tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-110137262008-05-14T22:49:34.820+02:00AutoCADderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15129132847149199163noreply@blogger.comBlogger142125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11013726.post-31156211825907309182008-05-14T22:46:00.002+02:002008-05-14T22:49:34.864+02:00

CAD Forum alerts to a potential problem in names of action macros. See "Be careful when naming AutoCAD action macros". Do not give AutoCAD users too much freedom...

AutoCADderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15129132847149199163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11013726.post-46726395222915588942008-05-14T22:38:00.002+02:002008-05-14T22:46:11.974+02:00

Another try to replace AutoCAD - The Prophecy. I am very skeptical about this. There were lots of commercial attempts and some half-hearted open source attempts to make this, but all failed. In my opinion the CAD market does not generate enough passion to replace AutoCAD. The original product is too good and too cheap (speaking about LT). Both commercial development and enthusiasts' efforts make

AutoCADderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15129132847149199163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11013726.post-86218749544748435332008-05-07T09:34:00.003+02:002008-05-07T09:48:16.588+02:00

We have received an archive of old paper drawings scanned to a .JP2 format. It took us some time to find out it is a "JPEG 2000" raster format but unfortunately AutoCAD does not seem to support this type of images. We were prepared to convert the files to another, AutoCAD-supported format but then I have found a neat trick. If you install the free Raster Design Object Enabler for AutoCAD, it not

AutoCADderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15129132847149199163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11013726.post-12178673997416040802008-04-16T10:57:00.009+02:002008-04-16T22:11:02.852+02:00

Is AutoCAD 2009 a "major" or "minor" version? There are discussions whether AutoCAD 2000i, 2005 or 2009 are really full new versions or just smaller updates, whether the odd versions are better or worse than the even ones (a popular urban legend). I have used the AutoCAD commands database on the CADforum web site to compare the number of new commands introduced in the individual AutoCAD

AutoCADderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15129132847149199163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11013726.post-49253118835722883732008-04-04T16:37:00.002+02:002008-04-04T16:48:45.641+02:00

The AutoCAD product line manager at Autodesk - Eric Stover - said in the Techworld interview that: the new DWG format is due in 2009 with the planned release of AutoCAD 2010 So we can expect a DWG format change in a year or so (in AutoCAD 2010). This complies with Autodesk plans to change the DWG file format every 3 releases (= every 3 years). The interview itself is about the problems some

AutoCADderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15129132847149199163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11013726.post-72761905135567268082008-04-03T12:55:00.003+02:002008-04-03T13:11:58.420+02:00

The DATAEXTRACTION command is maybe the most underestimated command (wizard) in AutoCAD. It can do miracles if you want to analyze, schedule and export data from your drawing. This CAD Forum tip mentions using the Data Extraction wizard for exoprting drawing text but the possibilities of this command are much broader. It is like the ATTEXT and EATTEXT commands on steroids. You can schedule not

AutoCADderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15129132847149199163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11013726.post-54397070016733704462008-03-26T09:37:00.002+01:002008-03-26T09:54:03.326+01:00

It is March again. So there must be a new AutoCAD version again... It is amazing how well Autodesk keeps the promised yearly release cycle - with all the delays we can see e.g. at Microsoft. The subscription-paying customers are probably worth keeping the promise. And with the 2009 versions, it seems that these customers under subscription will get more for their money (the Impression software,

AutoCADderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15129132847149199163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11013726.post-12390275159591229912008-02-21T11:29:00.002+01:002008-02-21T11:43:49.735+01:00

It seems that in the new 2009-version products Autodesk will get rid of some limitations which were restraining users with the hope of selling higher products. E.g. the free DWG viewer Autodesk DWG TrueView 2009 now adds the measure tool allowing to measure distances and areas in DWG drawings. This capability was previously limited to the DWF viewer (Design Review) only - so you had to convert

AutoCADderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15129132847149199163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11013726.post-67362165154400534672008-02-17T13:18:00.006+01:002008-02-17T14:48:29.213+01:00

