IntroductionWelcome| 00:00 | Welcome to the AutoCAD 2009 New
Features title. My name is Jeff Bartels and
| | 00:05 | I'm privileged to be your personal
tour guide as we walk through the many
| | 00:09 | changes and improvements that have
been made to AutoCAD, since release 2008.
| | 00:13 | Now, I have been using AutoCAD for a
long time and I can tell you that AutoCAD
| | 00:17 | 2009 is truly a milestone release.
| | 00:20 | You see, one of the things that makes
this release special is AutoCAD's
| | 00:23 | brand new interface, which at first
glance may seem a little intimidating.
| | 00:27 | Don't worry. In this title, you and I
are going to look at every component of
| | 00:31 | AutoCAD's updated interface. We are
going to explore everything that's been
| | 00:35 | added, changed, or turned off. When
we are through, you will have a full
| | 00:39 | understanding of the new system and
you will be off and running without
| | 00:42 | sacrificing your productivity.
| | 00:44 | After we finish talking about the
interface, we are going to take a hands-on
| | 00:47 | look at all of the new tools added to
AutoCAD 2009, as well as any enhancements
| | 00:52 | that have been made to the existing tools.
| | 00:54 | There have been several powerful
features added for both 2D and 3D work.
| | 00:59 | If you're someone who is thinking about
upgrading from AutoCAD 2008 or any prior
| | 01:03 | version of AutoCAD for that matter,
this title is a perfect choice to get you
| | 01:06 | comfortable with AutoCAD's new look and feel.
| | 01:09 | If you're someone who is interested in
updating your AutoCAD skills, this title
| | 01:13 | will keep you on the cutting
edge of what AutoCAD has to offer.
| | 01:16 | Well, the tour, so to speak, is about
to start. Let's jump in and take a look
| | 01:20 | at the new AutoCAD 2009.
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| Using the example files| 00:00 | Just a quick word about the exercise
files we'll be using. If you're a Premium
| | 00:04 | member of the lynda.com Online
Training Library, or if you're watching this
| | 00:08 | tutorial on a disc, you have access to
the exercise files used throughout this title.
| | 00:14 | In the Exercise Files folder, I have
collected some assets for you to use
| | 00:17 | during our tour of AutoCAD 2009
features. I have copied the folder to my
| | 00:22 | Desktop, but you can put it wherever
you want. If you're a monthly or an annual
| | 00:26 | subscriber to lynda.com, you don't
have access to the exercise files, but you
| | 00:31 | can easily follow along. Let's get started.
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| Introduction to this course| 00:00 | In the AutoCAD 2009 New Features
course, I have organized the lessons into
| | 00:04 | three categories; Interface,
Drafting Tools, and Visualization. In each
| | 00:10 | category, what we are going to do
is talk about the new features first,
| | 00:13 | followed by enhancements that
have been made to existing features.
| | 00:16 | We will start the title by looking at
AutoCAD's interface, since it's obviously
| | 00:20 | had the most changes. Then we'll move
on to Drafting tools, and finally, we'll
| | 00:25 | have a little fun with the
new Visualization features.
| | 00:29 | My goal is to make this title not
only a learning tool, but also a reference tool.
| | 00:32 | In the interest of completeness,
I have included information and
| | 00:36 | tutorials about every feature that's
been added since release 2008. I'm leaving
| | 00:40 | no feature behind, no
matter how small it may seem.
| | 00:43 | Speaking as someone who works in a
production environment, I'm giving you what
| | 00:46 | I would want if I were taking an update
course. Rest assured, after completing
| | 00:51 | this title you will have a full
understanding and a strong working knowledge of
| | 00:55 | all of the features added to AutoCAD 2009.
| | 00:58 | Well, we have got a lot of things to
talk about and a lot of brand new things
| | 01:01 | to look at, so let's get started.
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1. New Interface ComponentsUsing the Quick Access toolbar| 00:00 | One of the best ways to enhance
productivity is to have the commands we use
| | 00:03 | most within easy reach. AutoCAD 2009 makes
this possible with the new Quick Access toolbar.
| | 00:09 | Now, before we look at the toolbar, I
want to mention this drawing on screen.
| | 00:13 | Since we are going to be talking about
the interface in this session, I thought
| | 00:17 | it would look a little bit better to
avoid having a blank screen, so I have
| | 00:20 | opened this drawing.
| | 00:22 | Now, this drawing is located inside of
our Chapter 1 folder, located inside
| | 00:26 | the Exercise Files directory, and we
can see the drawing name right up here.
| | 00:30 | Now, our Quick Access toolbar is right
up here in the upper left hand corner
| | 00:34 | of our interface, and this toolbar
represents our 'go to' commands. These commands
| | 00:39 | are so valuable that we need to
always have quick access to them.
| | 00:43 | By default, AutoCAD loads this
toolbar with six commands, and from left to
| | 00:48 | right, we have got New, Open, Save,
Plot, Undo, and Redo. The nice thing about
| | 01:01 | this toolbar is that I can customize
it. I can add the commands that I use most.
| | 01:05 | Let's try that. Personally, I use the
eTransmit command all the time. I would
| | 01:11 | like to add the eTransmit
command to my Quick Access toolbar.
| | 01:15 | To do that, I'm going to come up and
right-click on the toolbar, and I'm going
| | 01:19 | to select the Customize option. This
brings up a collapsed version of my CUI;
| | 01:25 | CUI stands for Customizable User
Interface. If I look at this pane, I can see
| | 01:31 | an exhaustive list of all of
the commands available in AutoCAD.
| | 01:35 | Now, fortunately, they are in
alphabetical order, but instead of dragging down
| | 01:38 | to the E section, I'm going to click
in the Search Command list area and I'm
| | 01:42 | going to start typing eTransmit. As
I type, AutoCAD will filter the list;
| | 01:48 | you can see I didn't even have to type
the whole command, and AutoCAD found the
| | 01:51 | command in the list.
| | 01:53 | To place this tool in the toolbar, I'm
going to click and hold on it, drag it
| | 01:57 | up, and I can place it any place in the
toolbar that I want. I'm going to drop
| | 02:01 | him right here at the end. When I'm
finished, I'm going to come down and click
| | 02:05 | OK to dismiss my CUI.
| | 02:07 | Now, my eTransmit command is
available whenever I need him.
| | 02:12 | Now, if you're like me, the first time
you add a command to the toolbar,
| | 02:16 | you'll then ask yourself, you know what,
how do I take one of those guys out?
| | 02:19 | What if I want to remove a command?
Let me show you how we can do that. If we
| | 02:24 | would like to remove a command from the
toolbar, once again, I'm going to move
| | 02:27 | my cursor on top of the toolbar
and right-click and select Customize.
| | 02:31 | Now, this once again brings up my CUI,
and remember I mentioned that it was in
| | 02:35 | a collapsed state. Let's open this
guy up. I want to come down and click my
| | 02:39 | greater than symbol to open up the
right side pane, and then I'm going to
| | 02:44 | click the chevron to
open up my Workspace area.
| | 02:47 | Now, what I want to do is I want to
come over and highlight the current
| | 02:51 | workspace; it's real easy to tell which
one it is. Let me click the workspace,
| | 02:56 | and when I do, AutoCAD will populate
the Workspace Contents area, showing me
| | 03:00 | all the things that are in this workspace.
| | 03:02 | Notice, I have got a heading called
Quick Access toolbar. If I click the plus
| | 03:07 | AutoCAD will show me all of the
tools that are in that toolbar. If I want
| | 03:11 | to remove one, I can right-click on the
tool, and select Remove From Workspace.
| | 03:15 | When I'm done, I'm going to come down
and click OK to dismiss the CUI, and now
| | 03:21 | the eTransmit command has been removed.
| | 03:23 | Think for a minute about the
commands you use most often, and then save
| | 03:26 | yourself some time by putting those
commands in your Quick Access toolbar.
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| Exploring the menu browser| 00:00 | AutoCAD's new menu browser serves two
purposes. It makes our Drafting Area
| | 00:04 | larger, and it gives us new
functionality. But before we talk about the new
| | 00:08 | browser, I would like to
open a couple of drawings.
| | 00:09 | I'm going to do that by coming
up and clicking my Open icon,
| | 00:13 | and we are going to look inside the Chapter 1
folder, located inside our Exercise Files
| | 00:18 | directory, and I would like to open
up these two drawings. I can do that by
| | 00:22 | clicking once on this drawing to
highlight him, and then I will hold my Shift key
| | 00:26 | and I will click the drawing just
beneath him. Now they are both selected,
| | 00:29 | I will come down and click Open. I have
just opened two drawings within my interface.
| | 00:35 | As I move up to the top of the screen
to talk about the menu browser, I want
| | 00:38 | you to notice what's missing -
the pulldown menus. The pulldown menus have
| | 00:43 | been turned off or deactivated in
AutoCAD 2009. Now, don't worry, if you're
| | 00:48 | someone who likes using the pulldown
menus, we can still use them, we just
| | 00:51 | have to turn them back on. Let
me show you how we can do that.
| | 00:55 | If you want to turn on your pulldown
menus, place your cursor on top of the
| | 00:58 | Quick Access toolbar, and right-click,
and select Show menu Bar, and this will
| | 01:04 | restore your pulldown menus, and
these guys work just like they always have.
| | 01:08 | Now, this is technically older
functionality. We really don't need the
| | 01:12 | pulldown menus anymore. So I'm going
to turn mine off. Once again, I'm going
| | 01:16 | to move on top of the Quick Access
toolbar, right-click, and I'm going to
| | 01:19 | remove the check.
| | 01:22 | Let's take a look at AutoCAD's new
menu browser. The menu browser is located
| | 01:26 | beneath this big letter A; kind of
looks like a refrigerator magnet. If I click
| | 01:30 | this guy, the menu browser opens up,
and I can see the exact same menus that
| | 01:34 | used to be along the top of my screen.
Basically what AutoCAD has done is they
| | 01:38 | have collapsed our pulldown menus
and placed them beneath a single icon.
| | 01:43 | Now, in addition to compressing our
menus down to one location, the menu
| | 01:47 | browser also gives us additional
features. Let's take a look at some of those.
| | 01:53 | Notice, I have a Search menu now. If
I'm looking for a particular command
| | 01:57 | within the menus, I can click in the
Search area and I can type the command.
| | 02:01 | Let me look for the refedit command.
If I type refedit, AutoCAD will find the
| | 02:06 | command within the menus; it happens to
be located inside the Tools menu. If I
| | 02:11 | wanted to, I could click this
hyperlink and I could launch the command.
| | 02:15 | Now, I don't want to talk about the
refedit command just yet, so I'm going to
| | 02:19 | click X to close the search.
| | 02:22 | If I place my cursor over the Recent
Documents area, AutoCAD will populate the
| | 02:25 | right side of the menu with a listing
of all of the drawings that I have worked
| | 02:29 | on recently.
| | 02:30 | If I place my cursor over a drawing,
AutoCAD will show me a thumbnail image of
| | 02:34 | what that drawing looked
like the last time it was saved.
| | 02:37 | Now, this list can hold as many as 50
drawings. By default, it's only set to
| | 02:44 | show me nine. We will look at how we
can change that number in a little bit.
| | 02:48 | Notice at the end of each drawing
name I have got a pushpin. If I click the
| | 02:52 | pushpin, AutoCAD will
maintain this drawing in the list.
| | 02:55 | Now, if I have a drawing that I work
on several days in a row, it's very easy
| | 03:00 | to find. I can go right here to grab it,
I don't have to navigate through my
| | 03:03 | hard drive, it will always
be available in this list.
| | 03:06 | I can also change the way my list looks,
by clicking this flyout. Let's select
| | 03:11 | Large Images. Notice the difference.
Let me click the flyout again, we'll set
| | 03:16 | this back to Icons. I can change the
way the list is ordered; let me click this
| | 03:21 | flyout and I can group these by Date.
This can come in very handy when you're
| | 03:25 | doing a time sheet; what did I work
on today, what did I work on yesterday,
| | 03:29 | what did I work on two days ago.
| | 03:32 | I can also sort these by Type. I'm
going to set this back to Ordered List, and
| | 03:37 | let's look at the Open Documents
feature. If I place my cursor over the Open
| | 03:41 | Documents feature, AutoCAD shows me
the drawings that are currently opened in
| | 03:44 | my interface. If you remember, we
opened two when we started this session. If I
| | 03:49 | want to jump from one drawing to
another, I can simply click the drawing name
| | 03:53 | to jump to that drawing.
| | 03:54 | Let me bring the menu back up again.
I'm going to come up and click on the
| | 03:57 | letter A, and notice that AutoCAD
remembers the last place that I was. That can
| | 04:01 | come in very handy.
| | 04:02 | If I come down and hover over Recent
Actions, AutoCAD will show me the last
| | 04:06 | several commands that I accessed
through the menu browser. Also notice that
| | 04:10 | each of these commands also contains a
little pushpin, so if I want to maintain
| | 04:14 | these in the list, I can click the pushpin
and this command will never drop off the list.
| | 04:18 | Now by default, AutoCAD is going to
remember the last nine commands you have
| | 04:22 | accessed. Once again, we can also
raise this number to 50. Let me show you
| | 04:26 | where we can do that.
| | 04:28 | I'm going to leave the menu browser.
I'm going to hit my Esc key to clear it,
| | 04:32 | and we can change our menu browser
settings within our Options. If I
| | 04:36 | right-click and come down and select
Options. I'm going to go to my Open and
| | 04:42 | Save tab, and right here is where I
can adjust the settings for my menu
| | 04:46 | Browser. As I mentioned before, by
default, we can see nine recently used files
| | 04:52 | and nine recently used menu actions.
So we can set these up to 50 if we wish.
| | 04:58 | Let me click OK to exit the Options dialog.
| | 05:02 | By using the new menu browser, we
still have access to all of our standard menus,
| | 05:06 | in addition to having a great new tool to navigate
through our recently used drawings and content.
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| Understanding the ribbon| 00:00 | Probably the biggest change to the AutoCAD
interface is the introduction of the ribbon.
| | 00:03 | The ribbon essentially takes the
power and organization of your
| | 00:06 | toolbars and places all of
it on a collapsible panel.
| | 00:09 | Now, since we are going to be talking
about the interface in this session, we
| | 00:13 | won't actually be doing any work. I
wanted to avoid having a completely blank
| | 00:16 | screen, so I have opened a drawing.
This drawing happens to be located in the
| | 00:21 | Chapter 1 folder, located inside our
Exercise Files directory, and we can see
| | 00:25 | the drawing name right up
here, the number three drawing.
| | 00:27 | Now, ribbon is located at the top of
the interface, and this is the guy that we
| | 00:31 | are going to use from now on to launch
the majority of our AutoCAD commands.
| | 00:35 | Now, our ribbon is divided up into tabs
and panels. If I place my cursor right
| | 00:40 | up here, I can see all of my tab names.
If I would like to move from one tab to
| | 00:44 | the other, I can click on the tab name.
Now, a tab is a container that holds
| | 00:50 | panels. Now, the tab and panel concept is
very similar to a mechanic's tool chest.
| | 00:55 | The tabs represent the drawers
and the panels represent collections of tools.
| | 01:01 | Now, if this were a mechanic's tool
chest, we may see inside the drawer a drill
| | 01:05 | bit set, or we may see a ratchet set,
or we may see a set of metrical wrenches.
| | 01:11 | Since this is AutoCAD, and I happen to
be looking at the Annotate tab or the
| | 01:15 | Annotate drawer, I'm seeing a set of
Text tools, a set of Dimension tools,
| | 01:20 | a set of Multileader tools.
| | 01:23 | Now, in some cases, in your panel, you
may have more tools than what will fit
| | 01:27 | within the space. If that happens,
we'll have a flyout. Let me click this flyout.
| | 01:31 | This will maximize the panel and
give me access to the rest of the tools.
| | 01:35 | If I select the tool, then move
away from the panel, it will collapse.
| | 01:40 | Now, if I click this flyout one more
time, I want you to notice this pushpin.
| | 01:44 | If I click the pushpin, that panel will
always remain in an open state. Let me
| | 01:49 | click the pushpin again to
remove it, and it will collapse.
| | 01:52 | Now, there is a lot of flexibility in
the panels and in the tabs. Let me show
| | 01:56 | you what I mean. I can rearrange these
if I wish. If I click and hold on this
| | 02:01 | panel or this collection of tools, I
can drag him left or right, I can place
| | 02:06 | him wherever I want within the tab. In
fact, if I click and hold on the panel
| | 02:10 | name, I can drag him out into model
space. So I can use him down here if I wish.
| | 02:15 | Same thing goes for our tabs. We can
click and hold the tab names and we can
| | 02:19 | rearrange these in whatever
order we like. Just drag and release.
| | 02:24 | Now, if I would like to restore my
panel back to the ribbon, I will place my
| | 02:28 | cursor over the panel, and AutoCAD
will expand the panel so I can see the
| | 02:33 | handle that I can use to move it, or
if I come over to the other side, I can
| | 02:38 | see an icon that will allow me to send
this panel back to the ribbon. Let me
| | 02:42 | click this and he will go
right back where he was.
| | 02:44 | Now, panels and ribbons can also be
turned off. If I place my cursor on top of
| | 02:49 | a panel and right-click, notice I have
got two settings in the pop-up menu, one
| | 02:53 | for tabs and one for panels. If I hover
over my tabs area, I can see all of my
| | 02:57 | tabs and the checkboxes represent that
they are turned on. If I click a check,
| | 03:02 | I can turn the tab off. We can see the
Home tab is now gone, let me bring him
| | 03:05 | back. Let me come down to panels. I can
also take and turn them off or on as well.
| | 03:10 | Now, you will find that some commands
in AutoCAD have been incorporated into
| | 03:15 | the ribbon. For instance, I'm going to
launch the MTEXT command. Since we are
| | 03:19 | on the Annotate tab, I'm going to come
over and click the MTEXT icon. I'm going
| | 03:21 | to click two corners to represent my
column, and when I do, watch the ribbon.
| | 03:29 | Notice I now have a new tab for
Multiline Text, and in the ribbon now I can see
| | 03:33 | a panel for each one of my tools
that are associated with Multiline Text.
| | 03:38 | You will find that the Table command,
the Refedit command, as well as the Block
| | 03:44 | Editing commands, all
access their own ribbon features.
| | 03:47 | I'm going to set the Home tab Current,
because that's the one that we are going
| | 03:52 | to use most often. The Home tab
contains our Draw tools, as well as our Modify
| | 03:57 | tools and our Layer Control.
| | 03:59 | Now, remember I said that the ribbon
is a collapsible panel. That's what this
| | 04:03 | icon does right up here. If I click
this icon one time, AutoCAD will minimize
| | 04:08 | the ribbon down to the panel names,
and when its in this state, if I want to
| | 04:11 | access the tools, I will just place my
cursor over the panel name, it will open
| | 04:15 | up, I can select the tool, and
when I move away it will collapse.
| | 04:18 | If I come up and click this
Minimize button one more time, AutoCAD will
| | 04:23 | collapse the ribbon down to just the
tab names. Now if I want to access my
| | 04:27 | tools, I will come up and click on a
tab name, AutoCAD will maximize that tab
| | 04:32 | on the screen, I can choose the tool
that I want to use, and when I move away,
| | 04:36 | it will collapse.
| | 04:37 | So the more comfortable you get with
your ribbon, the less space you can have
| | 04:41 | it take up on screen. If I click the
Minimize button one more time, my ribbon
| | 04:45 | will restore to its fully open state.
| | 04:48 | Of all the new AutoCAD 2009 features,
the ribbon interface has the biggest
| | 04:51 | learning curve. Once you become
familiar with it however, you will have access
| | 04:55 | to a great deal of tools, while
using the smallest amount of space.
