I’m now in the process of making a career transition, so I don’t expect I’ll be making any more updates to this blog. I hope that the information here continues to be a useful resource. Thanks to my readers for your patronage!

If anyone is curious, my new career is in counseling. I graduated from the LIOS Graduate College of Saybrook University in January 2011, and I now operate a private practice as a mindfulness-based therapist here in Seattle. I’m still working the old job, but my intention is to leave after I build up my practice. If you are interested in finding out more about my work, please visit http://fosteringconnection.com . I’m especially good at working with engineers, architects and CAD techs.

Happy CADing!

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.

I tested it, and it works… except with CLASSICXREF. AutoDesk, can you can fix this?

The other plugins that look useful are DrawOrderByLayer, XrefStates, and OffsetInXref.

Free downloads here:
http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/ADN_plugins/catalog/

Update: AutoDesk Labs was kind enough to send me a version that works with CLASSICXREF. It activates when the command is run. I really appreciate this, but I find the functionality to be more of a hindrance than anything, because sometimes I just want to unload or open an xref, and I don’t need the UCS warning dialog in those instances. They tell me that it is impossible to hook the Attach command from the CLASSICXREF dialog, because it doesn’t exist as an independent command like XATTACH. Ah, well.

Just in case you are still interested in the revised version, here it is: RefUcsSpy-1.0.2.zip.

Update 2: I wrote a little AutoHotKey Script that magically drops out of the CLASSICXREF dialog and runs the XATTACH command, thereby activating RefUCSSpy. If you haven’t installed AutoHotKey already (it’s a fantastic tool), do so, then save the following as AutoCAD_keys.ahk or something similar, and run it when AutoCAD is running:

#Persistent
SetTimer, ControlGetUM
return
ControlGetUM:
ControlUnderMouse := ControlGetUM("class")
if ControlUnderMouse = Button4
return
ControlGetUM(what="ID") { ; by Learning one
MouseGetPos,,,, ControlID, 2
MouseGetPos,,,, ControlClass
if (what = "ID" or what = "I")
Return ControlID
else if (what = "Class" or what = "C")
Return ControlClass
else if (what = "Text" or what = "T") {
ControlGetText, ControlText , , ahk_id %ControlID%
Return ControlText
}
}
#IfWinActive, Xref Manager, &Attach... ;if Xref Manager is active
LButton::
if ControlUnderMouse = Button4
{
Send {Esc}
Send XATTACH{Enter}
} else {
Click
}
return

(Note: use this with the version of RefUCSSpy available on the AutoDesk Labs site, not the 1.02 version I posted above.)

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

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. You need to use the command line version of purge (prefix the command with a minus sign: -PURGE). Here’s how it looks:

Command: -PURGE
Enter type of unused objects to purge
[Blocks/Dimstyles/LAyers/LTypes/MAterials/MUltileaderstyles/Plotstyles/SHapes/textSTyles/Mlinestyles/Tablestyles/Visualstyles/Regapps/All]: Regapps
Enter name(s) to purge <*>: ~[s|p]*

In this example I’m purging all registered applications that don’t start with “s” or “p”. The ~ symbol means “not”, and the | symbol means “or”. The * is a wildcard that means that any character(s) will be matched. If you want to brush up on regular expressions, try this site.

I haven’t tried them all, but here are a few that worked, for example:

E[~P]* – match all names that start with E followed by any letter but P
*_* – match all names that contain an underscore character.
~[0-9]* – purges all names that do not start with a number.

Note that you don’t need to escape (prefix with a backslash) the underscore character. In fact, I don’t think any of the escape sequences work. It may be disingenuous to call these regular expressions, because many of the standard features of regular expressions won’t work. Only the most basic pattern-matching functions can be used. But that alone may be a useful tool for you.

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.

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

The other nifty feature is that you can add or remove grips, similar to the Pedit:Edit vertex:insert feature.  Unlike Pedit, you can convert line segments to arcs.  If you hold the mouse over a selected grip at the corner, or over the rectangular grip in the middle of a line segment, you will see a little tooltip pop up telling you that you can add or remove vertices.

I also appreciate the addition of the “recreate boundary” button in the Hatch Edit dialog.  But with the addition of the grip editing feature, it has become less necessary to use associative boundaries.

Here’s what you need:

gMapMaker, available here.  (latest version is 0.7.3.2 as of this writing)

After you install and run gMapMaker, you will want to set the options like so:

I set the Max Parallel downloads to 1 and the Wait between requests to 6000 ms so as not to piss off the Google Maps Server.  Meaning that downloading too many tiles at once will result in the server temporarily banning your IP.  Sometimes even these settings will trigger a ban, if you download enough files, so you may want to be even more conservative. You’ll know if you get banned if the bottom parts of your image end up as black squares.  It took me about 20 minutes to download about 300 256×256 tiles, which is better than waiting 12 hours or so for your IP to get unbanned.  Fortunately, thanks to gMapMaker’s cache, you don’t have to re-download tiles that have already been downloaded when you try again.

The next setting is Map Area.  Here you define the bounding box of your image with lat/long coordinates.  gMapMaker has a built-in interface that allows you to select which area of the Earth you want to grab map tiles from, but if you want something a little more accurate, use the interface at the bottom of this page.  Be sure to set the blue marker to the upper-left corner of your selection, so as to match the Map Area inputs in gMapMaker, then copy the lat/longs underneath the map to gMapMaker.

You can set the zoom level by going straight to Google Maps, zooming into the area you want (at the appropriate zoom level, it is not necessary to view the entire area), and hovering your mouse pointer over the “link” link in the upper-right corner.  The URL in your status bar (if you use Firefox, anyway) should have something like “&z=14″ at the end.  That number (14 in this example) is the zoom level you want to put into gMapMaker.  If you are using some other browser that doesn’t show you the URL, just click on the “link” link and note the zoom level at the end of the URL that pops up (select the URL and hit the “end” button your keyboard”).  Take note of the image size and memory needed at the bottom left of gMapMaker.  If the image is too big for your application, you might want to lower the zoom level or shrink the area.

Be sure to set the map type to “Google Satellite”, unless you want another type.

You can set the image format to whatever works for you.  Make sure to set the Operating mode to “OziExplorer mode, download and build merged image”.

Click Go, select a location to save the stitched-together image, and sit back and wait.  This dialog will show you gMapMaker’s progress:

Have fun.

I noticed that AutoCAD was ignoring certain keypresses occasionally.  For instance, when I was in the middle of a pline command, I’d type “cen” but “cn” would appear in the command line.  So I did a little googlin’ and came across this thread.  I wasn’t quite satisfied with the answer (what’s the point of dual monitors if I can’t display the non-modal windows on my second monitor?), so I played around a little bit and I think I found a solution.

In AutoCAD 2009 and onward, there are two command line windows, one that you access with F2, and one that you can access by typing “commandline” or hitting CTRL+9.  I prefer the F2 one because it is quicker to toggle on and off.  So I put the F2 command line window on my secondary monitor, and I noticed that I had tried to put the CTRL+9 command line window there as well, then turned it off.  Well, apparently AutoCAD still thinks it is there, because when I turned it back on and then docked it, the keypress delay disappeared.  Problem solved!  Now, with the CTRL+9 command line docked, I can turn it off, and the delay is still gone.

I tested this in Civil 3D 2009; I’m not sure if it will work in other versions.  Please let me know if it does or doesn’t solve your problem.

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.