Lynn Allen Event at CADsoft Consulting

Lynn and I demonstrate AutoCAD WS

Today I just thought I would tell you some of the highlights of today’s CADsoft Live event… “Make Your Ideas Happen” with Autodesk’s Lynn Allen, Technical Evangelist – AutoCAD 2012 After a brief introduction by Tim Duncan AIA, CADsoft President/CEO, Lynn was off and running. I liked the way she refered to the AutCAD users that still set their newer AutoCAD products back to the AutoCAD Classic mode as rebels. The rebels in the crowd proudly identified themselves. Lynn admitted to being a rebel herself at first, but now with the newer tools, the ribbon has won her over with additional tools in the Ribbon. For example, the new Associative Array command is much easier to control through the Ribbon. So, that is something to consider, especially since the old screen menu has finally been retired; you never know what will be next. I also got to do a live demonstration with Lynn on how the AutoCAD WS works and demonstrate how people in the office can see live updates from team in the field (at the Job Site) using their iPAD, Droid or other smart portable devices… and even comment “This is how you justify to your bosses that they need to buy you an iPAD.” (Everyone got way to excited and happy on that one… well maybe not the bosses.) But, they did see the huge value in it for walk-through’s and change orders at site. She also showed how companies were using the powerful visualization tools like 3ds Max Designs to gain community buy-in to a billion dollar roadway improvement in San Francisco. There were members of the community that Lynn referred to as McMansion owners, aka the Ritchie Riches’ of the area, that wanted to prevent the billion dollar roadway improvements from happening, because of the impact on their community. Once they were able to see what the improvement would look like along the whole stretch of roadway, they voted in favor of the project. After seeing the video, I can see why all of the Mc Mansions owners in the nearby community voted for it! She wrapped up the lecture with a very funny video of how the world is progressing and the importance of thinking outside of the box. After that, I did a quick trivia give-a-way with some nice hard bound designer books highlighting design projects completed with Autodesk solution and everyone got a copy Lynn’s Tips and Tricks for AutoCAD 2012. Whew!!! All that in less than two hours! So if you miss this year’s event with Lynn Allen… you might want to make plans to catch next years, as we do plan on having her back! And if you were able to attend, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

When Push comes to Nudge…

The Nudge Functionality

Moving objects in AutoCAD has always been a must and AutoCAD has always provided different ways to do this by using some type of editing command like Move or Stretch, or by using automated commands like Grip Editing… well Autodesk has now added one more new automated feature called Nudge. The New Nudge functionality is useful when you need to move one or more selected objects in an orthogonal direction. Simply select the objects (highlight) that you want to move and press Ctrl down and then hit the appropriate arrow key in the direction you want them to move. That’s it! However you may want to be able to control how far they get moved, so you need to understand the settings that control distance.

Snap mode affects the distance and direction in which the objects are nudged.

• Nudge objects with Snap mode turned off: Objects move two pixels at a time; movement is relative and orthogonal to the screen, regardless of the view direction or the UCS orientation. That means if you are zoomed in, it will move a shorter distance than if you were zoomed out. Not very accurate way to move objects, so I would recommend using the Snap turned ON method if this is important to you.
• Nudge objects with Snap mode turned on: Objects are moved in increments specified by the current snap spacing; movement is orthogonal to the X and Y axes of the current UCS and relative to the view direction.

So the next time you want to move something just give it a little Nudge.

AutoCAD WS …and My New Android

I know that you have all heard that to can share and edit drawings on your Mobile device (iPOD, Android…) Using AutoCAD WS… But I just wanted to see how many have you actually checked it out? Why? Because I was one of them… I was stuck it the realm of “I’m just used to doing things the way I have always been doing them, and anything new was just… witchcraftary!” But mostly because I did not understand what it could do for me; Why? Because I never tried it… and even if I don’t need the tools it has to offer it’s just nice to know that they are and that they are at my disposal for free… So I tried it!