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| Customizing the ribbon| 00:00 | One of the benefits of the new ribbon
interface is that we can customize it to
| | 00:03 | suit our needs. Let's look at how we
can make some changes to the ribbon.
| | 00:06 | Now, before we go up and start moving
things around and changing things,
| | 00:10 | I want to mention this drawing that we
see on screen. This drawing is here for
| | 00:14 | the sole purpose of being a background.
So it's we're going to be talking about
| | 00:17 | the interface at this time, I think it
looks better to have something on screen
| | 00:20 | than a big blank nothing.
| | 00:23 | If you'd like to open this drawing
and use it as a background as well, the
| | 00:25 | drawing is located inside the
Chapter 1 folder inside our Exercise Files
| | 00:30 | directory, and if I look right up here,
I can see the drawing that's called
| | 00:33 | Number 4, the Wooden Connector drawing.
| | 00:36 | Let's make some customization changes
to our ribbon. To do that, I'm going to
| | 00:40 | come up and right-click on the tab bar
and select Customize. This will bring up
| | 00:45 | my CUI, my Customizable User Interface.
The first thing I'm going to do is I'm
| | 00:49 | going to come over to the left side
and I'm going to select the current
| | 00:52 | workspace. It's real easy
to tell which one is current.
| | 00:54 | Let me click this guy and highlight him.
When I do over on the right side in
| | 01:00 | the Workspace Contents area, I will see
everything that is associated with this
| | 01:03 | workspace. Notice I have a heading
called ribbon tabs. Let me click the Plus
| | 01:08 | (+) to open this guy up and AutoCAD
will show me all the tabs that are being
| | 01:12 | used in my workspace. Now, remember a
tab is like a drawer in a toolbox. It's
| | 01:16 | essentially just a container. The tab
holds panels. If I click the Plus (+)
| | 01:22 | next to one of these tabs, I can see
all of the panels that are loaded on that
| | 01:26 | tab. Let me close this up.
| | 01:28 | Let's add the tab to our workspace. I
can do that by coming over to the left
| | 01:34 | side. I have got a heading here called
ribbon tabs. Let me click the Plus (+)
| | 01:38 | to open this up. This is where I can
go shopping for tabs. These are the tabs
| | 01:42 | that comes stock when we install
AutoCAD. This is like going to the hardware.
| | 01:47 | I'm going to do a little bit of shopping.
| | 01:49 | I'm going to come down and I'm going to
add the Visualize tab to our workspace.
| | 01:54 | I can do that by clicking and holding
on the tab and I'll drag it over and I
| | 01:58 | will release it in my workspace. I'm
going to click the Plus (+) and we can see
| | 02:02 | that it is now there. I'm going to
come down and click OK to save my changes
| | 02:07 | and we'll take a look at our ribbon.
| | 02:10 | Notice that I now have a Visualize tab
in my ribbon and if I click this guy, I
| | 02:15 | can see that it is already pre-loaded
with panels. Let's make another change. I
| | 02:19 | would like to create my own tab. What
if I wanted to do that? Once again, I'm
| | 02:24 | going to come up and right-click on
the tab Bar and select Customize. If I'd
| | 02:29 | like to make my own tab, I'm going to
right-click on the ribbon tabs heading
| | 02:33 | and select New tab.
| | 02:34 | I have just created a new tab. I'm now
going to give it a name. I want to call
| | 02:39 | this Jeff's tools, and hit Enter. When
I do that I want you to take a look over
| | 02:45 | on the right side of the screen in the
Properties area. Our tabs actually two
| | 02:49 | names. There's the official name, the
name that we've given it and then there's
| | 02:53 | the Display Text name. The Display
Text version is what we see listed in our interface.
| | 03:01 | Now that I have created my tab, I
want to pan up. Let's click the current
| | 03:04 | workspace. In the Workspace Contents
area, let's open up our tabs. Notice that
| | 03:08 | that tab has automatically been
assigned to our workspace. AutoCAD assumes if
| | 03:12 | you're making a tab, you want that to
be a part of your workspace. I'm going to
| | 03:18 | come down and click OK to save my changes.
We'll take another look at our ribbon.
| | 03:23 | Okay. Now I have a tab called Jeff's
tools. If I come up and click this guy,
| | 03:28 | let's see what it looks like. Notice,
I see nothing. That's because the tab
| | 03:32 | itself is nothing but a container. It's
like a drawer in a toolbox. We have to
| | 03:36 | add some panels to this tab
in order to have some tools.
| | 03:41 | Once again I'm going to go back to my
CUI. I'm going to right-click and select
| | 03:44 | Customize. I'm going to expand my
ribbon tabs area. I'm going to click the Plus
| | 03:52 | now I can see there's my tab. I'm
going to come down a little bit and I'm
| | 03:56 | going to open up the ribbon panels area.
These are the panels that comes stock
| | 04:00 | when we install AutoCAD. Let me click
my Slider and pan this up a little bit.
| | 04:06 | If I want to add a panel or a toolset
to my tab, I will click and hold on the
| | 04:12 | panel name, drag it up and I will lay
it down, release my mouse right on top of
| | 04:18 | the tab. Let me click hold and we'll
drag up Annotation, release. Let me click
| | 04:25 | and hold on Properties - 2D will
add this guy, drag it up and release.
| | 04:30 | Now if I open up my tab, I can see
that it contains three panels. Once again
| | 04:35 | I'm going to click OK to save my
changes and we'll take a look at our ribbon
| | 04:39 | again. My workspace has already
assigned the Jeff's tools tab. So if I add
| | 04:46 | panels to that tab, that's all I have
to do, just add the panels and when I
| | 04:49 | come back out, that will automatically
be part of my workspace. Let me click
| | 04:54 | the tab and there are my three panels.
| | 04:56 | Let's go a little bit deeper. What if
I wanted to create my own panels? Once
| | 05:02 | again I'm going to right-click,
select Customize. This time we'll go to the
| | 05:06 | panels area. I'm going to right-click
on the ribbon panels heading and I'm
| | 05:11 | going to select New panel. Let's call
this My Custom tools and hit Enter. I can
| | 05:21 | see my panel over to the right.
| | 05:24 | Now a panel is a toolset, it's a
container for tools. Right now my panel has no
| | 05:29 | tools. If I want to add tools to my
panel, I'm going to come down to the lower
| | 05:33 | left hand pane this is an
exhaustive list of every command available on
| | 05:38 | AutoCAD. If I want to add a command
or a tool to my panel, I will click and
| | 05:43 | hold on the Command, drag this guy up,
and I will release inside the panel.
| | 05:50 | Let's bring up another one, click, hold,
drag, release and as I add tools, I
| | 05:59 | can see my panel is getting populated
over on the right hand side. I'm going to
| | 06:04 | Minimize my panel. I want to show
you one more way we can make a panel.
| | 06:07 | But, if you have a custom toolbar
you've created that has some tools that you
| | 06:11 | use for your office, we can convert the
toolbar into a panel in one step. Let's
| | 06:16 | try that. I'm going to take and push
my slider up to the top. Let's go to the
| | 06:21 | toolbars area. Let me click the Plus
to open this guy up. If you have a
| | 06:25 | custom toolbar, it will be listed here.
If I want to convert a toolbar into a
| | 06:30 | panel, I will right-click on the
toolbar name and select Copy to ribbon panels.
| | 06:36 | AutoCAD says, hey, do you want to do
that? Yes, I do. Let me click Yes. I'm
| | 06:40 | going to close up my toolbars area.
| | 06:43 | If I come all the way down to he bottom
of my ribbon panels, I will see that I
| | 06:47 | now have a panel called Modify 2. If I
click this guy to see the preview. It's
| | 06:52 | a little bit frightening at first.
Don't worry about the fact that we can't see
| | 06:55 | our icon images. Those will work just
fine. But I have now created two panels.
| | 07:02 | Let's add these to my new tab.
| | 07:04 | I'm going to push this guy up. Let's
open up our ribbon tabs, so I can see
| | 07:13 | mine. Now I'm going to come down. I'm
going to click my first panel, then I'm
| | 07:21 | going to hold my Shift key and I'm
going to click the panel just above it to
| | 07:24 | highlight both of them. Then I will
click and hold on these guys and I will
| | 07:28 | drag them both together. I will
scroll up and I will come down and I will
| | 07:34 | release these guys right over the
Jeff's tools tab. I'm going to move over here
| | 07:39 | and release.
| | 07:40 | I have just added those two panels to
my custom tab. I'm going to come down and
| | 07:44 | click OK to save my changes
and we'll check out our ribbon.
| | 07:48 | All right, let's come up and go to the
Jeff's tools tab. We can see these three
| | 07:52 | panels that I dragged in, the ones that
comes stock from AutoCAD. I can see the
| | 07:56 | panel that I created from scratch onto
which I drag some tools and I can also
| | 08:01 | see the panel that I
created from an existing toolbar.
| | 08:04 | Now the last thing I want to show
you is how we can remove items from the
| | 08:07 | ribbon. Same workflow, I'm going to
move up to the tab Bar, I'm going to
| | 08:10 | right-click, select Customize. If I
want to remove something from the ribbon,
| | 08:13 | I'm going to highlight the current
workspace. This will show us the workspace
| | 08:18 | contents. Let me open up the ribbon
tabs area. Here are the two tabs that I
| | 08:22 | have added.
| | 08:23 | If I want to remove one, I'm going
to right-click and select Remove from
| | 08:26 | workspace. So do you really want to
delete this element? Yes I do. I'm not
| | 08:30 | deleting it permanently. I'm just
deleting it from this workspace. Let me
| | 08:35 | remove Visualize as well. right-
click, Remove from Workspace? YES.
| | 08:39 | Once again, those are not gone
forever. If we come over here and if we go
| | 08:43 | shopping for ribbon tabs. If I click
the Plus, notice Jeff's tools is still
| | 08:46 | there. If I remove it from here, then
it's gone forever. Let me right-click on
| | 08:52 | this guy and select Remove, do you
really want to delete this element? Yes.
| | 08:57 | That guy is gone.
| | 08:58 | Once again when I'm all done making
changes, I'm going to come down and click
| | 09:01 | OK to save my changes and return to Model
space. As you can see the ribbon doesn't
| | 09:08 | have to stay in its original state.
With a little customization, we can make
| | 09:12 | the ribbon conform to our needs.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting quick properties| 00:00 | Now, I'm a guy who loves using the
Property Changer palette. Since its debut on
| | 00:04 | AutoCAD 2000, I honestly didn't think
there was as faster way to change the
| | 00:08 | properties of my entities. I was wrong.
| | 00:11 | In AutoCAD 2009, we now have the Quick
Properties tool. We're going to use this
| | 00:15 | current drawing to play along with the
new Quick Properties tool. This drawing
| | 00:19 | is located inside our Chapter 1 folder,
inside our Exercise Files directory and
| | 00:23 | this is the Number Five
drawing, the Decorative Hinge.
| | 00:27 | The first thing I want to talk about
with regard to the Quick Properties tool
| | 00:30 | is how we can turn him on and off.
The toggle for the tool is located right
| | 00:35 | down here in the Status bar. I can see
it happens to be on because the button
| | 00:39 | right now is blue. If I click the
button, it will turn gray which means he is
| | 00:43 | off, click it again, he is back on.
| | 00:45 | Now, we don't notice anything special
when the Quick Properties is turned on
| | 00:49 | until we select something. I'm going
to come up and click this line segment.
| | 00:55 | When I do, AutoCAD brings up a miniature
property changer very close to my cursor.
| | 01:00 | This gives me quick access to my settings
so I could make changes to my properties.
| | 01:05 | Let's make a change. I'm going to
place my cursor on top of the tool, and I'm
| | 01:09 | going to change the color to Red.
When I'm all done making my changes, I'm
| | 01:14 | going to move off the tool, hit my Escape
key to clear the grips and the tool goes away.
| | 01:21 | Let's make another change. I'm going to
click this Dimension. Once again when I
| | 01:26 | do, the Quick Properties tool comes up.
Let me move into the tool. When I do,
| | 01:30 | it expands on the screen. Now once
again this is a miniature property changer.
| | 01:35 | I obviously don't have access to all
of the settings that are associated with
| | 01:38 | radial dimensions.
| | 01:40 | I do have access to a couple. I can
make some changes by wish. I can override
| | 01:43 | my text value. Notice I can't change
the layer, I can't change the layer or the
| | 01:48 | color or I can't do some of the basic settings.
| | 01:51 | Let's see how we can customize our
Quick Properties panel to add settings, so
| | 01:56 | that we can have control over the
things that matter to us most. If I want to
| | 02:00 | change or add the properties that I see
in this list, I'm going to come up and
| | 02:04 | click my Customize button. When I do,
AutoCAD is going to bring up my CUI. Well
| | 02:09 | there's nothing special about the CUI
we see on screen, AutoCAD just loaded the
| | 02:13 | CUI and it happens to
highlight the Quick Properties tool.
| | 02:18 | Now in this pane, I can see a list of
all of the entities that are associated
| | 02:22 | with the Quick Properties tool. In this
pane on the right, I can see a listing
| | 02:26 | of all of the settings that are
associated with this highlighted entity.
| | 02:31 | So, when I highlighted a radial
dimension, I would like to have access to a
| | 02:34 | Layer, and I would like to have
access to the Center Mark. I can collapse
| | 02:40 | these. I can have access to my Text
Fill color, my Text Height. I can go
| | 02:45 | through and I can customize this, so I
can fine-tune these entities such that I
| | 02:49 | see the settings that matter to me most.
| | 02:52 | As long as I'm here, let me click the
Line command. Each time I click a Line, I
| | 02:56 | would like access to my general
settings and also like to know what the Length
| | 03:00 | is and the Angle.
| | 03:01 | How about Hatch? Every time I click
on a Hatch object, I would like to know
| | 03:07 | what the Area is. Now you probably
notice that this is not a list of every
| | 03:12 | entity that's in AutoCAD, these are
just the ones that are associated with the
| | 03:15 | Quick Properties changer.
| | 03:16 | If you'd like to add items to this list,
for instance the Ellipse does not show
| | 03:20 | up here. I can click this button. This
will let me add AutoCAD entities to the
| | 03:25 | list. Once this guy pops up, I can go
shopping for additional entities. I'm
| | 03:31 | going to click Ellipse and I will
click OK to add him to the list.
| | 03:36 | Every time I click on the Ellipse, I
want to have access to the major and minor
| | 03:39 | radius as well as the area. When I'm
all done customizing this and fine-tuning
| | 03:46 | it to my needs, I'm going to come
down and click OK to save my changes.
| | 03:49 | Now let's move up and click this to
Dimension again. Now when I click, I can
| | 03:56 | move into my Property Changer. I have
more settings. I can see my Text Override
| | 04:00 | now, I can see my Text Height, I can
change the Layer of this dimension if I
| | 04:04 | wish, let me move out and hit Escape.
Let me click on the Line Segment. Let me
| | 04:10 | move into the Quick Properties panel.
I can now see the Angle of this line.
| | 04:14 | Now I have to admit when I first
started using the Quick Properties panel, I
| | 04:17 | thought it was a little bit intrusive.
It was kind of invading my personal
| | 04:21 | space. It was popping up pretty close
to my cursor. Let's look at how we can
| | 04:24 | change the location of where
this guy comes up on screen.
| | 04:28 | If I move over and click this icon,
stands for Options. Just to bring up the
| | 04:33 | menu, I'm going to come down and
select Settings. This is where I can adjust
| | 04:38 | settings for my Quick Properties tool.
If I come down at the bottom, this is
| | 04:42 | where I can control the Size. Right now
I can see he has set the Auto Collapse.
| | 04:46 | I can also see the Default Height has
set to 3 Rows. I'm going to leave that alone.
| | 04:53 | Let's move up to Location Modes.
This is where he is going to come up on
| | 04:55 | screen. Right now he has set for
Cursor and he has set for Top Right, I can
| | 05:00 | also choose where or around my cursor
he is going to come up, distance, he is
| | 05:05 | coming up 50 pixels away. I can
change this to whatever value I want.
| | 05:11 | Personally I like to have him set to
100 pixels, that way he is not coming in
| | 05:15 | right on top of my cursor.
| | 05:18 | Notice I also have a setting for Float.
If I select this setting, the Quick
| | 05:22 | Properties tool will always come up in
the same place. Generally speaking, the
| | 05:26 | next time he comes up, I can place him
wherever I want on screen, and that's
| | 05:29 | where he will come up from now on.
| | 05:31 | My personal preference, I like to leave
it set for Cursor. Let me come down and
| | 05:34 | click OK. Let me click another object
and notice he comes up just a little bit
| | 05:39 | farther away, little bit nicer,
he is not right in my space.
| | 05:43 | When I'm finished using the tool, I'm
going to hit Escape to clear the grips
| | 05:48 | and dismiss the panel.
| | 05:49 | Using new Quick Properties tool, we
can make many of our property changes so
| | 05:53 | much faster, because the settings
are just inches from our cursor.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Navigating with quick view layouts| 00:00 | One of the drawbacks to Layout tabs
is that they aren't visual. In order to
| | 00:04 | know what's on each layout, we have to
rely on the layout name. If those names
| | 00:08 | aren't descriptive or worse yet, if they're
still the defaults, layout 1, layout 2,
| | 00:12 | layout 3, it can make things difficult.
| | 00:15 | With the new Quick View Layouts command,
we can navigate through thumbnail
| | 00:19 | images of our layouts. I have got a
drawing up on the screen. This drawing is
| | 00:22 | called Heat Engine. This is the number
6 drawing. This guy is located inside
| | 00:26 | our Chapter 1 folder inside our
Exercise Files directory and we're going to use
| | 00:31 | this guy to learn how the
Quick View Layouts tool works.
| | 00:34 | Now this drawing is special because it
contains several layouts and what you're
| | 00:38 | probably thinking is where are they,
we don't see them. If we look at the
| | 00:42 | bottom of our interface, notice my
layout tabs are gone. There's another
| | 00:46 | instance where Autodesk has turned off
the feature when it has replaced it with
| | 00:50 | another one. But don't worry, If you
still want to use your layout tabs, they
| | 00:54 | are still here. We just need to turn them
back on. Let me show you how we can do that.
| | 00:58 | If I move my cursor down to my Status
Bar, I'm going to click this little black
| | 01:01 | flyout. When I click this guy, it
will bring up a menu. I'm going to select
| | 01:05 | Layout Model. I'm going to click that
to place a check. When I do, two new
| | 01:10 | icons show up on my Status bar. I'm
going to right-click on either icon and
| | 01:15 | select Display Layout and Model tabs.