Autodesk has announced the new version of its flagship product - AutoCAD 2009. It is clear that Autodesk's main focus is on the development of its 3D applications like Inventor, Revit or Civil 3D. AutoCAD 2009 seems to be one of the minor upgrades although the visible changes are major. AutoCAD 2009 is the version where the long and well known pull-down menus are no longer the primary user

AutoCADderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15129132847149199163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11013726.post-61834456850183681822008-01-30T22:02:00.000+01:002008-01-30T22:07:40.550+01:00

Shaan Hurley's Between the Lines blog writes about the AutoCAD command and system variable map. It is interesting that the number of commands has not changed since AutoCAD R12 - of course many new commands were introduced but some old ones are now obsolete. Read the post and discussion at: For AutoCAD Geeks - Command and System Variables Map and Trivia

AutoCADderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15129132847149199163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11013726.post-77555635822694397812008-01-16T11:15:00.000+01:002008-01-13T16:33:25.310+01:00

Not only architects and surveyors need to create digital terrain models (DTM). The CAD users I take care of had many times a list of 3D points or contours and they needed to make a 3D model (a surface) from these. Of course there are special tools like Civil 3D or AutoCAD Architecture which can do this or special add-on applications, but sometimes you just need a quick and dirty way to get a 3D

AutoCADderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15129132847149199163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11013726.post-27421351688709573522008-01-13T16:05:00.000+01:002008-01-13T16:15:32.786+01:00

The Autodesk Lab project - "Project Draw" - has matured to a quite usable tool now. It is a complete diagramming (CADD) application running completely in your internet browser. Think of Actrix (former Autodesk diagramming software) or Vision running inside a web page. So you don't need to install any software, not even an ActiveX object, to draw and edit diagrams, using symbol libraries, smart

AutoCADderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15129132847149199163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11013726.post-39333421058669704772008-01-13T15:56:00.000+01:002008-01-13T16:04:57.313+01:00

I have seen a short demo of AutoCAD 2009. All the new functions in version 2009 are probably still secret but there is one detail I will like for sure - as a user of the Bubble utility for AutoCAD. Similar to Bubble, if you hoover your cursor above an entity, a small bubble (tooltip) is displayed with the relevant data about this entity. So you can see at a glance what type of entity it is, what

AutoCADderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15129132847149199163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11013726.post-47676864659867639792007-12-18T21:49:00.000+01:002007-12-18T21:58:55.788+01:00

Did you know that there is a benchmark program hidden in your AutoCAD? If you want to compare the performance of different graphics cards, computers or different performance settings, you can simply load and execute the GSTEST.ARX benchmark stored in your AutoCAD directory. It is present not only in AutoCAD 2008 - I have succeeded to track it back to the AutoCAD version 2004 (maybe it was also in

AutoCADderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15129132847149199163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11013726.post-42144439733236922562007-12-18T21:43:00.000+01:002007-12-18T21:49:05.359+01:00

In February (AutoCAD speaks Microstationish) I have complained about the limited support of the DGN file format in AutoCAD 2008 (V8 only). Autodesk has probably heared that also from other users. Both DGN V8 and the older DGN V7 Microstation formats will be probably supported in the new AutoCAD 2009. It is good that the file format compatibility problems are being solved by CAD software vendors.

AutoCADderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15129132847149199163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11013726.post-38607062826898970212007-12-06T18:49:00.000+01:002007-12-06T19:05:37.759+01:00

Autodesk has published a "white paper" about using its current applications in Windows Vista. Almost all current versions of Autodesk software are compatible with Windows Vista and almost all run in Vista at the same performance level as in Windows XP. The white paper mentions two exceptions - but in the opposite way you would expect after reading all those skeptical articles about Vista.

AutoCADderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15129132847149199163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11013726.post-74986771214841859902007-11-27T09:29:00.000+01:002007-11-27T09:45:05.655+01:00

If you use AutoCAD 2008, you are probably suffering the same problem - attached xrefs bring in their annotation scale lists and the scale list in the main drawing grows ad infinitum. There can be thousands of nested scales named "XREF_XREF_XREF....". Such scale lists confuse users (see the SCALELISTEDIT command) and can substantially slow down Open and Xref operations on such infected DWG files.

AutoCADderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15129132847149199163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11013726.post-38187786784027249342007-11-27T09:09:00.000+01:002007-11-27T09:28:32.630+01:00

Not only AutoCAD 2008 or 2009, but still more CAD applications are released in the native 64-bit versions. This brings - first of all - much bigger directly addressable memory (RAM). So you can process much larger datasets without being slowed down by OS memory limits. As you probably know, applications running in the 32-bit Windows versions can address only 2GB (3GB in special modes) of mmory.

AutoCADderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15129132847149199163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11013726.post-38582757834532932612007-11-08T18:57:00.000+01:002007-11-08T19:08:33.748+01:00

Interesting - the DUMPMEMALLOC command can set CPU affinity for AutoCAD 2008. I have only a dualcore system to try it on but it seems to really work. The Task manager graph goes from parallel performance load to the left core (#0) load only. Read on CAD Forum - I recommend subscribing to their RSS feed.

AutoCADderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15129132847149199163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11013726.post-12411070477701703662007-11-01T12:04:00.000+01:002007-11-01T12:28:04.913+01:00

Searching for the german translation of an AutoCAD command I have found a very nice online resource of AutoCAD command names. This dictionary seems to contain all AutoCAD commands including Express Tools, in English, German, Italian, French and other languages. The command list is hidden on the CAD Forum web, in its Tips section - AutoCAD commands. The command lookup resembles the

AutoCADderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15129132847149199163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11013726.post-57136183078045636272007-10-29T20:36:00.000+01:002007-10-29T21:02:46.197+01:00

Recently we have received a couple of drawings with improperly displayed hatches. The hatches were scattered to small lines. Some computers displayed the drawings properly, some were scattered, some were missing the hatches completely. After a long investigation we have found two independent sources of the problem. The first one was the MaxHatch limit - on some computers it was set too low so

AutoCADderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15129132847149199163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11013726.post-79995978010208914732007-10-12T22:03:00.000+02:002007-10-12T22:16:03.479+02:00

My AutoCAD users wanted to have an automatically updated list of Xrefs (xref names) in the main drawing. After some research I have found two methods for doing this: The RTEXT tool from Express Tools - in RTEXT use a predefined Diesel expression for xref list, e.g. $(xrefs,3) or $(xrefs,27,Xref name: )Automatic text fields - in the main drawing insert a textfield (e.g. with FIELD), select the

AutoCADderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15129132847149199163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11013726.post-15700468316489515782007-10-09T20:50:00.000+02:002007-10-09T21:15:23.324+02:00

In many drawings, AutoCAD users need to enter texts with special characters like mathematic symbols, letters from greek alphabet, cyrillic, punctuation characters, indices, or just accented characters from other languages. With the Unicode support in Windows and AutoCAD it is quite easy to enter such characters - either using Windows language support for that particular language (and a local

AutoCADderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15129132847149199163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11013726.post-54525491199006716242007-09-18T11:25:00.000+02:002007-09-18T11:38:45.319+02:00

The current issue of Ralph Grabowski's upFront.eZine informs about the Autodesk's Grand Unification Plan aiming to go into deeper unification of the user interfaces and file formats in Autodesk software applications. So maybe the new versions (2009?) of AutoCAD, Inventor or 3ds max will share a similar user interface (which may or may be not good) and it probably will be easier to share their

AutoCADderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15129132847149199163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11013726.post-79951060505219778042007-08-30T09:57:00.000+02:002007-08-30T10:07:04.172+02:00

Autodesk has released SP1 for AutoCAD 2008 and LT 2008 (and AutoCAD from Revit Suites). As usual, it fixes the main problems found after the initial release and includes hotfixes which have been released up to now. For me, it fixes only two painpoints (I was not affected by any other problem fixed in SP1) - linetypes after zoom and multiple AutoCAD sessions after double-clicking DWG files. The

AutoCADderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15129132847149199163noreply@blogger.com