It’s kind of like calamari, lots of people love it; and lots have no desire for it… But how was I to know what all the hype was until I tried it? (…and know for a fact that it tastes like a rubber tire.) But the good was… I now knew what it was about and what it had to offer me. Well I’m here to tell you that AutoCAD WS is NOT a rubber tire… I just got a new phone (Droid) and it installed in minutes… let me create a login seconds and was able to view one of the sample drawings for me to test it out…( just in case all of the rest of my friends were still in AutoCAD File sharing and denial like I was).

Let me tell you it was very easy to use, easy to navigate, and even tried a few of their Drawing and Modifying tools, Panning and Zooming at my fingertips was amazing, and crystal clear as my monitor at work and I would say it was even fun. The only thing that I did not like about it, was that the help file was a little hard to read so I zoomed up on the text and it would not let you pan side to side so the need to work on that, at least for the Droid apps. (I tried it on two different types of droids, same on both.) But over all I think that it was very educational and I could see how it would be a MUST HAVE for anyone that goes out to the job site and then needs to reference the plans or relay actual drawing information back to their design team. I love AutoCAD WS! …Calamari, not so much!

HURRAY for ARRAY!

… Another Great Added feature In AutoCAD 2012! In the new release, you can save time and maintain a set of relationships between arrayed objects from windows on the exterior of a building to columns or trusses in a bridge. In addition to Rectangular and Polar, the array command now has the capability to array along a selected path and have the objects maintain a dynamic association with the path object. 

              While creating the array in the new contextual ribbon; AutoCAD gives greater control and displays a preview and you can easily edit the array properties during creation or after using grips or the properties palette or right-click shortcut menus.

You can maintain the association of the array or relax the selection and edit each individual component, and even reset them back if you choose to do so. 

With these new features in the AutoCAD 2012, the array will greatly improve your productivity! 

Remember to keep checking our blogs, CADsoft emails on upcoming events or follow me on twitter, for more great new features in AutoCAD 2012…

AutoCAD 2012 Released Today!!!

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!

Project Snap is Design Center’s stronger brother…

Today, I wanted to Blog about something different, something new, and something exciting! So, I decided to talk about one of the Autodesk lab projects, “Project Snap”. Basically, it is the next super-generation of the Design Center. Project Snap makes all of your content searchable similar to a Google search engine and it allows Autodesk users to connect to their design content (DWG, RVT, IAM), regardless of where the data resides and instantly locates design content without leaving AutoCAD. Project Snap creates an index of your data based on where you want it to look (local or network folders, Autodesk Seek, Autodesk Buzzsaw, Autodesk Vault). This index of design metadata looks at file properties, and even objects in files, and objects like blocks, text, attributes, fields, dimensions, leaders, Hyperlinks… (The list goes on and on.) Another great thing about this is it is easy to use inside a Find Content Palette similar to the other pallets right inside AutoCAD.

Here is an example of how you could use Project Snap.  Let’s say that you are looking for a particular content that resides somewhere on your network. You don’t remember the name of the file or where it is even located… you just remember a layer name, or a number in the drawing, or a block name, or even just part of a piece of text anywhere in the drawing… Anything!  With this download from Project Snap from the Autodesk labs page… You could type that little bit of information that you are looking for in the search field and it will find it in a SNAP! It will display all the files that it found as a match, you and use operators like “AND”, “OR” and even special characters to indicate you are looking for a numeric value… and so on all in a single interface. If that that is not cool enough (which it is!) you can then use it to open the file and double click on it and it will zoom you to the area on the screen for you to view it. If there are multiple matches, you will have an Icon for each one of them to zoom in on, and even share this content form drawing to drawing. This is very exciting and I cannot wait for it to be introduced in more  Autodesk products. For more information on Project Snap here is a link to their site… http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/snap/ or here’s a video for a quick sneak peak of Project Snap. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSaMDorGRA4

Did all of you enjoy hearing about his and would you like for me include more exciting ideas that Autodesk labs are working on in future blogs? Give me your feed back!