When I do, my tabs are back and they work
| | 01:20 | just like they always have.
| | 01:21 | Now there is one change with the
Layout tabs with 2009, there's one
| | 01:25 | enhancement. Now, if you place your
cursor over the layout name, AutoCAD will
| | 01:31 | give you a nice preview image
of the layout. So that's new.
| | 01:35 | Now this is technically older
functionality, we don't have to use the layout
| | 01:39 | tabs anymore. There is a new way to
navigate through our layouts. Let me show
| | 01:43 | you how we can do that.
| | 01:44 | First thing I'm going to do is turn
these layouts off. I can do that by
| | 01:47 | right-clicking on a Layout tab and
selecting Hide. This reduces them down to
| | 01:52 | these two icons. Then I'm going to
come back over to the flyout and click and
| | 01:57 | I'm going to remove the check from
layout model and those guys are turned off.
| | 02:02 | Let's take a look at our layouts using
the new Quick View Layouts tool. That
| | 02:06 | tool is located right here on our
Status bar. I'm going to come down and click
| | 02:09 | the icon to bring up the tool. When
this guy comes up, I can see a preview
| | 02:15 | image of every layout in this drawing.
Now these previews work very similar to
| | 02:20 | the tabs that we're used to, and that
if I want to jump from one layout to
| | 02:25 | another, I can simply click
the Preview to go to that layout.
| | 02:31 | Now these layouts are a little bit
unwieldy in size. They are pretty big. If I
| | 02:35 | want to change the size of my previews,
what I'll do is I'll place my cursor
| | 02:39 | over preview, hold my Ctrl key and I'm
going to roll my wheel backwards. I can
| | 02:43 | make these guys smaller. If I have got
really bad vision, I can push these guys
| | 02:48 | up. One thing I want to show you if
your layouts exceed what can fit on your
| | 02:52 | monitor, we'll have a little Greater
Than symbol. If I move towards the
| | 02:56 | greater than symbol, I can
scroll these back and forth.
| | 02:58 | Now, my own personal preference, I like
to have these guys as small as possible
| | 03:03 | on screen. So I'm going to hold my
Ctrl key over a layout and roll my wheel
| | 03:07 | backwards to make these guys small.
| | 03:12 | Notice that each layout gives me a
tool that allows me to plot or publish the
| | 03:16 | layout. This goes for Model space as
well. If I want to rename a layout, I will
| | 03:21 | come down to the very bottom where the
name is and I will Double-click, and I
| | 03:25 | can change the name. Just change this
one to EMG4, Double-click will change
| | 03:32 | this one to EMG5.
| | 03:39 | These previews make navigating
through our layout is much more intuitive
| | 03:42 | because now they are visual. I really
don't lose any of the functionality of
| | 03:46 | the tabs. For instance if I right-
click on one of these previews, I get the
| | 03:50 | same pop up menu as I had when we use the tabs.
| | 03:54 | Now, in addition to the Previews, I
also have the Control panel down below,
| | 03:59 | we'll use this Control panel to create
new layouts, publish all of our layouts
| | 04:04 | or I can click this X to
close the Control panel.
| | 04:09 | So as far as a workflow option when
using this tool, if I want to jump from one
| | 04:14 | layout or one space to another, I'll
come down and click the tool, click My
| | 04:19 | Layout and then click the X.
Technically I don't have to click the X if I just
| | 04:24 | click off in space, the
tool will close on its own.
| | 04:26 | Here's another workflow method. If I
want to jump from one space to another, I
| | 04:32 | will come down and click the tool. Now
I'm going to come over and click this
| | 04:37 | pushpin. This will keep the previews
up on screen all the time. Now they do
| | 04:43 | work like layout tabs. I can take and
select the layout I want, I can jump to
| | 04:48 | Model space if I want. I can pan, zoom
and draft and these previews are available.
| | 04:54 | The new Quick View Layouts tool in
AutoCAD 2009 can make navigating our layouts
| | 04:58 | much more intuitive and can save us some time
when we need to plot or publish our drawings.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Navigating with quick view drawings| 00:00 | For a long time, AutoCAD has allowed us
to open and work on several drawings at
| | 00:04 | a time. The difficulty was how do we
efficiently jump from one drawing to
| | 00:08 | another? With the new Quick View
Drawing tool, we can instantly switch between
| | 00:12 | any layout or Model space environment
within any of our open drawings.
| | 00:16 | Let's try that tool.
| | 00:17 | I'm going to start by opening a couple
of drawings. So I'm going to come up and
| | 00:21 | click my Open icon. We are going to
go inside the Chapter 1 folder located
| | 00:25 | inside of our Exercise Files directory
and I would like to open these last two
| | 00:29 | drawings. I can do that by clicking
one drawing, holding my Shift key and
| | 00:33 | clicking the other one so that they are
both highlighted. And then I'm going to
| | 00:37 | come down and select Open. This will
open both drawings in my interface.
| | 00:44 | Now, AutoCAD supports a multiple
document environment. That means I can have
| | 00:47 | several drawings open at one time if I
wish. Now that I have two drawings open,
| | 00:52 | let's use the new Quick View Drawings
tool to jump from one drawing to the
| | 00:56 | other. The Quick View Drawings tool is
located right down here on our status
| | 01:00 | bar. Let me come down and click the
icon to bring up the tool. And when this
| | 01:04 | guy comes up, he looks very similar
to the Quick View Layouts tool that's
| | 01:08 | because workflow why is he works the exact same.
| | 01:11 | Notice the two previews I see on screen,
each preview represents a drawing that
| | 01:15 | is currently open. If I place my cursor
over a preview, notice I have access to
| | 01:20 | the Save as well as Close option.
If I want to jump from one drawing to
| | 01:26 | another, I will click on the preview.
| | 01:28 | Let me click on this preview to jump
to the other drawing. We have always had
| | 01:32 | that functionality. We have always
been able to jump from one drawing to
| | 01:35 | another. But notice when I hover over
a preview, AutoCAD also gives me access
| | 01:40 | to the layouts. If I move my cursor up
into the Layouts, I can now jump to a
| | 01:46 | specific layout in an open drawing. I
also have access to the Plot as well as
| | 01:52 | the Publish command for any layout.
| | 01:54 | Now, my previews are kind of large, I
can resize these if I wish by holding
| | 01:59 | down my Ctrl key and rolling my mouse
wheel backwards. If I roll my mouse wheel
| | 02:03 | forwards, I can make the previews
bigger. My own personal workflow, I would
| | 02:08 | like to have these guys as small as
possible. I'm going to jump to a layout.
| | 02:13 | I'm going to come over and click ENG5.
| | 02:15 | Let's jump to that layout in the other
drawing, I will come down, we'll come
| | 02:21 | over to other drawing and then we'll
come up and click the layout. Very easy,
| | 02:27 | in fact I wanted to jump to another
layout and plot it I can do at one click.
| | 02:32 | Once again, down, over, up, select my
layout and click Plot. Now, I don't want
| | 02:37 | to plot this guy right now, so I'm
going to close this dialog. Let's come down
| | 02:45 | and click the Quick View Drawings tool,
and bring this guy back up on screen.
| | 02:49 | I want you to notice that in addition
to the previews, we also have a control
| | 02:52 | panel, this control panel allows us to
create a new drawing, open an additional
| | 02:57 | drawing or I can click the X to close
the tool. I also have a pushpin, if I
| | 03:03 | click the pushpin, these previews
will stay up on screen all the time.
| | 03:08 | Personally, I'm not the one that uses
the pushpin for this feature, because
| | 03:11 | quite frankly, these previews do
take up a lot of screen real estate.
| | 03:14 | I suppose at some instances it would
be helpful, but for me working on a
| | 03:19 | day-to-day basis, if I have several
drawings open, I like to close this guy
| | 03:23 | right after I'm done using them.
| | 03:24 | If you're someone who frequently works
on multiple drawings at one time,
| | 03:29 | the Quick View Drawing tool can be a real
time saver, when jumping back and forth
| | 03:32 | between your files.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. Updated Interface ComponentsSetting the default model space color| 00:00 | Probably the most unusual change in
AutoCAD 2009 is the default color of model
| | 00:05 | space. Now I have got a drawing up on
screen, we really won't be doing anything
| | 00:10 | with this drawing, I'm using it for the
sole purpose of having a background.
| | 00:13 | If you'd like to open the same drawing and
use it as the background as well,
| | 00:16 | this guy is located inside of our Chapter
2 folder, inside our Exercise Files
| | 00:21 | directory and this is the number
one drawing, the ceiling panel cover.
| | 00:25 | Now I'm working with a fresh install of
AutoCAD. The very first thing you will
| | 00:29 | notice when you open up a freshly
installed version of AutoCAD is that the
| | 00:33 | default color of Model space is now
this yellowish color. Now I'm going to be
| | 00:38 | honest, I'm not crazy about the new
color scheme. Anybody that has been using
| | 00:41 | AutoCAD for any length of time knows
that the background color for Model space
| | 00:46 | has always been black.
| | 00:47 | In my opinion the black color gives us
much more contrast between our layers
| | 00:51 | and for me it makes things much easier
when I'm doing production work. So as
| | 00:55 | far as this feature goes I'm going to
set this one out, I'm going to wait and
| | 00:59 | see if this color scheme catches on
with the masses before I incorporate it
| | 01:02 | into my workflow. You may feel the
same way, if you do, I'm going to show you
| | 01:06 | how we can switch the model
space background back to black.
| | 01:09 | To do that I'm going to go on to
my Options and I can do that by
| | 01:12 | right-clicking, coming to the bottom of
the menu and selecting Options. What we
| | 01:16 | are going to do is, we are going to
the Display tab and I go to Display and
| | 01:21 | then I'm going to come down and click
the Colors button. This will allow me to
| | 01:25 | change the colors of several other
components in my interface. But what I'm
| | 01:29 | concerned with is the 2D Model space,
I'm going to make sure that guy is
| | 01:33 | highlighted and he is by default and
Uniform background, I will make sure that
| | 01:38 | guy is highlighted and he is also by default.
| | 01:40 | This guy represents the current
background color of Model space, let me click
| | 01:44 | the drop down and I'm going to select
Black. When I'm all done, I'm going to
| | 01:47 | click Apply & Close and
then I'm going to click OK.
| | 01:53 | The beauty of using AutoCAD is that
you can customize it to suit your own
| | 01:56 | personal style. Having set that, if you
like the new Model space color by whole
| | 02:00 | means go ahead and use it. If not,
there is nothing wrong with changing it back
| | 02:04 | to its original color.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Restoring toolbars| 00:00 | In this session, we are going to talk
about the changes that have been made to
| | 00:03 | the toolbars in AutoCAD 2009. Now
before we get into that, I want to address
| | 00:07 | this drawing that we see on screen,
this guy is here for the sole purpose of
| | 00:10 | just being a background image. Since we
are talking about interface components,
| | 00:13 | it's always nice to have something on
the screen, rather than a large black
| | 00:17 | void in space.
| | 00:18 | Now if you would like to open this
drawing, use it as a background as well.
| | 00:21 | This guy is located inside the Chapter
folder, inside our Exercise Files
| | 00:25 | directory and this drawing is called
02_ceiling_panel_cover. Now the first
| | 00:31 | thing we notice in AutoCAD 2009 is
the lack of toolbars, you may think by
| | 00:35 | looking at the new interface that
AutoCAD has eliminated our toolbars. Well,
| | 00:39 | this is partially true; you see this
ribbon was designed to be a replacement
| | 00:43 | for the toolbars. Here is the problem,
not every command is available on the
| | 00:47 | ribbon, the Express tools come in to mind.
| | 00:49 | You won't find one Express tool on any
of these ribbon panels. One other thing
| | 00:54 | to note, toolbars are still necessary
because not every person may choose to
| | 00:58 | use the ribbon. The ribbon can be
turned off, in fact some people would prefer
| | 01:03 | to work using the older, 2008
interface that is possible. Let me show you how
| | 01:07 | we can do that, if I move my cursor
down to the Status Bar, I can click this
| | 01:11 | gear, this allows me to change my
Workspaces. Once I click the gear, I will
| | 01:15 | move up into menu, and I
will select AutoCAD Classic.
| | 01:18 | When I do, my interface reverts back
to on AutoCAD 2008 look and feel. So if
| | 01:24 | you like using toolbars, we can
continue to use them like we have in the past.
| | 01:28 | Now I'm going to switch my Workspace
back, I'm going to come down and click
| | 01:32 | this gear and I'm going to set this
back to 2D Drafting & Annotation. Let me
| | 01:37 | show you how we can incorporate some
toolbars into our workspace such that they
| | 01:41 | coexist with our ribbon.
| | 01:42 | If I want to turn on a toolbar, I'm
going to move my cursor up to my Quick
| | 01:46 | Access toolbar and right-click, I'm
going to come down to toolbars. If I hover
| | 01:50 | over AutoCAD, I can see a listing on
all of the toolbars available on AutoCAD.
| | 01:54 | I'm going to comedown to the EXPRESS
menu and I'm going to select ET:Blocks,
| | 01:59 | remember these tools are not available
in the ribbon and I click this guy to
| | 02:03 | turn on the toolbar. Notice our
toolbars are a lot more sleek in AutoCAD 2009;
| | 02:08 | this is kind of a
minimalist approach to toolbars.
| | 02:11 | I still have a handle, if I click and
hold I can move this guy over, I still
| | 02:15 | have the X that I can use to close the
toolbar and I still have icons. Notice
| | 02:19 | the name is missing, if I want to see
the name of the toolbar, I can hover over
| | 02:23 | the handle and AutoCAD will tell me
what the name is. Now this guy is still
| | 02:27 | docked, just like they always did, I
can take and drag this guy up and place
| | 02:30 | them up here. I can click and hold and
drag them over and I can dock them to
| | 02:34 | the left side of my screen, let me
click and hold and pull this guy back out.
| | 02:39 | Since our toolbars are so much smaller
now in AutoCAD 2009, I can tuck these
| | 02:44 | guys away in places that we never were
able to put them before. For instance,
| | 02:48 | let me click and hold the handle, I'm
going to drag this guy up and I'm going
| | 02:51 | to place it right here in my tab bar.
Let me turn on another toolbar, I'm going
| | 02:56 | to right-click in the Quick Access
toolbar, and go down to the toolbar option,
| | 03:00 | we'll come down to EXPRESS
and I will grab Standard.
| | 03:04 | Once again, these tools also are not
available on the ribbon. Let me click this
| | 03:08 | guy, I'm going to click hold and drag,
I'm going to drag this guy down and I
| | 03:12 | will place it in my Status Bar, got
some free space down here. Let me release,
| | 03:16 | let me slide them over a little bit,
we dial them up a little bit more, that
| | 03:21 | will do. When I'm all done, if I
want to keep this configuration on my
| | 03:26 | Workspace, I can come down and click
my Workspace tool, I can select Save
| | 03:31 | Current As and I can give this
workspace a name. I'm going to click Save to
| | 03:42 | save my changes.
| | 03:45 | Now I have toolbars and my ribbon
coexisting in the same workspace. When it
| | 03:49 | comes down to it, AutoCAD 2009 is all
about choices. How do you want to enter
| | 03:53 | your commands? Do you want to use the
ribbon? Do you want to use toolbars?
| | 03:58 | With the new smaller size, it's possible to
have toolbars and your ribbon working
| | 04:02 | side by side within the same interface.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Accessing the InfoCenter| 00:00 | An important feature that every program
should have is a resource that answers
| | 00:03 | your questions. AutoCAD's InfoCenter is
a great tool to use when you need help.
| | 00:07 | Now before we move up and talk about
the InfoCenter, I want to address this
| | 00:11 | drawing that we see on screen. This
guy is solely here for the purpose of
| | 00:14 | providing a background; we are not
going to be making changes to this drawing.
| | 00:18 | But if you would like to open the
drawing, such that your screen looks the same
| | 00:21 | as mine, you can go inside the Chapter
2 folder, located inside the Exercise
| | 00:25 | Files directory and the
drawing is called 03_c-clamp.
| | 00:28 | Now the InfoCenter is located right
up here at the top of the screen; there
| | 00:32 | have been a couple of changes in
AutoCAD 2009, one being this little white
| | 00:36 | triangle. If I click this guy, it will
minimize the search area. Click it again
| | 00:41 | and I can pop them back open. Let's
talk about the InfoCenter works. If I have
| | 00:46 | a question regarding a particular
command or a feature, I can use the
| | 00:50 | InfoCenter to get help. For instance,
I'm going to click inside the InfoCenter
| | 00:54 | and I'm going to type ribbon. Let's
say I have a question about the ribbon.
| | 00:58 | Now typically, I will come over and
click his magnifying glass to do my search.
| | 01:02 | If I do that, AutoCAD will search all
known sources for information about the
| | 01:06 | ribbon. Instead I'm going to select
this drop down, by doing this I can focus
| | 01:12 | my search on just a specific source.
For instance, I'm going to select the User
| | 01:16 | Guide, I want to find all information
about the ribbon that is in the User
| | 01:19 | Guide. I will click and AutoCAD will
show me a list of hyperlinks that are
| | 01:24 | associated to the User Guide, that have
to do with the ribbon. Now if I want to
| | 01:28 | follow one these guys, I will just
move in and click on it. AutoCAD will take
| | 01:32 | me to the User Guide and I'm off and running.
| | 01:34 | I can continue to follow additional
hyperlinks, until I get the information I
| | 01:38 | need. Let me move up and close this
guy because I want to go right back into
| | 01:44 | the search area, let me click the
drop down. Lets come back to User Guide
| | 01:48 | again; I want to show you if you go to
a particular search and you find that
| | 01:52 | search to be helpful, something that's
useful and maybe you want to return to
| | 01:55 | it later. If we move over to search
hyperlink, I can come down and click this
| | 01:59 | star. This will save the search as a
favorite place, let we move up and close
| | 02:03 | the menu, that's what the star is for.
| | 02:06 | If I click this star, it will give me
a listing of all of my favorite places.
| | 02:09 | Notice that I have access to the ribbon,
so I can return to it whenever I want.
| | 02:13 | If you want to remove a search from
your favorite place, you can come over and
| | 02:17 | click the star again to take it away
and then it's gone from the list; let me
| | 02:21 | close the menu. Another useful feature
of the InfoCenter is that it gives us
| | 02:25 | the ability to subscribe to RSS Feeds.
| | 02:29 | Now RSS Feeds are similar to blog
entries and they allow you to get current
| | 02:33 | information about your product or its
usage. That's what I use this button for,
| | 02:37 | this is my Communication Center. If I
click this guy and open it up, this is
| | 02:41 | where I can access current information
about my product. Now there are several
| | 02:45 | chevrons here let me collapse some of
these guys, I'm going to click this one
| | 02:48 | we'll close it up, close this
one, we'll close up all of them.
| | 02:52 | The Communication Center allows me to
get information via RSS Feeds like blog
| | 02:57 | entries or web page entries. I
can get current information about my
| | 03:00 | subscription status, e-Learning
Lessons; by default we are also subscribing
| | 03:07 | some Autodesk Channels. Let me show you
how we can add an RSS Feed, if I click
| | 03:13 | this guy and open it up, I can see
that we are already subscribing to the
| | 03:16 | Between the Lines blog, which is run
by Shane Hurley. I would like to
| | 03:20 | subscribe to another one, let me close
this menu and I'm going to go out to a
| | 03:25 | web site, I'm going to do that by
clicking in my Command line and type browser.
| | 03:29 | Let me hit Enter and I'm going to hit
Enter again to accept the default, this
| | 03:34 | will take me to the Autodesk site.
| | 03:36 | Now I'm going here because this site
has some links to RSS Feeds that have to
| | 03:44 | do with AutoCAD. If you have a
favorite site by all means you can use yours.
| | 03:47 | I'm going to up to the search area and
I'm going to type rss and hit Enter. I
| | 03:52 | will come down and I will click in the
Autodesk Blogs area. This will give me a
| | 04:01 | pretty concise list of all of the
Autodesk employees or people affiliated with
| | 04:06 | Autodesk who have blogs that have to
do with Autodesk products. Notice that
| | 04:11 | each one of these guy has a little RSS
icon, this means that I can subscribe to
| | 04:15 | the content from that blog.
| | 04:17 | Let's try and subscribe to Heidi
Hewett's blog, I can do that by right-clicking
| | 04:21 | on this icon and I can select Copy
Shortcut. Now I can close my browser, let's
| | 04:29 | go back to the Communication Center and
I'm going to click this icon up at the
| | 04:34 | top InfoCenter Settings. In my
InfoCenter Settings dialog, I'm going to come
| | 04:39 | down and select RSS Feeds; this
shows me the RSS Feeds I'm currently
| | 04:43 | subscribing to. I have the ability to
turn these on and off if I wish, I can
| | 04:48 | also control the number of entries that
I display, I want to add a new one. Let
| | 04:52 | me click Add and I'm going to click in
this field then I'm going to right-click
| | 04:57 | and Paste. Then I will click my Add
button and AutoCAD will come up and tell me
| | 05:01 | that the RSS Feed has been
successfully added, let me click OK.
| | 05:06 | Now for the purposes of this
demonstration, I'm going to turn off the other
| | 05:09 | blog entries, we'll just leave Heidi's.
