When we upgraded to AutoCAD 2012 I started to like and use the RIBBON. It took some getting used-to at first but I’ve learned to love it but I did have one major problem with it: the layers pull-down is on the “home” tab.

I love the layers pull-down because it quickly shows me the layer an object is on when I select something, but if I happen to be in another tab I can no longer see it. But I soon learned a trick thanks to Rick Ellis. Read more »

Autodesk introduced something called geometric constraints in AutoCAD 2010. They are very powerful and can help speed up drafting by saving keystrokes, picks and clicks. Check out this link from Lynn Allen to see what I mean.

Do you use geometric constraints in your day-to-day work?

Autodesk released a new version of AutoCAD and it has a lot of improvements. Check out this guide which shows what’s new. Are you upgrading to AutoCAD 2013? Why or why not?

Kate Morrical from LT Unlimited wrote a helpful blog post on managing annotation visibility. It can be confusing at first but annotation visibility is worth mastering. I use annotation scale visibility with dimensions, text and multileaders every day because it gives me even more control over how my drawings look. Here is what she said: Read more »

Hope, one of my readers, asked me how to draw a line tangent to two circles. This is a great question because it isn’t very obvious at first. Here’s how you do it. Read more »

Due to limited time and because I’m feeling lazy today, this is going to be a short post.

Ever wonder how to properly explode a block that contains attributes without having the text revert to the attribute tag? Try the BURST command. It a special “explode” command made for blocks with attributes.

See, I told you this was short.

I’m a design drafter. I create contract plans for construction. After the final plan sets are made, I hand the prints off to our archival team to put the drawings in their final home. Part of this process is printing a unique barcode sticker for each sheet. I didn’t realize that they went through such a tedious process to get this done until an associate at work came to me with an idea: why not print barcodes directly on the plan sheets? Read more »

This has got to be the easiest way to create a block out of existing linework. The first step is to select some linework:

Read more »

I love using Twitter because it’s like a mini news feed that I can customize to my tastes. Today I would like to share six Twitter accounts that offer great CAD tips on a regular basis. Read more »

A guy that I work with shared a tip with me on how to combine two pipe networks in Civil 3D. I hear you can do this natively in Civil 3D 2012, but I thought I would share a workaround in case you are using an older version of Civil 3D. Read more »

When you match the properties from one piece of text to another by default it matches the rotation angle and text size. If you simply want to match the layer of one piece of text to another without affecting other text properties such as rotation angle and text size, follow these simple steps: Read more »