Where’s my AutoCAD Classic? It only has Architecture… HELP!

In this Blog I wanted to answer a frequently asked question… this one comes from Laura, she asked:

Where’s my AutoCAD Classic? It only has Architecture… HELP!

Hi Laura,

Yes! You are right; it only comes with Architecture Workspace.  But there is a trick, since AutoCAD Architecture (ACA) is built on top of AutoCAD (ACAD); you can bring that “AutoCAD Classic” work space into ACA through the Customize User Interface (CUI). What you will want to do is go to the transfer tab and on the left side of the screen you will see the ACA.CUIX menu displayed, and you will want to right side of the dialog to open the ACAD.CUIX (AutoCAD’s Menu). Now expand the Workspaces section in both screens, and drag the AutoCAD Classic one from the right over the Workspace section on the left, or you can just drag the toolbars that you want available in ACA from the ACAD toolbar section just like above. Hit the ok button to exit out of the CUI, and you now have those items at your disposal in ACA. Now just in case you want it back to the original there are some restore and reset modes available… Inside the CUI on the customize tab, at the top you will see the ACA icon, right click on it and in the short cut menu you will have two options, Restore and Reset ACA.CUIX.  RESTORE will restore it back to a saved ACA.CUIX menu, like if you have some customized menu areas that you don’t want to lose, so I would click the save (disk) before making this adjustment in case you are worried about your custom menus. While RESET will take it back to the original “Out of the Box” ACA.CUIX. Just read the message that pops up, and it will tell you which one you hit and asks you to do it or not. I hope this helps! …and thank you for reading my Blogs.

Displaying the Classic Toolbars in 2010 Products

Recently we have had a few customer support request on how to display their “classic toolbars” in Autocad 2010 as well as the vertical products like Architecture, Civil 3D… and so. Yes, there is an AutoCAD Classic Workspace available out of the box, but only for the platform software and not the verticals. Even though I whole heartedly support the use of the Ribbon; sometimes you have older customization in a toolbar or you just want to use both the toolbars and the Ribbon to ease into the transition. In this blog I want to show you 3 simple ways on how easy it is to still be able to redisplay that hidden content.

First let’s look at the platform product, AutoCAD and its different ways of displaying toolbars.
1.The easiest way is if you liked the old look and feel of AutoCAD prior to the Ribbon then just change the Workspace to AutoCAD Classic and presto and it will have that old appearance that has been around for many versions.
  a. Workspace button located on the Status bar at the bottom of the screen. Just click the dropdown arrow and change it to AutoCAD Classic.

  b. By default the Ribbon is not displayed in this workspace. (Remember that does NOT mean you can’t take advantage of the Ribbon in this old look; if you want to add it also… At the command line just type RIBBON and it will display. When you want to hide it again type: RIBBONCLOSE and it will disappear again.

2. Another way in AutoCAD Platform is to go through the old Menu Bar that used to be the Pull down menus that were replaced by the Ribbon. Aww Yes; you can even reload your old pull downs, but for now we are just showing how to display it so we can get to the Toolbars section through inside it.
  a. The first step is to display the Menu Bar by going to the dropdown options in the Quick Access Toolbar. (Note: the Quick Access Toolbar is not the same as the regular toolbars; it is a whole different menu area and for the most part is always displayed and can either at the top of the AutoCAD Screen or below the Ribbon only. You can Also display the Menu Bars in the Veridical Products; remember they don’t have the Tools pull-down menu that you will need in the next step.

  b. Next you will see the Menu Bar appear above the Ribbon tabs. Go to the Tools pulldown and than Toolbars -> AutoCAD -> (then pick which toolbar you want to display first.

  c. In this example the Draw Toolbar will then display where it was last displayed.  Now here is the good part you only need one Toolbar displayed in order to access the rest the way you used to turn on and off the display of all the other Toolbars. To do so just (right-click) any icon on the toolbar and you will see a list of the rest of the Toolbars in the shortcut menu, just pick the ones you want to display like you have done in the past versions.