Let me click OK, let's go back to the
| | 05:15 | Communication Center and in the RSS
Feed's area now I can see the last five
| | 05:20 | entries in Heidi's Blog. If I would
like to visit one of these entries, I can
| | 05:24 | simply click it and it will take me
directly to the web site. The next time you
| | 05:31 | need help try using the InfoCenter,
its focused approach to answering your
| | 05:35 | questions, maybe just what
you need to solve your problem.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding the Status bar| 00:00 | AutoCAD's Status bar may look a
little different in 2009. It's got a new
| | 00:04 | streamlined appearance that takes
up less room on our screen. It's also
| | 00:08 | supporting some new tools as well as
having improved functionality. Now before
| | 00:12 | we move down and talk about the Status
bar, I just want to address this drawing
| | 00:14 | we see on screen. This guy is only
here to provide a background. We are not
| | 00:18 | going to be working with this drawing;
if you would like to open this drawing
| | 00:22 | such that your screen looks the exact
same as mine, you can certainly do that.
| | 00:25 | This drawing is located inside the
Chapter 2 folder, inside your Exercise
| | 00:29 | Files directory and the
drawing is called 04_c-clamp.
| | 00:33 | Now our Status bar is located right
down here at the bottom of the screen and
| | 00:37 | in first glance I can see some new
tools that have been added. We now have a
| | 00:41 | Pan as well as a Zoom icon on the
Status bar. If I come down a little bit
| | 00:45 | further, I have got a tool that I can
use to switch workspaces, that guy has
| | 00:50 | been added in 2009. If I move down here,
I can see an icon for the Quick View
| | 00:55 | Layouts and I can also see one for
the Quick View Drawings tool. These guys
| | 00:59 | have been added in 2009.
| | 01:01 | Now we discussed both of those guys
back in Chapter 1, if I move over here, I
| | 01:05 | have got an icon that represents my
Steering Wheel tool and I have got another
| | 01:08 | one that represents my ShowMotion tool.
We will be discussing both of these
| | 01:12 | guys in Chapter 5. Probably the
biggest change to the Status bar involves the
| | 01:17 | Mode settings, notice they are now
icons that used to be text. Now don't worry,
| | 01:21 | if we would like to put them back to
the text form, we can certainly do that.
| | 01:25 | If I want to do that I'm going to right
-click on one of the modes and remove
| | 01:30 | the check from the Use Icons area and
now our Status bar has more of a way
| | 01:34 | traditional look.
| | 01:35 | There has been another change to
the Status bar and that involves the
| | 01:39 | appearance of the on, off state. Notice
some of these guys are blue and some of
| | 01:44 | these guys are gray. If a mode setting
is blue, it means that it's turned on;
| | 01:48 | if it's gray, it means it's turned off.
It's little easier to tell now which
| | 01:51 | ones are on and off because it's a
color difference rather than an embossing
| | 01:55 | difference. Let me come down and
click my Quick Properties to turn it off,
| | 01:59 | click my Quick Properties to turn it on.
| | 02:01 | The most important feature change of
our Status bar involves our Mode settings.
| | 02:05 | We now have better access to our
settings. Let me show you what I mean, I'm
| | 02:09 | going to come down to my OSNAP mode,
now in the past if I wanted to adjust my
| | 02:14 | running Object Snap settings, I would
come down and right-click on this mode
| | 02:17 | and I would select settings. Let me
do that, I'm going to come down and
| | 02:20 | right-click, notice I can still go to
the full Setting dialog if I wish, but I
| | 02:25 | also have access to the settings right
here on the menu. So I can see what my
| | 02:29 | settings are, I can also
add an additional Object Snap.
| | 02:32 | Let me come down and right-click on
POLAR, I can see my current angle and I
| | 02:37 | could take and select another angle.
Once again I can go to the full dialog if
| | 02:40 | I wish but the settings are
available right here in the menu. Now in my
| | 02:46 | personal preference, I prefer to enable
the icons for my Status bar; they take
| | 02:49 | up a little less space on the bottom
of my screen. So I'm going to convert my
| | 02:53 | Mode settings back to the icons.
| | 02:56 | Once again, I can do that by right-
clicking on the mode and selecting Use
| | 02:59 | Icons. However, you choose to view
your Status bar whether it be the classic
| | 03:04 | view or the new streamlined approach.
I'm sure you will agree that the new
| | 03:07 | tools and the improved access to our
settings is a nice addition of this
| | 03:10 | important component.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Taking advantage of tooltips| 00:00 | Tooltips are a huge benefit for new users
and they have been improved in AutoCAD
| | 00:04 | 2009. In the old days, if you hovered
your cursor over a toolbar icon AutoCAD
| | 00:09 | would give you a description of the tool.
The problem was the descriptions were
| | 00:13 | only about four words. In AutoCAD 2009,
we get a lot more information with the
| | 00:18 | new extended tooltips. Now if we look
at the screen, I have got a drawing open,
| | 00:22 | this guy happens to be a civil
engineering example. This is a plan and profile
| | 00:25 | drawing, this is a proposed road and
it's going to be a connection between two
| | 00:29 | existing roads. Now we are going to
use this drawing to play around with the
| | 00:33 | new tooltips.
| | 00:34 | If you would like to open this drawing,
it's located inside the Chapter 2
| | 00:37 | folder, inside our Exercise Files
directory and its drawing number
| | 00:41 | 5, plan-and-profile. Let's take a look
at the new tooltips, what I'm going to
| | 00:46 | do is I'm going to move my cursor up
and I'm going to hover over the Line
| | 00:49 | command and when I do, I want you to
watch the information that we see on
| | 00:52 | screen. We move in, notice I get a
short description of the command. If I wait
| | 00:57 | a little bit longer, I get a little
more information and in this case I'm also
| | 01:01 | getting an image.
| | 01:02 | Let me move off and lets hover over the
Hatch command, once again I'm going to
| | 01:07 | move in and first I get a nice short
description of the command. If I wait, a
| | 01:11 | little bit longer, I get what's called
an extended tooltip, giving me even more
| | 01:15 | information and once again an image.
| | 01:17 | Now extended tooltips can be very
helpful especially for beginning users
| | 01:20 | because this is a great way to learn
the AutoCAD commands. While this extended
| | 01:24 | tooltip is up, take a look at the
very bottom. Notice it says, Press F1 for
| | 01:28 | more help. This means if the
extended tooltip doesn't provide enough
| | 01:31 | information, I can hit my F1 key and
AutoCAD will launch the Help feature,
| | 01:36 | taking me directly to
information about that command.
| | 01:39 | Now I don't need the help right now, so
I'm going to close this. Let's look at
| | 01:43 | where we can go to adjust our tooltip
settings, if I want to change the way my
| | 01:47 | tooltips work, I'm going to go to
my Options dialog. I can do that by
| | 01:50 | right-clicking, I can come down and
select the Options and we are going to go
| | 01:55 | to the Display tab, right here in
the Window Elements area, I can see the
| | 01:59 | settings that control my tooltips. This
check box turns the feature on and off.
| | 02:03 | I can see obviously mine is on; this
check box controls whether I see the
| | 02:07 | shortcut keys in the tooltips, do I
want to see the Ctrl or Alt key sequences
| | 02:12 | in my tooltips.
| | 02:13 | If I move down one more at; this
setting controls whether we see the extended
| | 02:17 | tooltips. Now if you're more
experienced user maybe you want to turn these off,
| | 02:21 | so that you're not bothered with the
large panels. Personally, I like to come
| | 02:24 | down to the next setting and change
the Number of seconds to delay. Usually I
| | 02:29 | bump this guy up to about five seconds,
that way I have to hover over a tool
| | 02:33 | for at least five seconds before I
have to worry about seeing the extended
| | 02:36 | tooltip. Now that I have made my
changes I'm going to come down and click OK to
| | 02:40 | save the changes and dismiss this dialog.
| | 02:42 | Let's look at what else tooltips can do
for us; now this drawing that we see on
| | 02:46 | screen references several other drawings.
Let me bring up my External Reference
| | 02:51 | manager, I'm going to come up to
Blocks & References, click the tab and I'm
| | 02:55 | going to into the Reference panel and
select External References. When I do, my
| | 03:00 | External Reference manager comes up
and I can see a listing of all of the
| | 03:03 | drawings that are referenced into this file.
| | 03:05 | Since my tooltips are on if I hover
over a drawing name, AutoCAD will show me a
| | 03:09 | nice thumbnail image of the drawing as
well as some additional information. Now
| | 03:14 | if I want to go a little further with
this concept, if I right-click in this
| | 03:17 | margin area, I can come down to tooltip
Style where I have additional settings.
| | 03:22 | Right now I'm set to show the preview
and the details, if you have poor vision
| | 03:26 | you can come down and use the Large
setting. Now if I hover over a drawing, I
| | 03:30 | get a great big image.
| | 03:32 | Let me close this manager. I'm going to
bring up the Plot dialog box, I can do
| | 03:38 | that by clicking my Plot icon. Let's
looks at something else that tooltips do,
| | 03:43 | notice at the top of the dialog that
there is no question mark any more, in
| | 03:47 | fact none of the dialog boxes contain
question marks in 2009, that's because
| | 03:51 | the Help functionality has been
incorporated in to the tooltip. If I have a
| | 03:55 | question regarding any of these
settings, I can simply place my cursor on top
| | 03:59 | of the setting and AutoCAD
will give me more information.
| | 04:02 | Once again, if I need more information,
I can click my F1 key for more help.
| | 04:07 | Let me come up and click the X to
dismiss this dialog. If you're a newcomer to
| | 04:11 | AutoCAD, the tooltips can be a
valuable resource to help you get up the speed
| | 04:15 | with the software. If you're an
experienced user, you may want to use the
| | 04:18 | feature to help you adjust to the
new interface or as a way to a view the
| | 04:21 | thumbnail images of your drawing content.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Restoring hidden messages| 00:00 | Frequently, when using AutoCAD, we are
confronted with pop-up messages. Often
| | 00:04 | times, these messages contain a little
check box that says, Don't show me this
| | 00:08 | again. Well, sometimes after we check
that box, we wish there was a way to get
| | 00:11 | that message to come back. In the old
days, the only way to restore hidden
| | 00:15 | message was to restore all the hidden messages.
| | 00:18 | In AutoCAD 2009, we have the ability to
choose the messages that we restore. I
| | 00:22 | have got a drawing on screen that
represents a floor plan for a single-family
| | 00:26 | home. If you would like to open this
drawing, it's located in the Chapter 02
| | 00:30 | folder inside the Exercise Files directory,
and that's drawing number 6, the houseplan.
| | 00:34 | Now, my workflow may seem little
unusual in this session. That's because I'm
| | 00:38 | not trying to accomplish any drafting;
my goal in this session is to bring up
| | 00:42 | as many pop-up messages as
possible. Let's get started.
| | 00:44 | I'm going to zoom-in in the laundry
room area. Let's say, I'd like to select
| | 00:50 | this outer edge of my utility top. Now,
I'm kind of an old-fashioned AutoCAD
| | 00:53 | user. Back in the old days, if we
wanted to select a line that set on top of
| | 00:57 | another line, we have to use our
Control key. So, let me move in on top of this
| | 01:01 | line, I'm going to hold Control and
click and when I do, AutoCAD brings up a
| | 01:05 | pop-up message, hey! Use your SHIFT
and SPACEBAR to cycle select, blah, blah,
| | 01:10 | blah, this is what you should be
doing. You know what, don't show me this
| | 01:13 | again. Let me click that.
| | 01:15 | Let's try something else. I'm going to
pan over to my kitchen area and maybe, I
| | 01:19 | would like this to say, Kitchen Area.
Let's edit the text. I'm going to move up
| | 01:24 | and double-click on this text to edit
it. It's a piece of MText. Let me click
| | 01:31 | right after the word. Now, hit
Enter, and I'm going to type Area.
| | 01:37 | Now, maybe I'd like to add the word
Area to some of the other rooms, instead of
| | 01:40 | retyping it in each situation, I'm
going to copy this one, so I can paste it
| | 01:43 | every place else. To do that, I'm
going to click, hold, and drag across this
| | 01:48 | text and then I'll right-click and
select Copy. And when I do, I get another
| | 01:52 | pop-up message. If you paste this
text to blah, blah, blah, it might be
| | 01:56 | difficult to see. Well, that's because
this text is white and the problem is if
| | 02:01 | I was to paste this into Microsoft Word,
it's going to be white on white, which
| | 02:04 | may make it harder to see. Okay, you
know what, I'm not worried about that
| | 02:07 | right now. Don't show me this
message again. Let me click Close.
| | 02:12 | Now that I'm done editing my text, I'm
going to hit my Escape key to cancel out
| | 02:16 | the MText editor. When I do, this is a
new feature in 2009; if you hit Escape,
| | 02:22 | while editing MText, we now have the
opportunity to save our changes. What I
| | 02:26 | would like to save my changes and take
a look at this, I got a check over here
| | 02:29 | that says, Always perform my current
choice. Okay, let me click this and I'll
| | 02:34 | select Yes. Oops! I missed; I
accidentally click No. Now, that's a problem
| | 02:40 | because that means in the future, if
I ever hit the Escape key while I'm
| | 02:44 | editing MText, it's just going
to cancel out of the command.
| | 02:47 | Let me show you how we can bring that
message back. To do that, I'm going to go
| | 02:50 | to my Options dialog box. To bring that
up, I'm going to right-click on screen,
| | 02:54 | and I'm going to come down and select
Options. When the dialog comes up, I'm
| | 02:59 | going to click my System tab and then
we'll come over to the General Options
| | 03:02 | area and I'm going to click Hidden
Message Settings. This brings up a dialog
| | 03:07 | that shows me a listing of all of the
hidden messages in which I have said,
| | 03:11 | Don't show me these again.
| | 03:13 | Now, it's in a tree form, so I'm going
to click these little fly-outs to open
| | 03:16 | up the tree and here's how it works. If
I click and put a check here, I'm going
| | 03:21 | to restore all of the hidden messages.
If I move down a level and click and put
| | 03:25 | a check here, I'm going to restore all
hidden messages that are associated with
| | 03:29 | Multiline Text. If I come down one
more level and click and put a check here,
| | 03:33 | I'm going to be restoring
just this individual message.
| | 03:36 | Now, this is the message I'd like to
bring back, the Unsaved Changes. Let me
| | 03:39 | click, put a check in the box. We'll
come down and click OK and then we'll
| | 03:44 | click OK to save our changes. All right,
let's test it out. I'm going to move
| | 03:48 | in and we'll try and edit our text. Let
me double-click to bring up the editor,
| | 03:51 | let me click after the text again. I'm
going to type Area. Let's test some of
| | 03:58 | the hidden messages. I'm going to click
and hold and drag across this guy, and
| | 04:02 | we'll right-click, Copy. Notice, I no
longer get the message. That guy is still hidden.
| | 04:07 | Let's try the one that we fixed. I'm
going to hit my Escape key to cancel out
| | 04:11 | and now, I get the message back, Do
you want to save your text changes? You
| | 04:15 | know what, I do want to save my changes,
but as far as this guy goes, I'm not
| | 04:19 | ready for that kind of a commitment
just yet. So, I'm going to come over and
| | 04:22 | click Yes to dismiss the
dialog and save my changes.
| | 04:27 | One more thing before we wrap up the
session. Notice, when I jump from MText
| | 04:31 | and jumped out, my panel headings got
split. That's not a problem, sometimes
| | 04:35 | that does happen. If we want to
correct that, we can use the Minimize button.
| | 04:39 | I'm just going to click it once, click
it again, click it one more time and it
| | 04:43 | will put my ribbon back to its normal
state. If the time ever arises that you
| | 04:46 | wish to restore a hidden message,
AutoCAD 2009 makes the job much easier by
| | 04:51 | allowing you to choose the
specific messages you wish to restore.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Introducing the Layer Properties palette| 00:00 | AutoCAD 2009 has made layer management
much more efficient by converting the
| | 00:04 | Layer Properties Manager to a palette.
By placing the manager on a palette, we
| | 00:08 | now have instant access to our layer settings,
even if we are in the middle of a command.
| | 00:12 | Now, I have got a drawing open on screen.
This guy represents a floor plan for
| | 00:16 | a single-family home. If you would like
to open the same drawing, it's located
| | 00:20 | inside the Chapter 2 folder inside
the Exercise Files directory and this is
| | 00:24 | the number 7 houseplan drawing. Now, to
start out, I'm going to pan this guy over as
| | 00:29 | far to the right as possible just to
free up some screen real state and let's
| | 00:33 | bring up the new Layer Properties Manager.
| | 00:36 | The Layer Properties Manager is on the
Home tab of the ribbon and it's located
| | 00:40 | right here inside the Layers panel.
Let me come up and click the icon.
| | 00:44 | When this guy comes up on screen, the
first thing we notice is that the Layer
| | 00:47 | Properties Manager is now a palette.