Parametric Constraints …the Final Chapter. Holiday Bonus Blog!

Dimensional Constraints

DIMCONSTRAINT options

The DIMENSIONAL CONSTRAINT commands allow you to control objects through dimensions. A good way to look at it is, “Regular AutoCAD Dimensions” update when the object changes size and so on, but with “Dimensional Constraints”, it’s like the opposite, the object changes when the Dimension is changed. In the latest version of AutoCAD now includes a new Convert option to convert associative dimensions to dimensional constraints rather than it being the default behavior.

Dimensional Constraints

Dimensional constraint visibility tools

When entering dimensional constraint values in‐place, you can click on an existing dimensional constraint to insert the constraint name. When dynamic dimensional constraints reference another parameter, the parameter text is prefixed with “fx:” to help keep you from accidentally assigning a constant value to a parameter that references other variables.

New tools on the Dimensional Panel of the Parametric tab provide you with more control over the visual display of dimensional constraints. Using the Show/Hide tool you can select the specific dimensional constraints you want to show or hide on the screen.

Parameter group filters

 A new search filters the parameters displayed in the grid based on the parameter’s name. The column tooltips display the full name of the column as well as a description. Additional improvements have been made to the Parameters Manager dialog simplifying the terminology for dimensional constraints and user variables created in the drawing editor vs. the block editor. The Show column in the Block Editor includes a new option to convert between dimensional constraint parameters or user parameters defined in the drawing editor versus the block editor. Icons are displayed for action parameters, attributes, and user parameters, in the Block Editor.

And that’s it for this year! I hope you enjoyed the information throughout this year’s Blogs and Videos and look forward to some more tricks with AutoCAD 2011 based products and a look at the new features in the next release (AutoCAD 2012) sometime early this spring when it is announced. Until Next Year… this is Isaac saying thank you for a great 2011, and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Parametric Constraints …the Series. PART 4

AutoConstrain settings

The Constraint bars are improved and provide more control and flexibility. You can select multiple objects for showing or hiding constraint bars using all of the standard selection methods (Window/Last/Crossing/BOX/ALL/Fence/WPolygon/CPolygon/Group/Previous). You can quickly display all constraint bars in their original position using the new Reset option. And, a new setting in the Geometric tab of the Constraint Settings dialogs enables you to show constraint bars when objects are selected even if those constraint bars are currently hidden. When the geometry is no longer selected, the temporarily displayed constraint bars are, once again, hidden. When you move a constraint bar and then edit the related geometry, the constraint bar maintains its position relative to the geometry.

Geometric Constraint settings

 The new constraint icons for Fix, Horizontal, and Vertical constraints visually indicate whether they apply to an object or to a point by the display of the icon. The symmetric constraint icon is also updated with 3 different appearances to indicate whether it is identifying a symmetrical point, an object, or the symmetric line.

Visually Enhanced Icon Displays

Parametric Constraints …the Series. Part 3

In this part we will take a look at is how constraints work with fillets and other objects. Creating a fillet automatically applies coincident and tangent constraints between the new fillet arc and the existing lines to help maintain the fillet if the arc or lines are modified. Likewise, creating a chamfer applies coincident constraints between the new chamfer line and the existing lines.

Fillets and Chamfers using Inferred Constraints

 After you’ve applied constraints, you can temporarily relax (disable) them by pressing the CTRL key while editing constrained objects. You can see the different effects as I grip stretch the line.

Not using CTRL key -Vs.- Holding down the CTRL

 AutoCAD 2011 has  improved the use of geometric constraints for ellipses and text. You can now apply Parallel, Perpendicular, Collinear, Horizontal, and Vertical constraints between the major or minor axes of an ellipse and other objects. When applying the constraint you will see a red axis line appear when you hover the cursor over the ellipse.

