Lazy Drafter

For all you lazy drafters out there, CompliCAD offers, “a few tools to help make CAD & BIM a little less complicated.” These tools are some useful unit-conversion & scale factor tools. Check them out…

At the request of Murph, I will show you how to create a block that will display the bearing in degrees, minutes, and seconds (DMS) using an AutoCAD Field. It’s actually very simple. Let’s get started. Type BEDIT to create a block: Give your block a name and hit OK...

Recently I was asked to create a grid that labels the Northings & Eastings on a map. There are a couple of ways you could do this: 1) If you have Civil 3D, create a point style that labels the Northing & Easting. 2) If you have AutoCAD create a block that displays the Northing & Easting with fields...

You may have noticed that when you attempt to delete a layer that is being used by entities in your drawing you will be denied. There is, however, an easy way to delete layers that are being used by entities. The command is LAYDEL...

This just in: “It is time to cast your votes for your favorite Autodesk product improvement wishes for the February 2009 cycle...

I just found out from @MisterAU on Twitter that Autodesk has a channel on YouTube. Looking over a few of the videos it looks like a lot of marketing promos and videos showing overviews of various Autodesk software...

According to the AutoCAD help file, “Reconciling new layers is the process of manually reviewing new layers so that you can avoid potential errors before plotting your drawing or when restoring a layer state.” I can see how this would be a really great tool but I haven’t fully adopted it...

I hope you had a good New Years. I sure did! I’m just getting back to blogging after a holiday break. Have you ever been frustrated that your hatch patterns always cover other objects no matter how many times you set the draw order to send it to back...

I just read an excellent tutorial by David Watson at CADTutor.net. David writes, “AutoCAD can be used to create a simple “walk through” of any 3D model...

I am trying to understand why companies use the “unitless” insertion scale (UNITS, INSUNITS) in their drawings as a standard. I’m sure there are uses for it, but I am having a hard time understanding. If you set your drawings to “unitless”, leave a comment here and tell me your reasoning...

I was one of those guys carrying around a MacBook at Autodesk University. The main reasons I took it was to blog and check email, but throughout the week I found myself wishing that Autodesk would make AutoCAD run natively on Mac OSX...

Matt Murphy showed this tip in a class at Autodesk University. He explained that AutoCAD attaches XData to objects in drawings and this data allows information to be associated with specific objects...

Erhan Toker from the DailyAutoCAD.com website posted an excellent tutorial on using the command LENGTHEN. He said, “Most of the time; we use TRIM and EXTEND for editing the lengths of objects. However, we may wish to define the length of an object to a certain value...

The party at in the evening of day 3 was incredible. There was a lot of entertainment, good food, and beer. I really enjoyed watching people do bungee jumping on a trampoline. Good times! Don't drink before trying this...

Today is the last full day at AU. Tomorrow morning I have a couple of classes, and then it’s all over. What a day it has been...

Today was another full day at Autodesk University. Last night I went to bed early so I missed the Exhibit Hall Opening Reception. But after lunch I did get a chance to take a walk around it and look at some really neat displays...

Autodesk University is in full swing here in Las Vegas. This is my second time attending this event and I have to say, it’s worth every penny. Not only are the classes good, but you get to network and meet innovative, smart people...

I am on my way to the airport to fly to Las Vegas for Autodesk University. This morning I thought I would share a simple command that can save you from a lot of embarrassment. There is nothing worse than having someone else point out a spelling mistake on your drawing...

Want to know a quick way to rename something in your drawing? Type RENAME on the command line to rename blocks, dimension styles, layers, linetypes, materials, table styles, text styles, UCSs, viewports, & views. Very powerful...

CutePDF Writer is freeware that will allow AutoCAD to print to PDF. According to their website it’s free for commercial and non-commercial use, contains no watermarks, and no popup web ads. Happy Monday!

Here are a few tips to speed up drafting. I am a huge fan of typing commands & command aliases. Here is a list of commonly-used command aliases. If you are unfamiliar with them, take one or two and start using them instead of clicking the toolbar button...

Here are a few things you can do to help speed up AutoCAD. Type IMAGEQUALITY and set it to “Draft” for faster-loading images in AutoCAD. When plotting however, you might want to switch it back to “High”. Type IMAGEHLT on the command line and set it to 0...

Shaan Hurly wrote a great tip on publishing PDFs. When plotting or publishing PDFs you can set it to publish individual PDF files or a single PDF file with many pages/sheets. The system variable is PUBLISHCOLLATE. Set it to 1 to publish a single PDF with many sheets...

There may be times when you would want to turn on/off the dialog box when inserting an attributed block into your drawings...

Here is a quick way of creating a selection set of the most recently-created objects in your drawing. If you want to select the most recent object(s) added to the drawing, run a command (such as PROPERTIES) and at the select objects command prompt, type L (for “last”)...