That means that we can have this guy open
| | 00:51 | on screen all the time. If you're
someone who uses two monitors, it's even
| | 00:55 | nicer because you're going to have
this guy open on your second monitor.
| | 00:58 | Because these guys are palette, we don't
have to close them between each command.
| | 01:02 | Let's take a look at some of the new
features in the Layer Properties Manager.
| | 01:05 | First thing, this Filters area is now
collapsible. If I move up and click this
| | 01:09 | chevron, notice, I can collapse the
filter area; click it again, I can open it
| | 01:13 | up. Let me close him because I want
to show you if you're someone who likes
| | 01:17 | working with the filters area
collapsed, if you want to access that filter
| | 01:21 | information, you can come down and
click the fly-out here and this will give
| | 01:24 | you access to those features.
| | 01:26 | Now, the search area that used to be
located down here, is now located up in
| | 01:30 | the upper right-hand corner. This guy
allow us to search for layers. Let's try.
| | 01:33 | I'm going to click in this area and
I'm going to type p*. This will show me
| | 01:38 | every layer that starts with the
letter P and I can see that I have one, the
| | 01:42 | plumbing layer. So same functionality,
just in a new place. Let me clear the
| | 01:46 | filter, I'm going to come up
and click the X to do that.
| | 01:49 | One very important edition to the
Layer Properties Manager, we can now freeze
| | 01:52 | the columns. Watch this, if I click and
hold on the slider bar and drag it left
| | 01:57 | and right, the layer names remain on
screen. That's because now I can freeze
| | 02:02 | columns very similar to what we can do
on Microsoft Excel. If I want to change
| | 02:06 | my freeze state, I can right-click on
the column heading and I can come down
| | 02:10 | and select Unfreeze. If I want to
freeze the column, I can freeze any column I
| | 02:15 | wish. I'll move up and right-click
and select Freeze column and that
| | 02:20 | information will always stay on screen.
| | 02:22 | We have a new Refresh button right over
here. If you're someone that uses this
| | 02:28 | column that shows you whether the
layers are used or not, this button will
| | 02:33 | refresh the layer state, and it will
synchronize your Layer dialog box with
| | 02:37 | your drawing, AutoCAD will go
through and verify that all these icons are
| | 02:40 | correct. We have an icon for Layer
Settings now. If I click this, I've got some
| | 02:46 | features that I can adjust to control
my new layer notification. This is brand
| | 02:49 | new in 2009. I can now adjust my
Isolate Layer Settings right here within the
| | 02:54 | Layer Manager as opposed to doing it in
the individual command. I can say, you
| | 02:58 | know what, when I use the Layer Isolate
command, do I want to lock and fade the
| | 03:02 | layers or do I want to turn them off.
| | 03:04 | Down below, I've got some additional
settings that we've had for a long time. I
| | 03:07 | can apply the contents with my Layer
Properties Manager, to my Layer toolbar. I
| | 03:11 | can also indicate the layers in use,
that's what this guy does and I can
| | 03:16 | control the color of the Viewport
override background color. Let me click OK to
| | 03:20 | dismiss the dialog. I don't know if
you've noticed what's missing from this
| | 03:24 | dialog, there is no Apply button.
| | 03:27 | From now on, if we make changes in the
Layer Properties Manager, those changes
| | 03:31 | happen instantaneously. For instance,
the wall layer in my drawing is now
| | 03:35 | yellow. Let me come up and make a
change. I'm going to click the color swatch
| | 03:38 | for that layer and let's set it to
magenta, and I'll click OK. Notice the
| | 03:43 | change happens right now; we don't have
to click Apply anymore. Maybe I'd like
| | 03:47 | to turn off my doors layer. I'm going
to click the icon, turn it off and those
| | 03:51 | guys turned off instantaneously.
| | 03:53 | Since this Layer Properties Manager is
now a palette, we can dock it. Let's do
| | 03:57 | that, I'm going to right-click on
this mast, and I'm going to select Anchor
| | 04:00 | Left. Now, this guy is available on my
screen whenever I need him. I can just
| | 04:04 | float over the mast and open it up, make
my changes, move off and it will close.
| | 04:10 | Since the Layer Properties Manager is a
palette, I can make layer changes even
| | 04:13 | when I'm in the middle of a command.
Let's try this. I'm going to launch the
| | 04:16 | Line command. I'm going to come up
and click Line and I can see in my layer
| | 04:20 | control, the current layer happens to
be zero. So, if I pick points on the
| | 04:23 | screen, it turn off my Polar. It turn
off some of these other things. If I pick
| | 04:31 | points on my screen, I'm drafting on
layer 0, I'm still in the Line command. If
| | 04:37 | I move over into my Layer Manager, I
can double-click to set a different layer
| | 04:41 | current, let me move back out. I'm
still in the Line command and I'm drafting
| | 04:46 | on the new layer. This functionality
was unheard of prior to AutoCAD 2009.
| | 04:51 | Let me hit Escape to clear the command.
| | 04:53 | The new Layer Properties palette gives
us even more control over our layers and
| | 04:57 | makes layer management
faster and easier than ever.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Exploring additional interface changes| 00:00 | In an effort to make this title as
complete as possible, I would like to take
| | 00:03 | this opportunity to show you a few
more changes that have been made to the
| | 00:06 | AutoCAD interface.
| | 00:07 | Now, none of these changes were
significant enough for its own video, so I
| | 00:11 | thought it put them altogether into
one video and we could look at them using
| | 00:14 | the shotgun approach.
| | 00:16 | The drawing that we see on screen,
we are not actually going to be doing
| | 00:19 | anything with this drawing. It's
solely here for the purpose of being a
| | 00:21 | background. If you would like to open
this drawing so that your screen looks
| | 00:24 | exact same as mine, this drawing is
located inside the Chapter 2 directory,
| | 00:28 | inside our Exercise Files folder and
it's the number 8 drawing, the c-clamp.
| | 00:34 | Okay, noteworthy change number one,
the title bar in AutoCAD 2009 no longer
| | 00:39 | shows the path to the drawing. Notice
the path has been removed. Now we can
| | 00:43 | change this if we wish, if you'd like
to put it back to a pre 2009 state, we
| | 00:48 | can do that by going to our Options
dialog box. I'm going to right-click, come
| | 00:52 | down and select Options to bring up
the dialog and we're going to click the
| | 00:56 | Open and Save tab. And right here in
the File Open area, if I put a check in
| | 01:00 | this box, I'll then again see the full
path to my drawing in the title bar. Let
| | 01:05 | me come down and click OK to dismiss the dialog.
| | 01:08 | Noteworthy change number two, AutoCAD
is now skinnable. Let me show you how we
| | 01:12 | can do this? If I right-click to bring
up my Options dialog a second time, if
| | 01:17 | we go to the Display tab, notice right
here in the Window Elements area, I've
| | 01:21 | got a Color scheme setting, right now
it's set to Dark. Let me select to drop
| | 01:25 | down and we'll take a Light and I'll
click Apply. When I do, watch the screen
| | 01:29 | right up here. Okay, notice it changed,
not exactly earth shattering, but it's
| | 01:36 | a minor change. What that shows us,
is that in the future, we may have
| | 01:39 | additional choices and who knows may
be one day we'll be able to make our own
| | 01:43 | AutoCAD skins. Let me set this back
to Dark. Let me click OK to dismiss the dialog.
| | 01:50 | Noteworthy change number three, we
have a new command that that will hide our
| | 01:53 | palettes, if I type hide pallets and
hit Enter, AutoCAD will hide all the
| | 02:01 | palettes in my drawing. If I type show
palettes, I can bring all those palettes
| | 02:06 | back. Now, don't worry about
remembering the commands, there is a control key
| | 02:09 | sequence that'll do this. If I hold
down Ctrl+Shift+H, AutoCAD will toddle back
| | 02:16 | and forth between the settings. Ctrl+
Shift+H turn them off, Ctrl+Shift+H turns
| | 02:21 | them back on.
| | 02:21 | Now you may look at that and think you
don't want that's just like the clean
| | 02:24 | screen command, isn't it. Well,
technically no, if I come down here in my
| | 02:28 | Status bar and I click the Clean Screen
command, Clean Screen turns off all of
| | 02:32 | the palettes, but it leads to command
Line. Not a huge difference, but it is
| | 02:36 | different. Let me click Clean
Screen again to bring my palettes back.
| | 02:40 | Our next noteworthy change involves
the scales list. If I come down and click
| | 02:44 | the flyout, the scale list in AutoCAD
2009, now allows you to exclude Xref
| | 02:49 | scales. May I click to the get to the
bottom, notice it defaults to hide the
| | 02:54 | Xref scales. Never again, am I
going to see scales in this list like
| | 02:58 | xref_xref_xref all of the unusual that
may come from my ex reference drawings,
| | 03:05 | so once again that's a nice touch.
Let me hit escape to clear that menu.
| | 03:08 | The other noteworthy change, the
dashboard has been removed from AutoCAD.
| | 03:13 | In fact, if I type dashboard now, this
used to be the command that would turn on
| | 03:18 | our dashboard. I'll type that in it
and hit Enter. Notice it's now associated
| | 03:23 | with the ribbon. In fact, if I type
dashboardclose and hit Enter, just turn
| | 03:29 | off my ribbon. So the dashboard
commands have now been associated to the ribbon.
| | 03:33 | Let's turn out ribbon back up, I can
do that by typing ribbon and hit Enter.
| | 03:39 | Now, if you're someone who liked to use
the dashboard, I know that I've logged a
| | 03:42 | lot of time using the dashboard, we can
convert our ribbon to function similar
| | 03:47 | to the dashboard. Let me show you how
we can do that. If I move up to the tab
| | 03:51 | bar and right-click, I can select
Undock and this will undock my ribbon,
| | 03:56 | place it on a palette and this palette
will act very similar to the original
| | 04:00 | dashboard. Here's my tabs right up here,
I can take and jump from tab to tab by
| | 04:05 | clicking on it and AutoCAD will
populate the palette with the various panels.
| | 04:09 | Now, I'd like to using my ribbon at the
top of the screen, so I'm going to put
| | 04:13 | it back and going to click and hold
on this mast, and I'm going to push up,
| | 04:16 | till I see this shape change,
on release to redock my ribbon.
| | 04:21 | Now, last noteworthy change has to do
with the Layer Properties Manager. Now,
| | 04:25 | the Layer Properties Manager in
AutoCAD has now been converted to a palette.
| | 04:29 | Mine happens to be open, if I have it
over this guy, it'll open up and allow me
| | 04:32 | to make changes to my Layer Settings,
when I'm all done, I can move out and
| | 04:37 | have collapsed. Sometimes, with
certain computers having the Layer Properties
| | 04:40 | Manager open while you're working may
cause performance problems, if you fall
| | 04:45 | into this category, we can still access
the original Layer Properties Manager,
| | 04:50 | I can do that by typing classiclayer
at the command line and hit Enter. This
| | 04:56 | brings up the original moto Layer
Properties Manager, so if this functionality
| | 05:00 | is necessary, it's still available
on AutoCAD 2009, it will just need to
| | 05:04 | associate an icon to the classic
layer command, and we close this guy.
| | 05:09 | As long as we are talking about classic
commands, if I type classicxref and hit
| | 05:17 | Enter, I can bring up the original X
reference Manager and I close this guy. I
| | 05:22 | can also type classicimage and hit
Enter and this will bring up the original
| | 05:27 | Image Manager, so if this functionality
is also useful,. We can still do it in
| | 05:31 | AutoCAD 2009. Let me move up and
click the X to close the dialog.
| | 05:36 | In the interest of completeness, I'm
glad we were able to take a look at these
| | 05:39 | minor changes. I hope that by seeing
these additional topics, you may find
| | 05:43 | something that you can
use in your production work.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. New Drafting ToolsAutomating tasks with the action recorder| 00:00 | Tedious and repetitive tasks may be a
thing of the past with AutoCAD's new
| | 00:04 | Action Recorder. The Action Recorder
allows you to record your AutoCAD commands
| | 00:07 | and then play them back such
that you can automate your work.
| | 00:10 | Well, I use the Action Recorder a lot
and I can tell you that it's very useful
| | 00:14 | for cleaning up AutoCAD drawings. For
instance, I'm going to bring up a PDF on
| | 00:18 | screen. I haven't to have a version of
Adobe Acrobat running. Take a look at
| | 00:22 | this guy. This is a PDF drawing of a
detail. Now, I frequently get drawings
| | 00:26 | like this from clients that I need to
incorporate into my AutoCAD drawings.
| | 00:30 | Now, since this is a PDF, its a
problem, because AutoCAD cannot insert or
| | 00:34 | reference a PDF file. Now, I have
included this PDF file in the Exercise Files
| | 00:39 | directory. It's located in the Chapter
3 folder, if you'd like to take a look at it.
| | 00:43 | Now, since I can't directly insert
this in the AutoCAD, what I do, is I open
| | 00:47 | this PDF in a version of Adobe
Illustrator, because Adobe Illustrator can open
| | 00:52 | the PDF and save it as a DWG. Let's
assume that I saved this drawing as a DWG.
| | 00:57 | I'm going to jump on of Acrobat. Let's
go back to AutoCAD and let's open DWG
| | 01:02 | file. To do that I'm going to come up
and click Open and let's select that
| | 01:07 | drawing, and the drawing I want to
open is located in the Chapter 3 folder
| | 01:11 | inside your exercise files directory
and it's this guy, detail_1, so we'll
| | 01:16 | highlight them and click Open.
| | 01:17 | Now, since this drawing was saved
from Illustrator, AutoCAD is giving us a
| | 01:21 | little warning - just go ahead and
click Continue and then likewise, since this
| | 01:25 | was saved from Illustrator, it's fine.
It's just, the drawing didn't end up
| | 01:28 | within my field to view, so I'm going
to double-click the wheel on my mouse to
| | 01:31 | do a zoom step.
| | 01:32 | Let me pan this guy back and I'll
center them on the screen, now, here's my
| | 01:38 | problem. This drawing requires clean up.
It obviously needs to be rotated, and
| | 01:43 | I'm probably going to have to change
its size. Let us find out how big it is,
| | 01:46 | since it came from Illustrator, we
really don't know, how big it's going to be,
| | 01:48 | when we open it in AutoCAD. I'm going
to go to my tools tab, I'm going to click
| | 01:52 | the Distance tool.
| | 01:53 | Let's find out what the distance is
from the end point here, to the end point
| | 01:57 | here. It had 243, that's going to be
way too big, so I'm obviously going to
| | 02:02 | need to scale him down. Let's click at
entity, if I click on this guy, I can
| | 02:07 | see that it's forced to be the color
white and it's on some layer called layer
| | 02:11 | 1, so as I mentioned this drawing is
going to require some clean up. Let me hit
| | 02:15 | escape to clear the grips.
| | 02:17 | Every time I export a file from
Illustrator, I end up having to clean up the
| | 02:21 | drawing and put it to office standards.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to
| | 02:24 | clean this drawing up using AutoCAD's
new Action Recorder and then the next
| | 02:28 | time I have to convert a drawing from
Adobe Illustrator, I can do it in one
| | 02:31 | step by replaying my action. Let's try
that, I want to do one thing before I
| | 02:36 | jump and start. Let's figure out
what our scale factor is supposed to be.
| | 02:40 | Let's again I'm going to go to my
Distance, that's adjacent from the end point
| | 02:45 | here to the end point here, I can see
that's 243 and some change. Let me click
| | 02:50 | hold and drag across that number. I'll
right-click and I'll Copy that number to
| | 02:54 | my clipboard. Let me go to my calculator,
I'll click the Quick Calculator icon,
| | 03:03 | and I'm going to click in this area and
typing 9/ and then I'll right-click and
| | 03:08 | Paste, when I hit Enter, this is the
scale factor I'm going to have to use to
| | 03:13 | get my detail down to 9 inches wide.
Now, let me highlight this guy and we'll
| | 03:18 | right-click and Copy him to our
clipboard. Here we go and let me close the
| | 03:22 | calculator. Okay, let's clean up this drawing.
| | 03:25 | To launch AutoCAD's Action Recorder,
I'm going to come up to the tools tab of
| | 03:29 | my ribbon. I'm going to go to the
Action Recorder panel and I'm going to click
| | 03:32 | Record, when I do, AutoCAD will pop
open the panel and then it'll put a red
| | 03:37 | light on my cursor to remind me that
I'm currently recording. Now, that I'm
| | 03:41 | recording the first step that I'd
like to do is I'd like to change the
| | 03:44 | rotation. I'm going to move up to my
Home tab, and click and I'm going to
| | 03:48 | select the Rotate tool right
here in the modified panel.
| | 03:52 | AutoCAD says Select objects, I'm going
to type all and hit Enter and then Enter
| | 03:57 | again, base point, let's rotate them
around the end point right here and my
| | 04:01 | rotation angle, I'm going to type in
90 and hit Enter. Let's pan him down, I
| | 04:07 | have rotations taken care of. Let's
put him to the right size, I'm going to
| | 04:12 | come up and launch my scale command
and click Scale. Select objects, once
| | 04:17 | again, I'm going to type all, Enter,
Enter, base point, we'll scale it from the
| | 04:21 | end point right here.
| | 04:22 | Scale factor that's why I figured that
out ahead of time. Let me come down to
| | 04:26 | my command line and click and then
I'm going to right-click and Paste. I'm
| | 04:32 | going to hit Enter to accept that
number and now, my detail is down to the
| | 04:35 | correct size. Let's zoom in. Let's make
a layer, I want to put this to my Layer Standards.
| | 04:43 | Now, my Layer Properties Manager
happens to be docked, I'm going to hover over
| | 04:47 | this guy, and bring him up. Let's
create a new layer and I'm going to call it
| | 04:51 | detail and I'm going to set the layer
to magenta. Now, don't worry about the
| | 04:57 | layer palette closing, it's set to
Autohide that's what it supposed to do, if I
| | 05:02 | need to get back to the layer palette
I can just click OK and I can move over again.
| | 05:09 | Now, that I've created my layer, let's
put everything on my layer and adjust
| | 05:13 | its properties. I can do that by going
to the Utilities panel and clicking and
| | 05:17 | I'm going to grab this tool right here
the Select All tool, let me click Select
| | 05:21 | All which will highlight everything
and it'll bring up my Quick Properties
| | 05:25 | panel. Let me change my layer, I'll
click in this setting and grab the drop
| | 05:30 | down. We'll click Detail and then
we'll change the Color property, click the
| | 05:35 | Drop down and I'll set this to ByLayer.
When I move down to I've to escape to
| | 05:40 | clear the grips. This drawings almost finished.
| | 05:43 | The last thing I want to do is purge
out that remaining layer from Adobe
| | 05:46 | Illustrator. I go to my Properties
panel, we can see the layer right here. I
| | 05:50 | don't need that anymore, so let's be
tidy. Let's get rid of that. I can do that
| | 05:54 | by launching the purge command. Now, I
can find the purge command on the tools
| | 05:57 | tab of my ribbon. I'm going to come
over to drawing utilities, I'm going to
| | 06:01 | click this icon with the little
broom and we click Purge. I want to purge
| | 06:07 | nested items. I do not want to
confirm each item to be purge, let me click
| | 06:12 | Purge All. There we go and we click
close and this drawing has now been
| | 06:16 | converted to my standards.
| | 06:18 | Since we are back on the tools tab, if
I look at my action tree, I can see an
| | 06:22 | exhaustive list of everything that
we've done to correct this file. Now, that
| | 06:27 | I'm done cleaning up the drawing.
I'm going to come up and click the Stop
| | 06:29 | button to stop recording and when I do
AutoCAD gives me the opportunity to name
| | 06:34 | my action, I'm just going to call this
Fixer and then I'm going to come down
| | 06:39 | and click OK. Okay, let's try this guy
out. I'm going to close this drawing,
| | 06:45 | save changes in that.
| | 06:48 | Let's come up and click the Open icon.