3. The Last way is the best way to display a Toolbar, because it works in both; platform or vertical products through the command line.
  a. At the command line type:
      Command: -toolbar
      Enter toolbar name or [ALL]: layers
      Enter an option [Show/Hide/Left/Right/Top/Bottom/Float] <Show>: Show
 
This dash in front of the command name suppress the CUI dialog box and allows you to just type in the name of the toolbar you want. Once you have the first toolbar displayed; refer to step 2c above to display any other desired toolbar you desire.

I hope this helps; Thank you for your time and if you have suggestions for future Blogs that you would like to see? Please feel free to email me at isaac.harper@cadsoft-consult.com.

Annotative or Not?

Coming soon… CAD BLOG. Here is a Free Sample, I like to call…
Annotative or Not?
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

Common Navisworks Issues and Resolutions

In today’s fast paced world having your program not performing correctly (or even not at all), is very frustrating and time (and money) consuming. So when I’m trying to help our customers with their Navisworks problems, One thing that is nice to know is if the issues are unique to that person and their computer; or if it is reported known issue and lots of people are experiencing it.  So, I thought I would go through some of the more popular support cases going on… and some solutions that we found and have passed on to our Navisworks clients. Here are some issues and solutions for Autodesk® Navisworks® Manage 2009-10

1.  Issue: Performance issues and settings. When you navigated around a model, performance was slow and the navigation was choppy.

Solution: Large models, hardware configurations and constraints, and system settings all affect the performance of Navisworks®. There are some basic adjustments that you can make to optimize performance.

Most modeling computers operate with 4GB of RAM. However, you can enable the /3GB switch in order to free resources and use more memory for various system processes. Enabling the /3GB switch is not complex and information is widely available on its use and how it can be set.

Try turning off Hardware Acceleration to see whether performance improves. Follow these steps:

1. Open Navisworks.

2. Click Tools menu > Global Options > Interface > Display.

3. Clear the Hardware Acceleration check box.

4. Exit Navisworks.

5. Restart Navisworks.

If performance improves, the issue is probably due to the graphics card drivers. Graphics card drivers could be out of date or become corrupted; check for an update every few months. Check with the manufacturer of your graphics card to see if new drivers are available. If they are, install them and then turn Hardware Acceleration back on (click Tools menu > Global Options > Interface > Display). If no new drivers are available, or newer drivers do not resolve the issue, leave Hardware Acceleration turned off.

If you access files from a central server location, bandwidth may cause performance issues. This is not common. However, if you experience slow performance, try copying the files from the server to your computer to see if this improves performance.

2. Issue: Navisworks Flythrough – Flythrough always opens automatically when starting ShipConstructor. Once you load Flythrough, it will always popup whenever you launch ShipConstructor. This happens even if you close the popup before closing ShipConstructor. NOTE: this only happens when flythrough window is not docked.

WorkAround: This is a known issue with ShipConstructor. For the time being, if you dock the flythrough control, as opposed to have it floating, the problem will not manifest. The Problem seams to happen in all of there 2008 products releases (A little over 50 or so.) and when you check the Fixed in Version portion it list: Pending Development

3. Issue: Exporting a short animation walkthrough from Navisworks. Using “presentation” mode, some of the objects are rendered as black. This happens in AVI, PNG, and JPEG exports.

Workaround 1: User having same problem importing MEP in Navisworks, They got passed it by using presenter to add a material / color to all the valves.

Workaround 2: Go to the Presenter tab and try deleting the material called “By Layer”. User claims this has worked in the past.

And lastly, are there some unanswered issues out there still?” Of course there is… But by no means would I discourage anyone from deciding not to use this very useful program because of them.  In fact for what it can do for you and workflow, (not to mention all of the different software programs that it works with…) I would say “Navis”WORKS”.