CAD Panacea

DWG TrueView 2013 Free download

rkmcswain — Wed, 23 May 2012 19:21:41 +0000

DWG TrueView 2013 is available for download here. If you do not want to download and use the Akamai download manager currently required on the Autodesk DWG TrueView page, there are direct download links listed here on this JTB World blog post.

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Starting a new drawing in AutoCAD

rkmcswain — Wed, 23 May 2012 11:10:40 +0000

Seems too simple, right? Who doesn't know how to create a new drawing in AutoCAD? You click the NEW button in the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT), or choose NEW from the Application Menu, or type in NEW at the command line....right?

Do you really know what each of those do though? The NEW button in the QAT actually executes the command named QNEW. If you choose NEW from the Application Menu or type in NEW at the command line, you are executing the NEW command. You may have other UI elements such as toolbar buttons that call one or both of these commands. What is the difference?

NEW - The NEW command will always present you with a file selection dialog, from where you can select a template file. You can also choose to not use a template by selecting the drop-down menu next to the OPEN button and choose "Open with no template" (Imperial or Metric).
QNEW - This command will launch a new drawing using the preassigned template file specified in OPTIONS. If there is no template file specified, this command behaves like the NEW command. (Note that if the system variable STARTUP = 2, in the zero-document state after starting up AutoCAD, the QNEW command will behave like NEW)

So if you have a template that you use most of the time, you can specify it in Options to be used with QNEW. This saves you the time of selecting a template when you start a new drawing.

So why have more than one template anyway? There are dozens of settings that are saved in the drawing, and without a template you would have to reset them each time you start a new drawing. If you work on multiple drawing types, you may want a different template for each one. Within each template, you can set up layers, styles, system variables, etc., as required. You can set up the layouts, create named views, create blocks, anything you can do in a regular drawing.

Other than the above, if you are not sure what settings get saved in a drawing file, browse the Options dialog. Anything with a DWG icon next to it (see below) is a drawing saved setting. Other system variables are documented as to how they are saved (drawing, registry, or not at all).

So in summary, make use of the QNEW command by specifying your most used template in Options, but don't forget about creating other templates for your other types of drawings. Set up things once, not over and over.

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AutoCAD Status Bar: ICONS or TEXT?

rkmcswain — Wed, 16 May 2012 22:00:19 +0000

I'm fairly receptive of new things in AutoCAD. Even if I do not adopt something new, I can generally find a reason for why things change. This one though, I still don't get. I can read the words much faster than I can figure out what the little icons mean. I've tried and tried, but this is still one of the first things I change on a new install. What do you think, ICONS or TEXT?

10 AutoCAD commands you have either forgotten or never knew (Update)

rkmcswain — Mon, 14 May 2012 18:55:18 +0000

So if you think this post look familiar, you are right. This originally ran back in 2009, but it was very popular and I wanted to update it and run it again so that it is at the top. I'm sure it will be new to a few people too.

How many of these do you know? How many do you use? What is your favorite "obscure" AutoCAD command or system variable? Leave a comment.

CONVERTPOLY (R14-R2013) - This undocumented command will allow you to convert "heavy" polylines to LWPOLYLINE's and vice versa. "Heavy" polylines are the pre-R14 version. They still have uses today, and the PLINETYPE system variable controls what gets created by default.
DBLIST (Version 2.0 - R2013) - This command will list every entity in the drawing. Useful when you think you have some entities that are not showing up. You can erase everything visible and then run DBLIST to see what else is still there.
XOPEN (R2004-R2013) - Use this command to pick an external reference to open it. You don't need to know the name of the xref.
TRACE (Prior to Version 1.4-R2010/11?) - This is a really old one. It creates a TRACE object, which is sort of looks like a polyline, but each segment behaves more like a SOLID entity, which brings us to...
SOLID (Prior to Version 2.0-R2013) - This command creates a 2D solid entity with three or four sides. Before solid hatch was introduced, this was about the only way to get a solid fill, and you had to do some tricks around curves. This is still a good way to create a solid fill without hatching.
SETBYLAYER (R2008-R2013) - Pretty self-explanitory. Use this to set certain object properties to BYLAYER, including Color, Linetype, Lineweight, and Material.
REVERSE (R2010-R2013) - Used to reverse the direction of a line, polyline, spline or helix.
TPNAVIGATE (R2008-R2013) - Used to display a certain tool palette. If the tool palette is not visible, this command will make it visible also.
SAVEIMG (R14-R2013) - If you just need a quick screen capture of your AutoCAD display, this command can do it. Plotting to Raster using the appropriate driver will usually result in better output with more options, but if you just need a quick file, SAVEIMG can do it.
TSPACEINVADERS (R??-R2013) - This is an undocumented command. Essentially, you perform a selection and it will show you TEXT and MTEXT that has entities blocking it. It doesn't do the cleanup, but in a crowded drawing it can help you identity text under linework, etc.