We'll go inside the Chapter 3 folder
| | 06:51 | inside our exercise files directory and
let's open up detail_2 this is another
| | 06:56 | drawing that was exported from Adobe
Illustrator, let me click this guy and
| | 06:59 | highlight him and we'll come down and
select Open. I'm going to click Continue
| | 07:04 | to dismiss the dialog. Let's do a zoom
extant. Alright to clean up this file or
| | 07:12 | to convert this file, all I have
to do is replay my recorded action.
| | 07:16 | Now there is a couple of ways we can
do this, one - I can select to my action
| | 07:19 | from just Drop Down currently, I only
have one. If I select the action from the
| | 07:23 | Drop Down, I can come up and click Play.
The other way I can launch my action
| | 07:28 | is by right-clicking and in the menu I
can come down to Action Recorder, select
| | 07:33 | Play and then grab my action. There is
one more way I want to show you, if we
| | 07:38 | come down to the command Line, I can
click down here and I can type in the name
| | 07:42 | of my action, I can treat my action as
though it's another AutoCAD command, so
| | 07:47 | I'm going to launch it this way. I'm
just going to type Fixer and hit Enter and
| | 07:51 | when I do this drawing
gets cleaned up before arise.
| | 07:54 | Notice one thing, when the drawing
was getting cleaned up, it did stop at a
| | 07:59 | dialog box, if during your recording,
you launch a command that pops up a
| | 08:03 | dialog that will stop during playback.
So I'm going to have the manually click
| | 08:07 | Purge All and Close to finish. Let
me go the playback the action macro is
| | 08:13 | complete and click OK and this drawing
has been converted to my standards. When
| | 08:18 | I'm all finished, if I pop this little
pan out I can click and close up that panel.
| | 08:23 | Just think never again, do I have to
manually go through and clean up drawings
| | 08:27 | that I've saved from Illustrator. Now,
I can clean them up in one step just by
| | 08:31 | replaying my action. In our next
session we're going to look at how we can
| | 08:34 | modify or customize an existing action
as well as how we can share our actions with others.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Editing and sharing action recorder macros| 00:00 | In our previous session we looked at
how we can create an action to automate a
| | 00:04 | repetitive test. In this lesson we'll
look at how we can modify an existing
| | 00:07 | action and how we can share our
actions with others. Now to get access to our
| | 00:12 | actions I'm going to come up to my
Tools tab in my ribbon and click in my
| | 00:16 | Action Recorder area is located right over here.
| | 00:18 | Now the Fixer action that we see is
the one that we recorded in the previous
| | 00:22 | session. This is the one that we'll be
modifying in this session. Now we would
| | 00:26 | like to select an action to modify,
we can click this flyout and select it from the menu.
| | 00:30 | Currently I only have a one. So my
choice is limited. I'm going to leave that
| | 00:35 | on Fixer. Then I'm going to click
the flyout and this will give me access
| | 00:39 | to Action Tree.
| | 00:40 | Since we are going to be working in the
Action Tree, I'm going to come down and
| | 00:42 | click the pushpin, so that the Action
Tree stays up on screen. Now one thing I
| | 00:47 | want to mention before we start. The Action
Recorder is brand new with AutoCAD 2009.
| | 00:53 | The amount of changes of or
customization that we can do to an existing action
| | 00:56 | is limited. Hopefully in future
versions of AutoCAD this will change.
| | 01:00 | So we can't do a lot of things, but we can do some.
| | 01:03 | Let me show you some of the things that
we can do. If I move over to the Action
| | 01:07 | Tree and I click and hold on the
slider, I can move up and down and review
| | 01:11 | everything that's included in this
action. I can see all of the command and all
| | 01:15 | of the values.
| | 01:16 | One change I can make is I can go in
and I can change the values. If I come
| | 01:20 | over notice this is a rotate action.
I rotated my entities 90 degrees. If I
| | 01:26 | click this field to highlight it, and
then click again AutoCAD gives me access
| | 01:30 | to that number and I can make a change.
| | 01:32 | Now if you make a change to a number
in your action, there is not Undo. So be
| | 01:37 | careful I'm going to hit Escape to
clear that, because I don't want to change
| | 01:40 | the number.
| | 01:42 | One other example I can take and crab
my slider and pin this down to where I
| | 01:46 | created my layer. I created the layer
right here called Detail. I can click in
| | 01:51 | this field. Click once again and I can
go in and change the layer name. So we
| | 01:55 | can go up and down through the list
and we can make some individual changes.
| | 01:58 | Let's look at what else we can do. I'm
going to grab my slider and slide this
| | 02:02 | up. I'm going to hit my Escape key to
clear the value. Then push this up. When
| | 02:08 | I was using the SCALE command,
I used the very specific number.
| | 02:12 | Now this number may not work in every
instance, but maybe I don't want to put
| | 02:16 | another hard coded number in here.
Maybe I would like to give the user the
| | 02:19 | opportunity to change the
number when they run the action.
| | 02:22 | To do that I'm going to come down and
Highlight this number. Then I'm going
| | 02:26 | right-click and select Request User
Input. When I do AutoCAD, will italicize
| | 02:31 | the value and it will give me an icon
that shows a little silhouette of a person.
| | 02:35 | That means that during playback the
action is going to stop at this point and
| | 02:39 | give me the opportunity to change
this value, if I want. Let's try that.
| | 02:44 | I'm going to open up detail. We will
take and run this action on the detail. We
| | 02:47 | will see how the action works. Wake him
up and click open. I'm going come down
| | 02:53 | and select drawing number one inside
our Chapter 3 folder. Inside Exercise
| | 02:57 | Files directory. We'll grab drawing 1_
detail_2. Let me highlight that guy and
| | 03:02 | we'll click Open.
| | 03:04 | Once again this file needs to clean up.
So I'm going to click continue and then
| | 03:08 | I'm going to double-click my
wheel on my mouse to do a zoom extent.
| | 03:11 | All right, now that we have got the
drawing up on the screen, let's replay our
| | 03:16 | action. To do that I'm going to make
sure that my actions is. I'm going to come
| | 03:20 | up and click Play.
| | 03:22 | Notice that as soon as AutoCAD got to
the SCALE command it stopped. And is that
| | 03:26 | all right? We have got an instance
where we require some input from you. Do you
| | 03:30 | want to Provide input? Do you want to
use the Recorded value or you want to
| | 03:33 | stop to playback all together?
| | 03:34 | Let me click Provide input. Notice
when I do AutoCAD puts me in the SCALE
| | 03:39 | command and at this point I can type in
whatever number I would like. I want to
| | 03:44 | type in 0.05 for SCALE and hit Enter.
| | 03:49 | Then the playback continues as normal.
Now since this guy stops in the purged
| | 03:53 | dialog, I'm going to come down and
click Purge All and then Close. Here we go
| | 03:59 | we have just run the action, but we
have given the user the opportunity to
| | 04:02 | change a number.
| | 04:03 | All right, let's look at what else we
can do. I'm going to click my Undo button
| | 04:08 | to put this drawing back the way it was.
Notice that all of the changes that
| | 04:12 | were made become one single action in an Undo.
| | 04:16 | Let's remove this User Input. I can do
that by right-clicking and removing the
| | 04:20 | check. Another customization I can make
to an existing action is that I can add
| | 04:25 | the user message. If there is something
important I think the user should know,
| | 04:29 | I can stop the playback and give
them a message. Let's try that.
| | 04:32 | I'm going to click and hold on the
slider. I'm going to drag it down. Let's
| | 04:35 | come down to the Purge command. This
is where the playback stops when it hits
| | 04:39 | the dialog box. So I'm going
to insert a user message here.
| | 04:43 | To do that I'm going to click the Purge
command to highlight and then I'm going
| | 04:46 | to right-click and select Insert User
Message. I'm going to type Select Purge
| | 04:57 | all and then click Close. I want to
click OK. I have just inserted a user
| | 05:06 | message into my action.
Let's play it back again.
| | 05:09 | Once again I'm going to come up and
click play. The drawing will clean up
| | 05:13 | before our eyes, and as soon as it
hits the Purge command, I get a little
| | 05:16 | message that says, hey select Purge All
and then click Close. All right, let me
| | 05:20 | click Yes. Let me click purge all and
then I will Close. Now my playback is
| | 05:27 | complete. I will click OK to finish the action.
| | 05:31 | One other thing we can do to an action.
We can remove command from an action.
| | 05:35 | For instance, I don't like the way
the Purge brings up a dialog box. I'm
| | 05:39 | going to remove this command. To do
that I'm going to right-click on the
| | 05:43 | Command and I'm going to select Delete.
| | 05:46 | Notice that if I delete something from
the action, AutoCAD says the deletion
| | 05:49 | cannot be undone. Let me go ahead and
click Delete. The Purge command has been
| | 05:54 | removed. As long as that guy is gone
I'm going to right-click and select the Delete.
| | 05:58 | Here's one of the drawbacks to actions.
It would be really nice if I could add
| | 06:08 | a command to an action. Unfortunately
I can't. All I can do is take away. Let
| | 06:13 | me show you a work around that we can
use to get beyond this limitation. Once
| | 06:17 | again I'm going to undo the status of
my drawing. Let me put it back to an
| | 06:20 | uncorrected state and click Undo. And
what I'm going to do is I'm going to
| | 06:24 | create a new action.
| | 06:26 | I would like everything this action
does, but I would like to launch to Purge
| | 06:29 | command such that it doesn't bring
up a dialog box. Let's try that.
| | 06:33 | I'm going to click Record, to record a
new action. Then in the command line,
| | 06:38 | the command I'm going to use is Fixer.
Remember that I can launch my action
| | 06:43 | just like an AutoCAD command. So I want
to type Fixer and hit Enter and it will
| | 06:47 | take me all the way through to the
end. At this point I will click OK.
| | 06:51 | Now that I have closed that dialog,
I'm going click the Escape button to
| | 06:54 | clear my grips and now I will add the
text version of the Purge command. I can
| | 06:58 | do that by typing _purge. This runs
purge at the command line. I'll hit Enter.
| | 07:04 | I'm going hit A for all I want to
purge everything. Names to purge, I'm going
| | 07:08 | to go ahead and hit Enter, because
the * means everything. Then verify each
| | 07:13 | name. I'm going to hit N
for no. Enter. There we go.
| | 07:17 | Now that I'm done I'm going to come up
and click stop. Here is where I can give
| | 07:21 | my action a name. I'm going to call
this fixmydetails. Then I will click OK.
| | 07:29 | There we go. Let's undo and try our new action.
| | 07:31 | I'll click Undo until this guy goes
back. Let's launch our new action,
| | 07:38 | fixmydetails. Let me come up and click
Play. The drawing is cleaned up. It's
| | 07:43 | converted to the appropriate size.
Everything is on the appropriate layer.
| | 07:47 | Everything has been purged out.
| | 07:49 | I was essentially able to Remove a
command from an action and then add another
| | 07:53 | command just by creating another action.
Now as you create actions like this in
| | 07:57 | the office you may want to share these
with others. Let me show you how we can do that.
| | 08:01 | If I would like to share my actions, I
need to go to my Options dialog box.
| | 08:05 | So I'm going to right-click in the
middle screen. I will come down select
| | 08:08 | Options. In the Files tab, I'm going
to grab the slider and come down. I have
| | 08:16 | got an entry called Action Recorder Settings.
Let me click the plus (+) next to this guy.
| | 08:20 | Notice I have two folders. This first
folder I will click the plus to open it
| | 08:24 | up. This is the location where I our
actions are stored. Now an action is saved
| | 08:29 | with an .actm extension. That stands
for Action Macro. This is the folder where
| | 08:34 | I will find that. Fix my details and
the other details action will be located
| | 08:39 | in this folder.
| | 08:41 | Now if I would like to share these
across the office, I can come down and use
| | 08:44 | this folder. Let me open up this one.
Notice it's blank. I'm going to come and
| | 08:48 | click browse. Now I can navigate to a
location on my network where I would like
| | 08:55 | to save my action files. In
this case I'm going to hit Cancel.
| | 09:00 | If I place my action files in that
folder and then the other people in my
| | 09:04 | office also set their secondary folder
to that network location, they will be
| | 09:08 | able to see and use my actions.
| | 09:10 | When I'm finished I'm going to come
down and click OK to save my changes and
| | 09:14 | Close the dialog.
| | 09:16 | Each time you find yourself
repeating a task, see if you can automate the
| | 09:19 | process by using an action. If you
happen to create a valuable action, share it
| | 09:23 | with our office so everyone can
benefit from you boost and productivity.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Leveraging rollover tooltips| 00:00 | In the past the only way we could get
information about entities was to select
| | 00:04 | them first. Thankfully this is no
longer the case. Using the new rollover
| | 00:08 | tooltips we can access the properties
of our entities by simply hovering over
| | 00:12 | them with the cursor. Now I have got a
drawing open on screen. We are going to
| | 00:15 | use this guy to play around with the
rollover tooltips feature. If you would
| | 00:19 | like to open this drawing, it's located
inside the Chapter 3 folder inside the
| | 00:23 | Exercise Files directory and this drawing
is called number 2, decorative hinge.
| | 00:28 | Now the purpose of the rollover
tooltips is to allow us to get information
| | 00:32 | about our entities without having to
click on them. Let's try that. Let's say I
| | 00:35 | was concerned about what layer this
circle was on. I'm going to place my cursor
| | 00:39 | over the circle and when I do AutoCAD
brings up a rollover tooltip that gives
| | 00:43 | me some information. Now is it
showing me the color, the layer and the line
| | 00:47 | type? Well, is this circle on the same
layer? All I have to do is hover over it
| | 00:51 | and once again I can see information.
Let's check this line. If I hover over
| | 00:55 | this line I can see yes that line is
also on the part layer. It's also set to
| | 00:59 | be a ByLayer color.
| | 01:00 | Now if you're not seeing the rollover
tooltip feature it can be turned off. Let
| | 01:05 | me show you where the toggle is to turn
this on and off. That's located in our
| | 01:09 | Options dialog box. So I'm going to
right-click right in the middle of the
| | 01:12 | screen. I'm going to come down and
select Options and I'm going to go to the
| | 01:17 | Display tab and on the Display tab if I
come down to the Window Elements area,
| | 01:22 | all the way down at the bottom,
here is the checkbox that controls our
| | 01:25 | tooltips. Right now I can see that
mine are on. I'm going to come down and
| | 01:29 | click OK to dismiss the dialog.
| | 01:32 | Now rollover tooltips are nice. If I
hover over this circle I can get a little
| | 01:36 | bit of information. In order to be
really helpful, is if I hovered over this
| | 01:40 | circle and AutoCAD told me what the
Radius was. Or maybe the Circumference or
| | 01:44 | the Diameter. Wouldn't it be nice if
I hovered over a line if AutoCAD would
| | 01:48 | tell me how long the line was. Let
me show you how we can customize the
| | 01:51 | rollover tooltips. I can customize my
tooltips by going into my CUI and I'm
| | 01:56 | going to do that by going to my tools
tab in my ribbon, I'm going to come down
| | 02:00 | to the Customization panel and I'm
going to click CUI. This brings the CUI up
| | 02:06 | on my screen, my Customizable User
interface and what I'm going to do is come
| | 02:09 | over to the left side and I'm going
to click on the rollover tooltips to
| | 02:13 | highlight it.
| | 02:15 | When I do, AutoCAD will show me a
list of all of the entities that were
| | 02:19 | associated with the rollover tooltips
and then to the right I can see a list of
| | 02:22 | all of the Properties that are
associated with each entity. For instance, if I
| | 02:27 | click on a circle I can come over to
the right and I can see the rollover
| | 02:30 | tooltip is going to show me the Color,
Layer and Line Type. Once I come down
| | 02:34 | and select Radius, I would like to
see that, and I'll also like to see the
| | 02:37 | Diameter and maybe the circumference.
I will now see this information in the tooltip.
| | 02:42 | You know what, let me click on line.
Every time I hover over a line I would
| | 02:46 | like to see the Length. That would be
handy. Polyline, every time I hover over
| | 02:51 | a Polyline I would like to see what
the Elevation is. I would like to know if
| | 02:54 | that Polyline is Closed.
That would be very helpful.
| | 02:57 | Now you probably noticed that this
isn't a complete list of every entity in
| | 03:01 | AutoCAD. If we would like to add an
entity to this list I can come up and click
| | 03:05 | this icon and I can select the entity
from this larger list. I'm going to grab
| | 03:11 | Body. Let me push this up and click OK
and that is now been added to my list.
| | 03:19 | Let me come down and click OK. Let's
try that out. This time I'm going to hover
| | 03:25 | over my circle and now in addition
to seeing the main three pieces of
| | 03:28 | information, I'm also seeing the
Radius, Diameter and Circumference.
| | 03:32 | Now if I hover over a line I can also
see the Length. I want to show you one
| | 03:38 | more thing. Let's go back into the CUI.
I can do that by right-clicking and
| | 03:42 | selecting Repeat CUI from the menu.
Let's go back and select rollover tooltips.
| | 03:47 | You probably noticed that this looked
fairly similar to the Quick Properties.
| | 03:52 | In fact it is similar, the Quick
Properties gives us the same settings after
| | 03:55 | the object has been highlighted.
| | 03:57 | If you have already gone through and
fine-tuned all of your entities using
| | 04:00 | Quick Properties, you can associate
those same settings to your rollover
| | 04:04 | tooltips. For instance if you have
gone into Quick Properties and you have
| | 04:07 | dialed up each one of these to see
everything, it's important to you, you can
| | 04:12 | come over and right-click on rollover
tooltips and say Synchronize this with
| | 04:16 | Quick Properties. This way you can see
all of the important settings just by
| | 04:20 | hovering before you even click on it.
| | 04:23 | When you're all done you can come down
and click OK to save your changes and
| | 04:26 | dismiss the dialog box. Using the
new rollover tooltips we can access the
| | 04:32 | properties of our objects without
having to touch them. This new hands-off
| | 04:35 | approach really makes things easy when
we need to review the entities in our drawing.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Converting layouts to models| 00:00 | When using AutoCAD in a working
environment, it's very common to share your
| | 00:03 | drawing with others. Sometimes you may
send drawings to a client who doesn't
| | 00:08 | use AutoCAD. In some cases the program
they are using may not support layouts.
| | 00:13 | To help make our drawing more compatible,
AutoCAD 2009 gives us the new Convert
| | 00:17 | Layout To Model tool.
| | 00:18 | Now I have got a drawing up on screen.
If you would like to open the same
| | 00:22 | drawing and work along with me, this
guy is located in the Chapter 3 folder
| | 00:25 | inside the Exercise Files directory and this
is drawing number 3, the soft drink can. Now this
| | 00:31 | drawing contains a layout with several
viewports. To illustrate that I'm going
| | 00:36 | to jump to Model space, we'll see
what's going on in Model space. The fastest
| | 00:40 | way to get to Model space is to come
down and right-click on our Quick View
| | 00:43 | Layouts tool and select Activate Model tab.
| | 00:46 | Well, my line weights are a little bit
large. Please indulge me for one second
| | 00:51 | while I turn this off. I'm going to
come down to my Status bar and click the
| | 00:54 | Lineweight mode to turn those off and
now we can see all of the geometry that
| | 00:58 | exists in this drawing. Essentially
it's a front view of a soft drink can with
| | 01:02 | some dimensions and I have
got a top view right up here.
| | 01:05 | All right let's go back to our layout.
