I always have a slight chuckle under my breath when I have to talk about this feature, because when I started in drafting as a Designer, one of the skills I had to learn is how to sketch. Then I had to Learn CAD. Then I had to learn how to make CAD look like I sketched it. Yea, I’m sure you come from the same era are shaking your head with a grin on your face as well. But it’s not like we went back in time we just found a better, faster, more consistent way to create and edit your drawings, but still have that “soft-artistic-roughed-out-not-quite-set-in-stone-look” to your design ideas. And if you have ever manually created a rendering or sketch and had to change it, you know what I mean by what it took to change it!!! … Most of the time, you had to splice out that part of the drawing or start all over from scratch. So CAD has made this much easier to change, and allow the Artistic Designer (or everyone else in the office) to be more consistent in the style of the sketch through the Visual styles.
Now the Sketchy capability has been around for almost 5 years (AutoCAD 2007), but it has gotten more convenient to use especially with the new “Sketchy” inside the “Visual Style Controls” (3rd category) in the “In Canvas Tools, located on the upper-right corner of the Graphics Screen (Drawing area) in AutoCAD 2012.
You can change the appearance by adjusting the setting and options, or create your own multiple styles inside the Visual Style Manager. And the best part is whether you are designing in 2D or 3D, every view has the capability of becoming a designers sketch or a working drawing with a click of a button.
AutoCAD 2012
Today I am going to focus on the new Autodesk Content Explorer.
I have always hated trying to find something you know you created before, but feel you might just redo it before you could look through thousands of drawings to find it or don’t really remember what file it resides in…?
You can now quickly find content in all of your drawing files based on objects, text strings, attributes as well as look for content to insert like Blocks, Layers Linetypes, Styles, and so on, similar to Design Center, but the Context Explorer uses Google-like indexing to globally look throughout your libraries, network and even on online resources such as Autodesk Seek, all in one convenient location.
All in one Content Explorer Palette
This Google like indexing speeds up the processes to find just about anything you need for your design needs. With the Content Explorer Palette you can use the search field to look through all of your available search locations, to find a variety of content, by Type, Name, Date Created / Modified or Location and expand and collapse to easily view your results, and quickly determine how many instances occur within each file and even use tools to open and zoom to the content you would like to see before you decide on if you want to use it; or use it to make changes to multiple drawing files that need to be updated that maybe scattered all over your network.
Open and Zoom feature
You can use the thumbnails or detail views to view the content and even use the built in filter capabilities to narrow the search and even add watch folders to find the exact content that you desire.
Easy to use and View Content
You can use the thumbnails or detail views to view the content and even use the built in filter capabilities to narrow the search and even add watch folders to find the exact content that you desire.
With AutoCAD 2012 looking for content really is a SNAP! I hope you find this to be a great new feature to AutoCAD and there are so many more to mention.
So over the next few months I want share some of these other great new features… So remember to check back often to see all that AutoCAD 2012 has to offer!
The new Add Selected tool enables you to quickly create a new object in your drawing based on the properties of an existing object. For example, if you use the Add Selected tool and select a polyline, AutoCAD automatically launches the PLINE command with basic object properties including color, layer, linetype, linetype scale, plotstyle, lineweight, transparency, and material preset to match the selected object…
It is also very easy to use with any type of AutoCAD entities fromDimensions, Text, Hatch, Lines… even Block content, and is much more intuitive than just using the copy command, for example: If you were to select a Block in your drawing and use copy; even though you are creating a new object; all of it’s settings are preset so you may have to do some editing afterwards to things like Scale, Rotation and so on. But if you select the Block you want, Right-click and choose Add Selected from the shortcut menu, it will launch the Insert command and load that block to be inserted, allowing you to make any changes during the insert process.
Another example: is this works for all of the entities that are saved to a style, (Text, Dimensions, Multileaders, Tables…) Have you ever needed to add a note or something to your drawing and you want to make sure you have all of the same settings and style as a similar note? Normally most people (out of habit) would have to do some research on the existing note first to determine all of its settings; Layer, Style, Text Height, Rotation, Annotative Scaling and on and on and on. Then they go to all the different areas and set each one to be current before they add the note, or perhaps they edit the note afterwards to match all of the settings. Either way it takes valuable time to do all that. With Add Selected everything gets set up for you automatially, just add the note like you have already done the research and made of the settings. And the best thing about it is all the settings that were made are temporary for that command; you don’t have to go reset everything back to the way it was!!!
So whatever type of object you select, it knows to launch that command with all of the content setup prior for fast and easy creation.
This new feature alone could shave hours off your day to day workflow.
I’m Isaac, and thank you for your time.
Hi Everyone,
AU is just around the corner, so to get you in the spirit of things, I thought I would devote this blog to a topic “similar” to what I am covering at AU …Annotative Objects. By Autodesk standards these objects are Text, Mtext, Dimensions, Hatches, Tolerances, Multileaders, Leaders, Blocks, and Attributes.
But today I want to talk about items that are NOT considered Annotative Objects; but can perform like they are….
First off; Tables. I was amazed when Autodesk made most “Text like Objects” Annotative, but not Tables. Even if you assign an annotative text style to the table, it doesn’t work. Perhaps it is because most people use them in the paperspace environment only. So here is a way you can make it work. Block the table afterwards, and make the Block annotative. Now it will be able to scale up and down with the Scale list pretty simple and it performs the way you would expect.
Tip: If the table is a separate drawing that you are going to insert into the current drawing as a block? Then set the ANNOTATIVEDWG system variable to 1. This specifies whether or not the drawing will behave as an annotative block when inserted into another drawing.
Next let’s talk about Fields. You may have not even thought about it because we mostly insert them into “Text type commands”, (like Text, Mtext and so on…) but if you have ever used the FIELD command there is no place to set annotation scaling. Therefore, just keep inserting them into you “Text like commands” and you’ll be fine.
Finally, I want to talk about Linetypes. First let me explain… I know there is the LTSCALE command that globally controls the scale of linetypes. But it does not get controlled by the Scale List. Plus as you switch back and forth between Model and Layout tabs you had to keep readjusting the LTSCALE so that all the different viewport scales in paperspace would plot correctly and uniform using the PSLTSCALE. Well now you can set the MSLTSCALE command to a value of 1 in model, and from there just use the Annotative Scale List on the Status bar menu. This way you won’t have to readjust your LTSCALE command back and forth anymore. Cool Huh?
That’s all we have time for right now, but realize that AutoCAD is very customizable. With a little imagination and the power of the CANNOSCALE (Sets the name of the current annotation scale for the current space) and the CANNOSCALEVALUE (the system variable that holds the current Annotative Scale and Returns as the inverted scale factor.) sky is the limit for all you Menu Customizers, Script Writers, Macro Makers and Lisp Routine-ers out there!
Take Care,
Isaac Harper
Tags: Annotative, au, Blocks, Fields, Linetypes, Scale, Scales List, Scaling, Tables, Text
Annotation, AutoCAD, Tips & Tricks | Isaac Harper | 
October 27, 2009 5:35 pm | 
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