I’m not sure how this happened but one day my coworker was trying to select multiple objects after starting a command but AutoCAD forced him to select one object at a time unless he explicitly told it to do a crossing window by typing C at the select prompt. This was very frustrating!

After asking around, someone in our office figured out that “Implied Windowing” was turned off.

If you ever run unto this, here is how you fix it:

Type PICKAUTO into the commandline and change it to 1.

I’m lazy so I like less keystrokes. For example when I am running the PEDIT command on an object that isn’t a polyline, I don’t want to be prompted with this every time:

Do you want to turn it into one? <Y>

Read more »

I love that you can link an Excel spreadsheet to an AutoCAD table. This is a very powerful tool, but I quickly discovered a problem: you can’t use .shx fonts an Excel spreadsheet.

Our CAD standards dictate that we use a .shx font but since it cannot be used inside Excel the AutoCAD table takes on the same non-standard font used in the spreadsheet. All of my AutoCAD tables linked to a spreadsheet were coming in with a non-standard font and it was a pain reformatting each and every cell. That’s when I discovered this little secret. Read more »

At the request of Murph, I will show you how to create a block that will display the bearing in degrees, minutes, and seconds (DMS) using an AutoCAD Field.

It’s actually very simple. Let’s get started. Read more »

Recently I was asked to create a grid that labels the Northings & Eastings on a map. There are a couple of ways you could do this: 1) If you have Civil 3D, create a point style that labels the Northing & Easting. 2) If you have AutoCAD create a block that displays the Northing & Easting with fields.

If you have Civil 3D, the point-style method works the best but today I am going to show you how to use fields to make this happen. Read more »

You may have noticed that when you attempt to delete a layer that is being used by entities in your drawing you will be denied.

There is, however, an easy way to delete layers that are being used by entities. Read more »

This just in: “It is time to cast your votes for your favorite Autodesk product improvement wishes for the February 2009 cycle. The ballots, populated with the wishes submitted by your fellow AUGI members, are live and awaiting your votes.” Read more »

I just found out from @MisterAU on Twitter that Autodesk has a channel on YouTube. Looking over a few of the videos it looks like a lot of marketing promos and videos showing overviews of various Autodesk software. Read more »

According to the AutoCAD help file, “Reconciling new layers is the process of manually reviewing new layers so that you can avoid potential errors before plotting your drawing or when restoring a layer state.” Read more »

I hope you had a good New Years. I sure did! I’m just getting back to blogging after a holiday break.

Have you ever been frustrated that your hatch patterns always cover other objects no matter how many times you set the draw order to send it to back? Read more »

I just read an excellent tutorial by David Watson at CADTutor.net. David writes, “AutoCAD can be used to create a simple “walk through” of any 3D model. For example, if you have designed a new pedestrianisation scheme for a town centre, you could use AutoCAD to give a slide presentation to show how the scheme would look from a pedestrian eye view as the person moved through the space. This is an extremely useful technique for presenting schemes to clients or the general public who may not necessarily have a good understanding of plans.” Read more »