Now c'mon.....how many of you knew about #10?

Here is another list, from The CAD Masters blog.

Enjoy.

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Creating a command for a new Contextual Tab

rkmcswain — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 12:18:41 +0000

This tutorial serves two purposes. One is to create a new tool to convert Line or Arc entities to Polylines, and the other purpose is showing how to integrating this tool into a contextual tab.

We're using AutoCAD 2013, and by default there are no contextual tabs for Line or Arc entities. Let's create a tool to convert these object types to polylines and put it on a contextual tab.

Start by opening the CUI editor by running the CUI command. In the upper left pane, under the ACAD menu, expand Ribbon, and then expand Contextual Tab States.

Scroll down until you see "Line Selected" and click it. Notice that there is nothing under here and nothing shows up in the right pane. If you check "Arc Selected", you will see the same thing.

In order to add something here, we need to do five (5) steps.

Create a new command.
Create a new Panel
Create a new Tab
Add the command to the new Panel and add the Panel to the new Tab
Add the new Tab to the Contextual Tab States for Arc and Line entities

Step 1 - In the lower left portion of the CUI, click the New Command icon to create a new command. Over on the right side, enter the name "Convert Line or Arc to Polyline", and in the Macro field, copy this macro exactly as printed here.

._pedit $M=$(if,$(=,$(getvar"PEDITACCEPT"),0),y,)^C^C

In the Images area, choose an existing image or browse to find one.

Step 2 - In the upper left pane, right click on Panels and choose New Panel. It will scroll down automatically and the name of the Panel will be highlighted - Enter a name, like "My Tools"

Step 3 - In the upper left pane again, scroll up above Panels, right click on Tabs and choose New Tab and give it the name "Line/Arc Tools".

Step 4 - Now it's time to put the puzzle together. Left-click drag the new command you made in Step 1, into Row 1 of the "My Tools" Panel you created in Step 2. Now left-click drag the "My Tools" panel into the new "Line/Arc Tools" tab.

Step 5 - Finally add the "Line/Arc Tools" tab to the Contextual Tab State named "Line Selected". Then drag and drop it one more time into the Contextual Tab State named "Arc Selected". Click OK to save the CUI and close the CUI editor.

Now when you get back into your drawing, draw a line and arc. Select ONE of them, and the proper contextual tab should appear that contains one panel, containing one command - the "Convert Line or Arc to Polyline" command that we added in Step 1. Pick this command and the entity will be converted to a polyline.

Now this is just a simple example and only supports a single object selected. You could tweak the macro to support multiple entities, create a lisp routine to do even more and use this in place of the macro we entered above - not to mention create other commands for lines and or arc and add them to the contextual tab. From there, you could do this for other entity types.

What will you do?

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AutoCAD Release History

rkmcswain — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 11:50:06 +0000

Shaan Hurley has always been my reference for AutoCAD history and has an excellent page on this. So the question came up the other day "What was the first version of AutoCAD for Windows". My memory told me it was Release 12, but I was not quite sure. A little searching turned up this document which confirms that R12c3 (Release 12, patch c3) was the first major release for Windows (see first comment below regarding R11 for Windows). Since Windows itself taxed most affordable computer systems back then, most people probably stayed on DOS, Solaris, or one of the other platforms for AutoCAD at that time.

If you have a DWG file and are not sure about its version, drop it into Notepad or some other ASCII/Hex editor and look at the first 6 bytes and compare to the table below.

DWG file header
6 byte header	AutoCAD Version
AC1027	AutoCAD 2013
AC1024	AutoCAD 2010,2011,2012
AC1021	AutoCAD 2007, 2008, 2009
AC1018	AutoCAD 2004, 2005, 2006
AC1015	AutoCAD 2000, 2000i, 2002
AC1014	AutoCAD Release 14
AC1013	AutoCAD Release 13
AC1009	AutoCAD Release 11, 12
AC1006	AutoCAD Release 10
AC1004	AutoCAD Release 9
AC1003	AutoCAD 2.6
AC1002	AutoCAD 2.5

Below is a Release 13 installation floppy disc. You needed this to go along with the CD-ROM, also shown below.