To do that I'm going to right-click on
| | 01:08 | my Quick View Layouts tool and select
Activate Previous Layout. Now this layout
| | 01:14 | contains several viewports. If I move
over this can and double-click I can see
| | 01:19 | the rectangular shape of my viewport,
the viewport layer happens to be turned off.
| | 01:25 | So, on this viewport I'm seeing that
line work in Model space. If I come over
| | 01:29 | here and double-click I can jump into
this viewport. I'm now inside this guy
| | 01:34 | and I'm actually seeing the same line
work that I see over here. I'm seeing the
| | 01:38 | same geometry just in a different
window. Remember a viewport is just like a
| | 01:42 | window in the Model space.
| | 01:44 | Lastly if I come down here and double-
click, I'm now inside this viewport and
| | 01:48 | I'm seeing the same geometry again just
with a different scale. Now AutoCAD can
| | 01:53 | support the concept of layouts and
viewports. Not all CAD programs can do
| | 01:57 | this. So if I'm going to ship this
drawing to a client who has an older CAD
| | 02:01 | program or a CAD program that does not
support layouts, I need to be certain
| | 02:05 | that what he sees on his screen
looks the same as I what I see on mine.
| | 02:08 | So what I'm going to do is I'm going
to use the Convert Layout To Model tool
| | 02:13 | and what this will do is it will take
all of the entities that I have on my
| | 02:16 | paper and it will move it all into
Model space. It will convert this drawing to
| | 02:20 | a Model space Only drawing. Let's do that.
| | 02:23 | Now I'm still inside this viewport.
So let me come out and double-click
| | 02:26 | outside the viewport so I get out of
my paper and let's around the new tool.
| | 02:30 | To launch the tool I'm going to come
down and click on my Quick View Layouts
| | 02:33 | icon and when my layout comes up on
screen, I'm going to move into the Preview,
| | 02:37 | I'm going to right-click and I'm
going to select Export Layout To Model.
| | 02:42 | Since I'm creating a new drawing,
AutoCAD is giving it a new name. Let me go
| | 02:45 | ahead and click Save. Now that it's
finished I have an opportunity to open it.
| | 02:51 | Let's take a look. There we go. We can
see that all of the geometry that was on
| | 02:55 | my layout is now converted to model
space. In fact even though these viewports
| | 03:00 | were viewing the same geometry AutoCAD
has created separate drawings for the
| | 03:04 | contents of each of these viewports.
| | 03:06 | This drawing is now much easier to
share with someone who uses an older CAD package.
| | 03:10 | By making our drawings compatible
with a variety of CAD programs, the
| | 03:14 | Convert Layout To Model tool allows us
to collaborate with a larger number of clients.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Updated Drafting ToolsIntroducing automatic spell-checking| 00:00 | As great as AutoCAD's Spell Checker is,
it's only as good as the last time you used it.
| | 00:04 | You see, each time you work on a drawing,
you have the potential to create new
| | 00:09 | spelling errors. In the past the only
to ensure our drawings remained error
| | 00:13 | free was to run the Spell Checker each
time we updated the file. Well AutoCAD
| | 00:18 | 2009 eliminates this problem by
making the spell-checking tool interactive.
| | 00:23 | Let's take a look at the new enhanced
spell checking functionality. Now I have
| | 00:27 | got a drawing open on my screen. If
you would like to open this drawing as well,
| | 00:31 | it's located inside the Chapter
4 folder inside your Exercise Files
| | 00:35 | directory and this is drawing
number 1, the ceiling panel cover.
| | 00:41 | Now this is an example of a mechanical
drawing and technically speaking this is
| | 00:45 | a ceiling panel cover for a duplex
receptacle. So I'm going to change the title
| | 00:50 | of this guy. We pan this up and we
zoom in a little. If I want to edit this
| | 00:55 | text I'm going to move in and double-
click on it. Now this is Mtext, so I'm
| | 01:03 | going to click at the end of the line
here, I'm going to hit Enter and let's
| | 01:08 | type DUPELEX RECEPTICLE. Notice as I
put that text in, AutoCAD automatically
| | 01:18 | underlines the word that it doesn't
recognize. It doesn't necessarily mean that
| | 01:22 | they are misspelled just means that
AutoCAD doesn't recognize that as being a
| | 01:25 | legitimate word.
| | 01:27 | You see now AutoCAD is constantly
checking our text for errors as we type.
| | 01:33 | Since we have a couple of issues here,
let's correct these. If I would like to
| | 01:36 | correct a word I'm going to place my
cursor over the word and right-click. And
| | 01:41 | in the menu if I come up to the top
AutoCAD will show me its best three choices
| | 01:44 | for this word. In this case DUPLEX is
what I want, so I'm going to select this
| | 01:50 | and that word is corrected.
| | 01:52 | Let's fix RECEPTICLE. Once again I'm
going to place my cursor over the word and
| | 01:56 | right-click. I want to move to the top
of the menu and I can see three choices.
| | 02:01 | If these choices won't work for me I
can come down to more suggestions, then I
| | 02:05 | can see a larger list of choices. I
can also come over at this point and add
| | 02:09 | this word to the dictionary, or I can
come down and say you know what, AutoCAD
| | 02:13 | just ignore every instance
of this word in this drawing.
| | 02:16 | In this case RECEPTACLE is what I want.
So I'm going to come up and click this
| | 02:20 | to correct this word. When I'm all
done I'm going to click the X to close the
| | 02:25 | Text Editor. Since I'm have left the
Mtext editor, I just want to point
| | 02:30 | something out. Notice my panel names
are missing. Occasionally this happens
| | 02:34 | when we are working in 2009. If I
would like these panel names to come back I
| | 02:38 | can use the Minimize button I'm just
going to click it three times. Once,
| | 02:42 | twice, three times and the
ribbon comes back to normal.
| | 02:46 | Now in addition to scanning our text as
we type, AutoCAD will also take a look
| | 02:50 | at existing text. Let me back up, I'm
going to pan this over because I have got
| | 02:55 | a layer that I want to turn on. I'm
going to come down and turn on the More
| | 02:59 | Text layer. I have got an existing
paragraph. Let me move in and we'll edit
| | 03:06 | this text. I'm going to double-click
on this guy to edit and as soon as I go
| | 03:09 | into the Mtext AutoCAD
automatically underlines the words that it is
| | 03:13 | questioning.
| | 03:14 | Let's fix these. I can right-click
on this word and enter as what I want,
| | 03:19 | that's perfect. Let me select this,
misspelled that's wrong. Let me right-click
| | 03:24 | on this guy and we'll correct him. In
this case I don't like the top three
| | 03:29 | suggestions. Let me go to More
Suggestions and this is the one I want right
| | 03:33 | here. I will select this option and
correct that word. When I'm finished I'm
| | 03:39 | going to come up and click Close to
close the text editor. This new enhanced
| | 03:43 | functionality works for both
multi-line text and single-line text.
| | 03:48 | By constantly scanning our text for
errors AutoCAD has actually made it
| | 03:51 | difficult to misspell words. Just think,
never again do we have to worry about
| | 03:56 | the last time we spelled checked the file.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modifying clipped xrefs dynamically| 00:00 | If you have ever clipped xreferences,
you have probably noticed that there is
| | 00:03 | no easy way to revise your clipping
boundary. Generally speaking the only way
| | 00:07 | to edit a boundary is to delete it
and create a new one. In AutoCAD 2009
| | 00:12 | however, clipping boundaries have
become dynamic, meaning that making a change
| | 00:16 | to your boundary is as
simple as editing your grips.
| | 00:18 | Now I have got a drawing on my screen.
This is a civil engineering example and
| | 00:23 | this happens to be a plan_and_profile
drawing for a proposed road connection
| | 00:27 | between two existing roads. Now if you
would like to open this drawing as well,
| | 00:32 | this guy is located inside the
Chapter 4 folder inside your Exercise Files
| | 00:36 | directory and this is the number two
drawing 2, plan_and_profile. This drawing
| | 00:40 | contains several xreferenced files.
Let's jump to Model space and take a look.
| | 00:45 | The fastest way to get to Model space
is to come down and right-click on the
| | 00:49 | Quick View Layouts tool and select
Activate Model tab. Now most of the geometry
| | 00:55 | that we see on screen is coming in from
an Xref. For instance if I click at the
| | 00:59 | road I can see that geometry is an
external reference. Let me hit my Escape
| | 01:03 | key. If I click these contours I
can see these are all also an external
| | 01:08 | reference. In this session I would
like to clip this contour Xreference.
| | 01:14 | To clip the reference I'm going to
select it and we can see all of the geometry
| | 01:18 | that's associated with that xreferenced
file. Now if it's highlighted I'm going
| | 01:22 | to right-click and then in the menu I'm
going to come up and select Clip Xref.
| | 01:28 | Now that the command is launched I'm
going to right-click and I'm going to
| | 01:31 | select New boundary and then I'm going
to right-click again and I'm going to
| | 01:37 | select Polygonal because I want to
create a non rectangular clipping path. The
| | 01:46 | boundary that I'm going to create is
going to be four points. Let's pick a
| | 01:49 | point right here. We'll pick a point
here. I'm going to come down, we'll click
| | 01:53 | a point over here and then
finally we'll click a point here.
| | 01:57 | When I'm all done I'm going to right-
click and select Enter. I have just
| | 02:02 | applied a clipping boundary to my
contour or xref. Now I mentioned before the
| | 02:07 | clipping boundaries are now dynamic.
Let's make some changes to this boundary.
| | 02:12 | The first thing I have to do is I
have to turn on the boundary frame. To do
| | 02:15 | this I have to type in a system variable.
That system variable is called XCLIP
| | 02:20 | Frame. I wish there was an icon for
that, but I'm afraid there is not. I will
| | 02:26 | type xclipframe and hit Enter. Right
now it's set to zero which means off. I'm
| | 02:30 | going to type 1 turn this guy on and hit Enter.
| | 02:34 | I can now see the boundary of my
clipping frame. Let's make a change. To do
| | 02:38 | that I'm going to come up and click the
boundary, this will give me some grips.
| | 02:42 | I'm going to click a grip and notice
as fast as I move and release my grip I
| | 02:49 | can dynamically adjust this boundary.
Now this boundary has no real value right
| | 02:55 | now. Let's apply this clipping
boundary to match our property boundary. To do
| | 02:59 | that I will click this script and I
will place it right here. I happened to
| | 03:02 | have a running object snap, set for end point.
| | 03:04 | I will click this clip and place it here.
We will click this clip and place it
| | 03:10 | here and then finally we'll come down
and click this clip and place it here.
| | 03:15 | Now, I'm essentially clipping the
contours on the outside of my property line.
| | 03:19 | Notice there is one more grip on my
boundary. This guy is our flip grip. If I
| | 03:24 | click this guy AutoCAD will invert
my clipping boundary. I'm now clipping
| | 03:28 | everything inside the property line.
So each time I click, I can invert the
| | 03:34 | clipping boundary.
| | 03:34 | When I'm all done adjusting the
clipping boundary, I'm going to turn off the
| | 03:41 | frame. Remember that the frame will
plot, keep that in mind if you turn your
| | 03:45 | frames on. To turn the frame off I'm
first going to hit my Escape key, then I'm
| | 03:50 | going to right-click and select Repeat
Xclip Frame, we'll set this guy back to
| | 03:57 | zero and I will hit Enter. If you're
someone who xreferences geometry, take
| | 04:02 | advantage of the new dynamic clipping
boundary. I'm sure you will agree it
| | 04:06 | makes boundary editing much faster than using
the old fashioned delete and replace method.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Finding and replacing text| 00:00 | The Find and Replace command in AutoCAD
2009 has been enhanced with additional
| | 00:04 | features to make your searches easier
and more powerful than ever. I have got
| | 00:08 | a drawing up on screen, if you want
to work along with me, you can open the
| | 00:11 | same drawing. This drawing is located
inside the Chapter 4 folder inside our
| | 00:16 | Exercise Files directory, and this is
the number three drawing, the heat engine.
| | 00:21 | Now this drawing contains a lot of
layouts, let's bring the layouts up on
| | 00:24 | screen. I can do that by coming down
and clicking on my Quick View Layouts tool
| | 00:30 | and my previews are a little bit large.
I'm going to hold my Ctrl key down and
| | 00:33 | roll my wheel my backward to make
these guys a little smaller. There we go.
| | 00:39 | Now I'm currently looking at Laying #1.
In most of my layouts, I'm showing
| | 00:44 | multiples views of my part and I have
also labeled my views top, front and
| | 00:49 | right side. In summary instance where I
have labeled a front view, I have used
| | 00:53 | the word front. We can say it here on
Layout 1, let me clip Layout 2, we can
| | 00:57 | say it here with Layout 3, we can say it there.
| | 01:01 | Now maybe after I have gone through
and I have labeled all of my view, I have
| | 01:04 | decided, you know what, maybe I need to
be a little bit more formal, maybe this
| | 01:08 | should say front view instead of just
front. Now problem, I can fix this with
| | 01:13 | the Find and Replace command. Let's do that.
| | 01:16 | I can launch Find and Replace from the
menu browser. I'm going to come up and
| | 01:20 | clip the mid letter A and I'm dong to
come down to Edit and I'm going to come
| | 01:27 | over all the way down to Find. Now I'm
going to move into the Find what area
| | 01:32 | and I'm going to type the word FRONT.
Now in the Replace with area I'm going to
| | 01:39 | click and I'm going to type
FRONT VIEW, and I'll click Find.
| | 01:44 | When I do AutoCAD is going to jump from
Model space to each layout, looking for
| | 01:50 | that text string, and I can see it's
found one. At this point, I can come down
| | 01:55 | and click Replace or Replace All. Now
this functionality is nothing new, this
| | 01:59 | one we have had in previous versions of
AutoCAD. Let's look at some of the new
| | 02:03 | things that we can do with Find and Replace.
| | 02:05 | I'm going to come down and click the
List results box. We'll push this guy up,
| | 02:11 | and now that List results is checked,
I'm going to come down and click Find
| | 02:14 | again. If the List results box is
checked, when you do your search, AutoCAD
| | 02:21 | will scan the entire drawing for each
instance of that text string and that
| | 02:25 | will give of your search in the form of a list.
| | 02:29 | I see that it's done doing the search,
I'm going to click OK, and here's the
| | 02:32 | list of the text strings that it's found.
It will tell me the type of object that
| | 02:37 | it found and it will also tell me
the layout name where it's located each
| | 02:41 | of the text strings. If I'd like to
go to one of these locations, I can
| | 02:45 | double-click on the heading and
AutoCAD will take me to that location in the
| | 02:49 | drawing and I have the opportunity to
make my change. In this case I'm going to
| | 02:53 | click Replace and will make the change.
Notice AutoCAD makes the change in the
| | 02:57 | list and then it jumps to the next
entry. At this point, I could make another
| | 03:00 | change if I wish or what if I double-
click a different layout, I can jump to a
| | 03:04 | new location.
| | 03:05 | Now our purpose in dong this search
was to replace all of these, so I'm just
| | 03:09 | going to click Replace All, and when
all been fixed, let me click OK, and let's
| | 03:18 | close the dialog. Now this drawing has
an additional that requires changing.
| | 03:29 | Let me zoom in on the title block and
right down here in the file name are, I
| | 03:34 | can see the file name is bird.dwg.
that's incorrect, you can tell, at the top
| | 03:38 | of the screen, this
drawing is called heat engine.
| | 03:41 | Now unfortunately each layout was
created from the first one, so I can say that
| | 03:45 | each layout has an incorrect file
name. Let's fix those by using Find and
| | 03:50 | Replace. Once again I'm going to go
to the menu browse, I'm going to click,
| | 03:54 | this time I'm going come down to Recent
Actions, and then I'm gong to come over
| | 03:57 | and select Find. May push this up and
we'll look at a couple more features that
| | 04:03 | are available in the 2009
version of Find and Replace.
| | 04:06 | I'm gong to click this more than
symbol to expand the rest of the dialog, and
| | 04:12 | now in 2009 we have six new settings
that we did not have before. I have a
| | 04:17 | checkbox that allows me to use
wildcards. I can use the asterisk or the
| | 04:21 | question mark or the pound symbol in my
search. I can also search Xrefs for the
| | 04:26 | text strings. I can search blocks.
| | 04:29 | This is a nice one. I can ignore
hidden items. Now AutoCAD will not scan
| | 04:34 | entities that are on layers that are
turned off or frozen, or attributes and
| | 04:38 | blocks that are set to hidden. These
last two settings allows me to match
| | 04:43 | character for non-English languages.
| | 04:46 | Let's make our change. I'm going to
click List results. In the Find what area,
| | 04:51 | I'm going to type BIRD and in the
Replace with area, I'm going to type HEAT
| | 04:58 | ENGINE, and let's click Find. AutoCAD
searched the entire drawing, it's found
| | 05:06 | six matches. We'll click OK. It's
found the text string on every layout. In
| | 05:13 | this case I'm going to come down and
click Replace All and all of them have
| | 05:17 | been corrected. Let me click OK, then
we'll click the X to close the dialog.
| | 05:25 | The new functionality of the Find and
Replace command gives you the ability to
| | 05:28 | crate a more focused search for
text in your drawing, and it makes the
| | 05:32 | decisions making process much easier
by walking you through the drawing to
| | 05:36 | review the findings.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Panning and zooming array previews| 00:00 | The Preview function of the Array
command has been updated in AutoCAD 2009.
| | 00:04 | We are now able to pan and zoom our geometry
while previewing our array. Now I have
| | 00:09 | got a drawing up on screen. If you'd
want to work along with me, you can open
| | 00:12 | the same drawing. This is located
inside your Chapter 4 folder, inside the
| | 00:16 | Exercise Files directory, and this is
the drawing number 4, the bookshelf.
| | 00:19 | Now in this example, let's assume
that we are furniture designer and we are
| | 00:24 | designing a bookshelf. Now this
bookshelf that we are designing needs to have
| | 00:28 | adjustable shelves, and the only way we
are going to have adjustable shelves is
| | 00:31 | to take and drill a series of the
holes on the inside face of the right and
| | 00:35 | left side of the bookshelf, such that we can
insert little metal pins to hold up our shelving.
| | 00:40 | Now I'm gong to turn on a layer. I
have got a drawing that represents a
| | 00:44 | finished example of what I want to do.
Let me turn on layer Finished. This is
| | 00:49 | what I'm looking for. This is a
drawing of the right inside face of this
| | 00:54 | bookshelf. In this drawing, I can see
these that series of holes that will need
| | 00:58 | to drill to have adjustable shelving.
I can also see the range in which my
| | 01:02 | shelves are going to be adjustable.
| | 01:03 | Let me turn on a couple more layers.