Constraining Ellipses

You can also apply Parallel, Perpendicular, Collinear, Horizontal, and Vertical constraints to the angle of text objects to control their rotation. In addition, text and mtext objects behave consistently with the insertion point of the object being the cons, allowing the angle of the edge of the street rotate the text around the insertion point of the text.

Constraining text - Before and After

 Well that probably enough for now, time to let you try those out (I also know it’s that time of the season and you already have a lot on your mind.), but we still have a few more tips to show you about Constrains before the end of the year. Thanks again and check back in soon the see the continuing series.

Parametric Constraints …the Series. PART 2

The 2D parametric functionality in AutoCAD 2011 has been enhanced, and includes predefined command macros to access options within in the GEOMCONSTRAINT and DIMCONSTRAINT commands automatically for you. For example, instead of launching the GEOMCONSTRAINT command and then selecting the perpendicular option, you can launch the GCPERPENDICULAR command directly all in one step. Repeating the last command automatically repeats the last command as well as the specific option, so this will help in speeding up the process. Object highlighting; when you roll over an icon on a constraint bar or when you select a parameter in the Parameters manager supports the Visual Effects settings you specify on the Selection tab of the Options dialog box (dashed and thickened by default), so it make it easy to see what constraints are assigned to what objects. Additional improvements to geometric and dimensional constraint functionality enable you to create and edit parametrically constrained geometry faster than ever before.

Geometric Constraints
AutoCAD 2011 significantly simplifies the process of adding geometric constraints to 2D AutoCAD geometry. AutoCAD can infer geometric constraints as you create and modify geometry. A new INFER Constraint button located on the status bar enables you to toggle on and off inferred constraints similar to the toggle for object snaps and other drafting settings. This toggle is also available on the Geometric tab of the Constraint Settings dialog box. (Tip: If you don’t like the Icon version on the status bar you can rick-click on the icon and uncheck “Use Icons” to see the “Text” version displayed.)

Infer Constraints tool

 Using inferred constraints automatically applies coincident constraints for Endpoint, Midpoint, Center, Node, and Insertion objects snaps. For example, if you draw a circle by snapping its center to the midpoint of a line, AutoCAD automatically applies a coincident constraint between the center of the circle and the midpoint of the line. If you move the circle, the line goes with it. The same powerful functionality applies to editing commands. If, for example, you copy the insertion of a block to the endpoint of a line, AutoCAD automatically applies a coincident constraint between those two points. When you move the line, the block maintains its position at the endpoint of the line. Tip: Remember if you are not using Inferred option and are just adding constraints manually; to select them in the correct order; just read the prompt as you go.

Editing with inferred constraints

In addition to creating point‐to‐point coincident constraints with the previously mentioned object snaps, you can use the Nearest object snap to apply a coincident constraint between a point and an object. For example, if you draw the center of a circle on a line using the Nearest object snap, the center of the circle has the flexibility of moving anywhere along the line including the virtual extension of the line.

Nearest object snap with inferred constraints

The Perpendicular and Tangent object snaps automatically apply perpendicular or tangent constraints between the object being created or edited and the object being snapped to. They also apply a point‐to-point or point‐to‐object coincident constraint if appropriate. Using the Parallel object snap automatically applies a parallel constraint but no coincident constraints are applied since, by definition, the two objects never intersect. When you draw horizontal or vertical lines and polyline segments, inferred horizontal and vertical constraints automatically apply to those segments. Inferred constraints enhance the behavior of rectangles, fillets, and chamfers by automatically applying appropriate geometric constraints. For example, if you draw a rectangle (using the RECTANG command), AutoCAD will automatically apply a pair of parallel constraints and a perpendicular constraint to the rectangle. So, when you modify the size and shape of the rectangle,(like grip editing from the corner) it will remain as a rectangle shape with parallel sides and perpendicular at the corners.  Next Blog we will look at how it will constrain fillets and other objects with the Infer Constraints in PART 3… so check back in about 2 weeks to see the continuation of Parametric Constraints.