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AutoCAD

History

Windows

Launching the Autodesk 2013 products

rkmcswain — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 15:30:47 +0000

Image Courtesy Autodesk

I was excited to be invited to the Autodesk Media Summit last week at the Autodesk Gallery at Market One, in San Francisco. I arrived on Monday evening, a little late for the pre-event get together hosted by TechSoft 3D. However, the next morning we met next door at the Autodesk Gallery for a light breakfast and then quickly got started with the main event – a live webcast to introduce the Autodesk 2013 product line.

The media room just prior to getting started Tuedsay morning

Users from all over tuned in via the Autodesk facebook page, while about 90 of us watched it live in person. I am sure we were burning up the Autodesk_Guest WiFi with all the live blog posts and tweets being sent out from the event. Carl Bass, President and Chief Executive Officer (@carlbass), led off the event by discussing how Autodesk received grief for predicting 10% growth last year. They ended up at 14% growth. Some of the interesting facts mentioned: 75% of Autodesk’s business is from outside the United States; in the past 30 years, AutoCAD has built a user base of about 12 million (legal) users, while the cloud based product AutoCAD WS has built a user base of over 7 million in only 2 years, with drawing uploads to AutoCAD WS over 300,000 per week.

Autodesk CEO Carl Bass - Image Courtesy Autodesk

Cloud based services, now branded under the name Autodesk 360, can provide advantages to both Autodesk and the end user. Centralized data storage means you can access your design from wherever you are, on various platforms. Software updates are managed internally providing completeness and speed to the operation. No more pushing to millions of workstations and hoping everyone gets it. Bass also says “We are able now to take analysis which was only able to be done on workstation class devices and we are now able to do it in the cloud in 15 minutes. The cloud is an infinitely scalable resource.”

Amar Hanspal - Senior Vice President, Information Modeling & Platform Products Group (@amarhanspal), took the stage next. Hanspal says “Autodesk is here to democratize technology.” Streamlining data interchange between applications and moving towards a more consistent interface continue in the 2013 product line. Revit 2013 will be a complete solution. The traditional flavors of Architecture, Structure & MEP are still there, but will now be packaged and installed as one application. Moving from one to the other is easier than ever. Autodesk Navisworks now supports native Revit models, and AutoCAD is now included in every product suite.

Autodesk Senior VP Amar Hanspal - Image Courtesy Autodesk

Scott Reese, Senior Director, Digital Simulation, DLS (Design, Lifecycle and Simulation) Product Group discussed topics such as the importance of design simulation in the Shanghai Tower project, and how “Autodesk Simulation 360 is going to transform the simulation landscape…… a paid as you go simulation model where people will have access to any simulation they need.”

Buzz Kross, Senior Vice President, Design, Lifecycle & Simulation, revealed that “Autodesk PLM 360 is 1/20th of the costs of the traditional PLM systems. The cost benefits users get is pretty phenomenal.”, also states that no customer so far has taken longer than 3 days to set up Autodesk PLM 360. Autodesk PLM 360 was released earlier this year.

After lunch, we were broken into groups and attended several breakout sessions, which in general were presented by an Autodesk marketing representative, an Autodesk technical representative, and an Autodesk customer with a success story.

Sarah Hodges and Armundo Darling from Autodesk presented an informative session where they discussed the Autodesk Building Design Suite, and more details on the combination of all the Revit tools into Revit 2013. Kelly Cone from The Beck Group presented an overview of some of the projects on which they are using the Building Design Suite tools to successfully design.

Typical afternoon breakout session - Image Courtesy Autodesk

Charlie Crocker and Guillermo Melantoni presented “Doing more with AutoCAD”. It was noted that the “Autodesk Design Suite” has been renamed to the “AutoCAD Design Suite”. AutoCAD Raster Design is now included in all of versions of the suites. Autodesk 360 storage space has been increased from 3GB to 25GB per user. The image below is of a 79,000 seat sports stadium currently under construction. This project was designed by Castro Mello Architects using AutoCAD and other Autodesk products, and is slated to become the first LEED Platinum stadium in the world. More info on this story can be found here.

