AutoDesk labs plugins

AutoDesk Labs has a bunch of cool plugins for AutoCAD. The one that that looks especially useful to me is RefUcsSpy. From the site:

Many AutoCAD users have reference files set up in World coordinates. Attaching such files when in a different User Coordinate System (UCS) can result in the contents appearing at incorrect locations. This plugin can be used within AutoCAD to detect when reference files are being attached when the UCS is not “World.” If it is not, the user will be prompted whether they would like to temporarily set the UCS to World for the duration of the attach command.

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100 AutoCAD Tips You Should Know

From CAD notes, here’s a handy list of AutoCAD Tips:

http://cad-notes.com/2010/06/100-autocad-tips-you-should-know/

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Matching Names in Purge

I discovered recently that it is possible to use regular expressions in the purge command. If that doesn’t excite you, I don’t know what will.

A regular expression is a way to define a pattern. The pattern can be used to include or exclude the name(s) of a layer, linetype, registered application, or anything that can be purged.

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Publish troubles?

Is the output of your Publishing endeavors not what you expected? Are multiple sheets being printed to a single PDF file, when you really want multiple files? Try setting PUBLISHCOLLATE to 0. If it is set to 1, AutoCAD will process the entire set of drawings being published as a single job.

I actually had a lot of problems when PUBLISHCOLLATE was set to 1 when I was using AutoCAD 2009, where the last sheet output would overwrite each previous sheet. This behavior seems to have been fixed in 2010, though.

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Editing Hatches in 2010

I’ve been using AutoCAD 2010 for a few months now, and I’ve found some value in a few of the new features.  One that a colleague pointed out to me is the new grip editing features for hatches.  You may have noticed that when you click on a non-associative hatch, you’ll see grips appear.

It’s a handy way to quickly change those hatches without having to redraw the boundaries.

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Layout Selector

QVLAYOUT is a handy command,for sure.  It lets us hide our layout and model space tabs, recovering valuable screen real estate, and it provides a nice thumbnail view of each layout.  But it takes a few extra milliseconds to generate the thumbnails, and if you know you want to go to the first layout (which is often the case) and you are a keyboard commando, you might find this LISP routine useful.  It’s called LayoutNav.  Props to Lee Ambrosius for writing this back in 2003.

Load it up with APPLOAD, then you can use the command “FirstLayout” to jump right to the first layout tab.  I used ALIASEDIT to alias “L1″ to “FirstLayout”, so it’s EVEN QUICKER.  I’m into efficiency, if you haven’t noticed.

Next week: How to convince your clone to write your blog for you.

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Blog Roundup

There’s some useful info out there:

Dave Dixon has some really useful info on Speeding Up Civil 3D.  I suspect these tips will work for vanilla AutoCAD as well.

Ellen Finkelstein on Clipping Blocks

Justin Zeimba on the downsides of ClearType

Donnie Gladfelter shows us how to Create Blocks with Multiple Insertion Points

Shaan Hurley links hatches to tables

Aleksandr Smirnov has a nice collection of LISP routines

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Introducing: the AutoCAD coordinizer

Happy New Year!  I’m back, and I have present for you.

I’m proud to reveal my latest bit of coding handiwork, the AutoCAD Coordinizer.  I originally created this in PHP, but didn’t have a free web host for it, so I just ported it to Python and put it on Google’s Apps site.

What it does, basically, is take the output of a LIST or ID command (or series of commands) and extract the X and Y values, placing them in a handy list.  I wrote it to simplify the creation of coordinate tables.

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Improving Performance in AutoCAD and Civil 3D

I’m running Civil 3D 2009 on a PC with an Nvidia Quadro 3500 video card. I’ve recently taken a few steps to speed things up. First, I disabled Communications Center, which speeds up start times. Second, I installed the latest Nvidia Drivers. Finally, I installed the Nvidia Powerdraft Drivers.

I didn’t do any benchmarking, so I can’t say exactly what effect these changes had, but if you are having problems with AutoCAD’s speed, you might want to try a few of these things.

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For Your Amusement

This is pretty off-topic, but I did a search on our network drive for AutoCAD script files.  Below are the filenames.  Enjoy.

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