hopefully now you will too.

Match (Specific) Properties

You’ve probably used the MATCHPROP command for years to transfer one object’s properties to another’s, maybe to fix a mistake or modify a copy.

But did you know you can choose which properties to match? You don’t have to use them all!

The Settings option inside Match Properties is a little hidden, since it doesn’t show up until after you’ve selected the source object. But once you’ve found it, you get a whole bunch of choices.

As you see, everything’s checked by default, but you can remove any property you like just by unchecking it.

The top half of the dialog is dedicated to universal properties like color and linetype. In the bottom half are special objects with unique characteristics—for example, checking the “Dimension” and “Text” boxes transfers an object’s style and annotative properties along with the checked general properties.

After checking this out, you may decide to leave everything checked, or get rid of all but a few important properties…it’s up to you.

Happy matching!