AutoCAD 2013 splash screen - Sports stadium designed by Castro Mello Architects - Image Courtesy Autodesk

Karen Weiss, P.E. and Dana Probert, P.E. did a great job presenting the Infrastructure Design Suite, which now includes the Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler and AutoCAD Raster Design. Cory Dippold, P.E., LEED AP from Hatch Mott McDonald gave a presentation on their use of Autodesk Infrastructure products and BIM on the $2.46 billion Port Mann/Highway 1 improvement project in Vancouver, BC.

Lastly, Tracy Douglas and Anthony Governanti presented more information on the Autodesk Building Design Suite including the fact that Revit models are now natively supported in Autodesk Navisworks. Customer Dace Campbell, AIA, LEED AP from BNB Builders presented a case study in which over 2000 clashes were discovered using Autodesk products before construction started, saving the firm and the client time and money.

We were treated to a dinner reception on Tuesday evening where we were able to meet and greet our peers, many of the afternoon presenters, as well as members of the Autodesk PR team.

Wednesday morning, we split up and our group was headed for a water tour of the new Bay Bridge that connects San Francisco and Oakland. We started by travelling to the construction site headquarters in Oakland via the existing Bay Bridge. After donning protective gear including life jackets, hardhats and safety goggles, we boarded the Brittany and headed for the main cable stayed span of the new Bay Bridge with our guide Bart Ney. You simply cannot get a feel for the size and scale of this project by viewing it from the existing bridge or from land. Getting up close to this giant is the only way, and doing it from the water level is about as close as you can get without becoming part of the construction crew. This project is the largest engineering project in California history. The SAS (Self Anchored Suspension Span) contains almost 1 mile of 137 strand cable and will hold up the longest looped suspension bridge in the world when completed. Engineering, manufacturing and construction data was used along with Autodesk products to create stunning visualizations and renderings of the project. These were used at various stages to help move this project from an idea to reality.

Heading out towards the new Bay Bridge

A view of the single tower for the suspension bridge

The visualization tools proved their worth when a section of the bridge had to be replaced during the Labor Day weekend 2009. The engineers and contractors were able to show hour-by-hour progress on exactly what would take place during the closure convincing the public and everyone involved that the project could and would be completed in the planned±100 hour closure.

After this most impressive tour, we headed for the LucasFilm LDAC headquarters in San Francisco where we saw how Autodesk Media and Entertainment products are used in the entertainment world – all from the comfort of the Lucas Theater.

What an awesome day and a half. I would like to give special thanks to the entire Autodesk PR team including Angela Simões, Stacy Doyle, Clay Helm, Greg Eden, and Alexandra Constantine.

Leaving the Autodesk Gallery at Market One

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AutoCAD 2013, Free trial

rkmcswain — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 14:42:26 +0000

Here is a direct link to the AutoCAD 2013 trial page.

If you would like to try AutoCAD LT 2013, see this link.

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AutoCAD 2013

Free

free trial

AutoCAD 2013 in 2 minutes

rkmcswain — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:39:15 +0000

As you have may have already heard (or predicted because it's late March), AutoCAD 2013 has been launched. Below is my annual overview of what's new in this version. I've done this for the past 4 versions including AutoCAD 2009, AutoCAD 2010, AutoCAD 2011, and AutoCAD 2012

File Format

The default file format is new for AutoCAD 2013. You can still save down to previous versions (R14 DWG and R12 DXF) as always.
Thumbnail previews are now stored as PNG images for better resolution and smaller file size.
The THUMBSIZE system variable now includes 9 different thumbnail sizes.

User Interface

The command line has seen some significant changes.

There is an icon for accessing the Autocomplete features, transparency settings, and other options.
When floating, the command line is one line high by default, and a limited history (user defined length) will be displayed above the command line.
Command options are now clickable in the command line. An arrow on the right side (or the F2 key) gives you access to more history.
The command line now supports only monospaced fonts, and you have many more options for customize the command line colors.
The Viewports tab on the View ribbon has been renamed to Model Viewports to help distinguish this from Layout (floating) viewports which are accessible on the Layout tab of the ribbon.
Quick View Drawings now includes some color highlighting to indicate the current drawing/layout.
Object Property Preview - When you are making property changes in the Properties palette, the changes are applied dynamically before you make your selection. For example, if you select an object and pick the drop down for Color, as you hover over each color, the object is updated on the screen to give you real-time feedback. This behavior is optional, controlled on the Selection tab in the Options command.
The display quality of raster images has been improved.
Hatch editing supports multiple object selection, using either the contextual ribbon or the command line version.
In the External References palette, the behavior of "Saved Path" vs "Found At" has been reversed. You can now edit the "Saved Path" and the "Found At" is read-only. When applicable, the new default Path Type is "Relative".
AutoCAD 2012 removed the ability to snap the cursor to the grid while no command was active. AutoCAD 2013 introduces an option to restore the legacy behavior.

Object Creation and Modification

The PressPull command has been improved to work with multiple objects and 2D and 3D curves.
On the Curves panel of the Surface tab, there is a new Extract Isolines command to extract isoline curves from an existing solid or solid face.
Enhancements to the Array command. By default, a preconfigued array appears (3X4 rectangular, 6 objects polar, and a full path) to help you visualize your final result. New multifunctional grips and the contextual ribbon assist in editing arrays.
Point Cloud functionality has been enhanced. There is a new Point Cloud toolbar and the Point Cloud panel on the Insert tab of the Ribbon has been updated. The External References palette now includes an "Attach Point Cloud" option, and the Attach Point Cloud dialog includes more information about the selected point cloud. There are new point cloud clipping tools available, and the properties palette has been updated to display more point cloud properties.
Autodesk Inventor models can be imported into AutoCAD 2013.
The VIEWBASE command includes a select option where you can select model space objects and then specify a new or existing layout in which to place the multiviews of the object(s).
In the Text Editor, Text Style dialog, and the ArcAlignedText dialog, the dropdown list of fonts is longer, resulting in less scrolling.
Leaders are included in the Text to Front tool.
Strikethrough for text is now available in Mtext, Multileaders, Dimensions, and Tables.
Content Explorer has been updated with basic indexing support for more file types including any file type that can be opened, imported or referenced into AutoCAD. Searching algorithms have also been improved to facilitate better search results.
Wipeouts now have a new frame option to display, but not plot the frame. Use the WIPEOUTFRAME system variable.
There is a new option to maintain existing widths when reversing a polyline. Use the PLINEREVERSEWIDTHS system variable. In the image below, the red polyline on top was reversed with PLINEREVERSEWIDTHS set to 1, the green polyline on the bottom was also reversed, but with PLINEREVERSEWIDTHS set to 0.
In AutoCAD 2012, previews were added to the Fillet command, now in 2013 previews have been added to the Offset command. Preview the offset before committing to it.
Online rendering is available from inside AutoCAD.
In addition to prouduct updates and quick links to the Subscription Center, Infocenter provides access to the Autodesk Facebook page and Autodesk Twitter posts.

Connectivity

AutoCAD 2013 allows you to connect directly to the Autodesk 360 for online file sharing, file syncing, and more. You can store encrypted copies of your drawings in the cloud for later access/retreival, including any external references. You can also store your custom settings such as program appearance, profiles, workspaces, options, and support files - which can be restored to any other machine.
The Autodesk 360 command (on the Online tab) takes you straight to your Autodesk cloud, where you can upload, access, and share drawing files and documents. You can access AutoCAD WS to edit drawings right in the browser. Cloud documents are also accessible from many file selection dialog boxes inside of AutoCAD, such as Open and Save.
A new tab in the Options dialog named Online is used to specify cloud storage settings. Notice that included here is the ability to store your AutoCAD settings on Autodesk 360 for later retrieval on any other machine with AutoCAD.

Installation, Customization, and more...

Language packs are now applied to a single install, instead of there being multiple language versions of AutoCAD.

More information on AutoCAD 2013 from:

Autodesk Webcast Events (March 27 and March 29)

rkmcswain — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 13:30:29 +0000

Here are a couple of online events coming next week from Autodesk.

What - Special Autodesk webcast with presentations by Autodesk CEO Carl Bass, Senior Vice President Amar Hanspal, and more.

When - Tuesday, March 27, 2012 at 9AM (PST), Noon (EST)

Where - You can catch this live webcast on the Autodesk Facebook page. You do not have to have a facebook account to participate.

What - An Autodesk virtual event to learn about the newest software, suites and more. Presenters include Autodesk Executives and Technical Evangelist Lynn Allen.

When - Thursday, March 29, 2012.

Where - Sign up here and get more information here.