I'll go back to my Layer Control and I'm
| | 01:10 | going turn on these last three. This
shows me what we started with. This is the
| | 01:16 | inside face of the left side of my
bookshelf. Now we can see that I have
| | 01:21 | already offset the left and right edge
in, defined the columns where I'm going
| | 01:25 | to be drilling my holes. I have also
offset the top edge down and the bottom
| | 01:29 | edge up to define the area where
we are going to be drilling holes.
| | 01:34 | Let's zoom in right down here and we
can see that I have already created my
| | 01:38 | first circle. This guy has a radius of 5
.16th of an inch. Now I could copy this
| | 01:44 | circle to each location to represent
where I'm going to drilling my holes, but
| | 01:47 | that would be very time consuming.
Instead I'm going to use the Array command.
| | 01:51 | Now the Array command is located on the
Home tab of our ribbon. It's inside the
| | 01:55 | modify panel, and I'm going to click
this flyout to maximize the panel, and the
| | 02:00 | command is right here. When I
click this guy to launch the Array.
| | 02:05 | Now when it comes up on the screen,
I'm gong to be doing a rectangular array,
| | 02:08 | let's come over and select our objects
or click this icon, and then I'll grab
| | 02:12 | my circle. Let me right-click to return
to the dialog. Now on the columns area,
| | 02:18 | I'm going to set this to two. I want
two columns of holes. Let me come down to
| | 02:23 | column offset, how far apart do I want
my columns. I'm going to set this for 8
| | 02:28 | inches, because I want my columns to
be 8 inches apart, center to center.
| | 02:32 | Well, offset, let's set this to 2 inches,
this is how far apart I would like my
| | 02:38 | holes to be vertically. This means that
I will be able to adjust my shelves in
| | 02:42 | two-inch increments.
| | 02:43 | Now in the rows area, I didn't measure
that, I really don't know, ho many rows
| | 02:48 | and how sets of holes I need to fill
up my area. I'm going to set this to 15,
| | 02:53 | we'll just guess. When I'm going, I'm
going come down in click Preview. Now
| | 02:58 | here' s the problem.
| | 02:59 | In previous version of AutoCAD, I had
no way to panning or zooming during my
| | 03:03 | Preview to see how accurate my guess was.
Now in 2009, I can pan or zoom and I
| | 03:10 | could see my number wasn't that good.
That's all, I can go back to the dialog
| | 03:15 | box. If we take a look at the
command line; if I pick on screen or hit my
| | 03:18 | Escape key, I can return to the dialog.
| | 03:20 | Let me escape. Let's try a new number,
let's try 19. Once again I'm going to
| | 03:27 | click Preview, we'll back up and pan,
and I could see that works perfectly. I'm
| | 03:32 | going to go with that. Now that my
arrays finished, I'm going to right-click to
| | 03:36 | accept the array.
| | 03:37 | While Array command's new Preview
functionality may not be considered
| | 03:42 | groundbreaking, it was a welcome
improvement and one that's been long overdue.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Sharing drawings with DWFx| 00:00 | AutoCAD 2009 has enhanced the DWF file
to make it a more attractive choice for
| | 00:05 | drawing review. Generally speaking,
a DWF file is very similar to an Adobe
| | 00:09 | Acrobat PDF file. What we do is print
our drawings to DWF, which stands for
| | 00:14 | Design Web Format, and then we can e-mail
the DWF files to a client for their review.
| | 00:20 | In the old days, the biggest drawback
to the DWF file was that it required your
| | 00:24 | client to download a special viewer to
review or print your drawings. This is
| | 00:28 | no longer the case.
| | 00:30 | With the new DWFx file, anyone with
the current web browser can open or print
| | 00:34 | the drawings. Now the new DWFx
format is an enhancement to the DWF.
| | 00:40 | In AutoCAD 2009, every place where we
could use a DWF file, we can now use a
| | 00:45 | DWFx. For instance, when I'm plotting,
let me go to my Output tab, let me
| | 00:50 | select Publish. Notice in the dialog, I
can come down and select DWF format and
| | 00:57 | I have a choice between the old or
the new DWFx format, then close this.
| | 01:06 | If you're someone who references DWFx,
let me go to the Blocks and References
| | 01:10 | tab, I'm going to select the DWF option
and notice I can reference both the old
| | 01:16 | and the new format. Finally, if you're
someone who uses the DWF format for your
| | 01:23 | mark ups, let's look at that. I'm going
to go to my menu browser. I'm going to
| | 01:27 | come down and select tools, then I'm
going to move up and click on palettes.
| | 01:31 | I'm going to select Markup Set Manager.
| | 01:35 | Now with this guy up, I will click Open,
and we can see that we can use both
| | 01:41 | the old and the new format. I think
you get the idea. Let me close this, and
| | 01:46 | we'll get rid of the palette. Let's
open a drawing. I'm going to come up and
| | 01:50 | click my Open icon, and we're going to
look inside the Chapter 4 folder located
| | 01:57 | inside our Exercise Files directory
and I'd like to open up drawing number 5,
| | 02:02 | the Plan and Profile.
| | 02:03 | I want to highlight mine and come
over and click Open. Now what we see on
| | 02:08 | screen is a civil engineering example.
This happens to be a plan and profile
| | 02:12 | drawing and this is a concept design
for a proposed road that will connect two
| | 02:17 | existing roads. Now I would like to
shift this drawing to my client for the
| | 02:20 | review. Unfortunately, my client
doesn't have the special software to view DWF
| | 02:26 | files and he doesn't have a version of
AutoCAD, doesn't matter. I want to plot
| | 02:30 | this drawing to the new DWFx format
and then my client can view it in his
| | 02:34 | Internet Explorer.
| | 02:36 | To print this to a DWFx file, I'm
going to come up and click my Print button
| | 02:41 | and when the print dialog comes up, I'm
going to select from the drop-down DWFx
| | 02:46 | ePlot. This is the new format. Let me
select this guy and I will click OK.
| | 02:53 | I'm going to save this to my Exercise
Files folder. So I'm going to go to my
| | 02:59 | desktop, I'll go on Exercise Files and
we'll go inside Chapter 4. I will save
| | 03:04 | this guy right here. It's going to be
05_plan and profile.dwfx. I'm going to
| | 03:09 | click Save and AutoCAD creates the file.
| | 03:12 | Now that we've saved the file to the
DWFx format, let's open and view the file
| | 03:18 | the way our client would. I'm going to
bring up my Windows Explorer, I'm going
| | 03:21 | to go to the Desktop where we saved
the file. We'll go inside the Exercise
| | 03:27 | Files directory. We'll go inside
Chapter 4. Here's the drawing; this is the
| | 03:31 | DWDFx format. Let me right-click on
this guy and I'm going to select Open With,
| | 03:36 | and then I'm going to select Internet Explorer.
| | 03:40 | This will open the drawing within my
browser. Now I may have to select this guy
| | 03:44 | to contend with this active X control.
There we go and we maximize this on
| | 03:53 | screen and the drawing is now opened
within my browser. From here my client can
| | 03:57 | pan and zoom just like we can in
AutoCAD, if I hold my wheel down, I can pan
| | 04:01 | this drawing. If I roll my wheel
forward and backward, I can zoom in and out.
| | 04:05 | So my client has the ability to review
this drawing without having the need for
| | 04:09 | special viewer. He can also plot the
drawing as well or he can save it to a new
| | 04:14 | location on its machine.
| | 04:16 | It's being sent by Autodesk, the DWDFx
file is the future of the DWF. One thing
| | 04:21 | is certain, by eliminating the need
to have a special viewer. The new DWDFx
| | 04:25 | file gives us more options when we
need to send drawings to clients.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Importing and exporting DGN files| 00:00 | Anyone who has ever exchanged drawings
with a MicroStation user knows that the
| | 00:04 | conversion between an AutoCAD DWG
file and a MicroStation DGN file is never
| | 00:09 | perfect. AutoCAD 2009 makes the
process easier by allowing us to import and
| | 00:14 | export MicroStation DGN files. AutoCAD
2009 now supports both the V8 and the
| | 00:20 | version 7 DGN file.
| | 00:22 | Let's import a DGN. I can do that by
coming up to my menu browser. I'm going to
| | 00:27 | click, I'm going to select File and
then I'm going to come over and select
| | 00:31 | Import. Now in the Import File dialog
I want you to come down and check in the
| | 00:37 | files of type, let's set this guy to
DGN. Then we are going to look inside of
| | 00:43 | our Exercise Files folder, we are
going to go into the Chapter 4 folder and
| | 00:51 | we'll open up this DGN file, this
microstation-detail. Let me highlight this
| | 00:54 | guy and we'll click Open. Now notice
the drawing doesn't come directly in
| | 00:59 | that's because there are differences
between the DGN format and the DWG format.
| | 01:04 | This Import dialog box allows us
to reconcile those differences.
| | 01:09 | Let's look at the left side first; up
at the top it's asking us to select a
| | 01:12 | design model from the DGN file,
currently we just see Default. You may see more
| | 01:17 | entries here depending on the DGN file
you're opening. Think of it this way, a
| | 01:21 | DGN file cannot support layouts but
it does support multiple Model space
| | 01:26 | environments; coming down a little
bit lower, this is how I can resolve
| | 01:30 | External references. What do I want to
do with them? Do I want to translate the
| | 01:33 | references to DWGs? Do I want to ignore
the external references or do I want to
| | 01:38 | attach these as DGN underlays? In this
case I don't have any references, so I'm
| | 01:42 | going to move on.
| | 01:44 | Let's come down to Conversion units;
now a MicroStation drawing contains two
| | 01:48 | unit settings, an AutoCAD drawing
contains one. So what we have to do here is
| | 01:52 | establish which one of the MicroStation
unit settings we want to use. Generally
| | 01:56 | speaking, do I want 1 unit to equal 1
foot or do I want 1 unit to equal 1 inch?
| | 02:01 | I'm going to leave this guy set as it
is and if I come down to the bottom, the
| | 02:05 | last thing Explode text nodes to text
elements; generally you want to keep this
| | 02:10 | unchecked. This will convert your
MicroStation text entities into AutoCAD
| | 02:15 | multiline text entities. In the event
your DGN file contains Arc Aligned Text,
| | 02:21 | you may want to check this box such
that what you open in AutoCAD is more
| | 02:24 | faithful in appearance to the DGN file.
| | 02:27 | So essentially I'm leaving all at the
defaults, I'm going to come over and
| | 02:30 | click OK. When I do, AutoCAD opens
the DGN file on screen. Now let's take a
| | 02:36 | look at this guy, I'm going to move up
and now I'm going to click this entity,
| | 02:40 | I can see that's forced to be a Color,
it's on a Layer called 19, it's forced
| | 02:44 | to be a Linetype. Let me hit Esc,
we'll click another entity. Let me click, I
| | 02:49 | can see this guy is forced to be Green,
it's on a Layer called 35 and has a
| | 02:52 | Linetype forced on it of Continuous.
| | 02:55 | Now this isn't horrible, I'm not
complaining because I was able to open the DGN
| | 02:59 | file. Let's try and open the file
again and let's see if we can automatically
| | 03:03 | convert it to our office standards. I'm
going to close this and let's bring it
| | 03:10 | in again, to do that I'm going to
come up to the menu browser, I'm going to
| | 03:14 | come down to Recent Actions and I'm
going to select File, Import. Let's grab
| | 03:21 | the microstation-detail and we'll click Open.
| | 03:24 | Now we have already talked about the
settings over here, in fact we haven't
| | 03:27 | touched these at all. Let's talk about
the area over here; this is where I can
| | 03:31 | control the translation between the DGN
properties and my DWG properties. Let's
| | 03:37 | take a look at these tabs, notice I
have one called Layer. The tabs are divided
| | 03:41 | into columns; I have got the DGN
settings on the left and the DWG settings on
| | 03:45 | the right. Based on the default settings,
I can see that everything that's on a
| | 03:49 | DGN Layer 19, it's going to be
translated to the AutoCAD Layer 19 and so on all
| | 03:54 | the way down the list. If I click the
tabs, I can also see how Linetypes are
| | 03:58 | going to be translated, Lineweights and Colors.
| | 04:04 | So what we see in these tabs is a
representation of the default settings. Now I
| | 04:08 | don't want to use the default settings,
that's what we just used when we opened
| | 04:11 | the drawing a minute ago. I want to
create my own custom translation file
| | 04:15 | that's what this Mapping Setups button
is for. Let me click this button and I'm
| | 04:20 | going to give this a name, I'm going
to click New and I'm going to call my
| | 04:23 | Mapping Setup Fred the surveyor.
| | 04:30 | Let's assume that I get several
drawings from Fred the surveyor and Fred
| | 04:33 | happens to use MicroStation. Now this
is going to be an Import, Mapping type.
| | 04:37 | It's going to be going from the DGN to
AutoCAD. When I click Continue, notice I
| | 04:41 | now have access to the tabs. Now here
is the trick, I can only modify things on
| | 04:47 | the right side. Since we are on the
Layer tab, I can come through and I can
| | 04:52 | control how AutoCAD translates from
DGN to DWG. Right now everything on DGN
| | 04:58 | Layer 19 is going to be translated to
-- let me click here, let me click the
| | 05:03 | flyout and I can choose a Layer name.
Notice I don't have very many choices;
| | 05:08 | man it would be real nice if I had my
standard detail layers available in this
| | 05:13 | list, that's what this button is for.
| | 05:16 | I can use this button to load
properties from an existing DWG file. Let's do
| | 05:20 | that, I'm going to click the button,
when the dialog comes up we are going to
| | 05:25 | go into the Exercise Files folder, I'm
going to go inside chapter_04 and I have
| | 05:34 | got a folder in here called dwg
templates. This is where I save a drawing that
| | 05:38 | contains the Layer standards for my
details. Let me open this up and I'm going
| | 05:43 | to grab detail template. Let me select
Open and AutoCAD will now append my DWG
| | 05:49 | settings to the bottom of the list.
Unfortunately, it also adds them to the
| | 05:53 | left side, which is technically
incorrect. These layers do not exist in the
| | 05:57 | DGN, no matter we'll press on --
okay as far as my DGN file is concerned
| | 06:03 | everything on Layer 19 I would like to
place on -- let me click the drop down.
| | 06:07 | Here is the problem; I don't know what
Fred the surveyor puts on Layer 19. This
| | 06:13 | is the time when I have to call Fred
and say hey can you fax me over a copy of
| | 06:16 | your CAD standards. Let's assume that I
have done that, I have called Fred and
| | 06:20 | he's faxed over a list of those layer
names and what he puts on each layer.
| | 06:24 | Let's do the translation, on Layer 19,
Fred typically puts his BORDER, so I
| | 06:28 | will select BORDER. Let me widen this
guy up a little bit; on Layer 20, Fred
| | 06:35 | usually puts his BREAK LINES. Layer 21,
this is what Fred uses for TEXT. So I'm
| | 06:42 | just going to go through and I'm just
translating from his drawing to mine.
| | 06:47 | Layer 22 uses DIMENSIONS, 24
is where Fred puts his HATCH.
| | 06:55 | Now this can be a time consuming
process the first time through, but once you
| | 06:59 | have created your translation you can
then convert the file in one step. Let's
| | 07:04 | finish this up; Layer 25 is where Fred
puts any HIDDEN lines, 29 is where he
| | 07:12 | puts his PART geometry and then lastly
Layer 35 is where Fred puts TABLE if he
| | 07:17 | happens to have one. Now one
important thing to note, all I'm doing in this
| | 07:23 | translation is I'm renaming Fred's
layers, that's it. Man it would be so nice
| | 07:27 | if I was moving Fred's entities onto
my layers using their settings. I wish
| | 07:32 | that was the case, unfortunately
it's not. All I'm doing is renaming the layers.
| | 07:35 | Let's move to the Linetype tab, from
here I can see the Linetypes that are in
| | 07:41 | the DGN file, from here I can click in
the DWG column and I can select or load
| | 07:46 | a DWG Linetype. I can also go through
into the same thing for Lineweights. I
| | 07:51 | can see some of these guys have already
been automatically assigned. I can also
| | 07:55 | come down and use the Color tab; this
will translate DGN colors to DWG colors.
| | 08:00 | I may wonder how to add a color
here; it's a little eluded, we better
| | 08:04 | right-click and select Add Color. In
this case, I can type number 1, let me
| | 08:11 | click over in this field and it's
going to be set to Red. By default any
| | 08:15 | MicroStation color, 1 is going to equal
to Red, 2 is going to equal Yellow but
| | 08:19 | it's going to translate to the same
numbers or colors in AutoCAD. The only time
| | 08:22 | we would use this option is if we wanted
our colors to be different in the translation.
| | 08:27 | Now one important thing to note,
these three tabs only convert forced
| | 08:31 | properties that are on your entities.
So if you're someone who uses the ByLayer
| | 08:35 | property and the appearance of your
objects is dictated by the layer, these
| | 08:39 | last three tabs really don't matter to
you. Let me go back and click on Layer
| | 08:43 | 1, this is actually the most important.
When I'm all done with my translation,
| | 08:46 | I'm going to come down and click OK. I
have just created a new Mapping Setup
| | 08:51 | called Fred the Surveyor. Let me
click Close, this guy is now current. I'm
| | 08:55 | going to come down and click OK and
this will import the drawing using our new setup.
| | 09:04 | Notice the drawings come into AutoCAD,
let me click on an entity and we'll take
| | 09:07 | a look at it. If I click this, I can
see it's on the appropriate Layer, that's
| | 09:11 | perfect but unfortunately it's still
forced to have a Color and a Linetype. Let
| | 09:17 | me hit Esc to clear the grips. Let's
click the table; I can see this guy is on
| | 09:22 | the appropriate Layer, that's good.
Let's use a rollover tooltip, let me hover
| | 09:26 | over this object. I can see this guy
happens to be on the PART Layer. So
| | 09:29 | everything translated on the
appropriate Layer, unfortunately they are not set
| | 09:33 | to my office standards.
| | 09:35 | Let me show you a quick way that we can
finish translating this file. I'm going
| | 09:38 | to highlight all these geometry, just
by making a window, we'll right-click and
| | 09:45 | we'll select Copy. Now I'm going to
open a drawing, let's go into our dwg
| | 09:52 | templates folder and we'll grab the
detail template drawing. Remember this is
| | 09:56 | the drawing that contains all of the
Layers that I typically use for details.
| | 10:02 | Now that I'm in the other drawing, I'm
going to right-click and I'm going to
| | 10:05 | select Paste to Original Coordinates.
Let me do zoom extends to see my geometry
| | 10:12 | and then lastly, now that I have got
the geometry into a drawing, it's on the
| | 10:15 | appropriate layer and all the
Layers in this drawing are set correctly.
| | 10:19 | Let's finish up by converting the
properties of all of these guys to ByLayer. I
| | 10:23 | can do that by going to my Modify panel
inside the Home tab. We will click the
| | 10:27 | flyout and I'm going to come right
down here and click the Set to ByLayer
| | 10:31 | command. Let me click that and AutoCAD
says Select objects, I will type all,
| | 10:36 | Enter, Enter. Change ByBlock to ByLayer
? Yes, this will convert entities even
| | 10:42 | if they are inside MicroStation blocks
and do I want to include blocks? Yes, I do.
| | 10:48 | Okay, now the drawing is fully
converted to my office standards. Well, it's not
| | 10:52 | a completely instantaneous transition;
if we have saved a Mapping Setup we can
| | 10:56 | convert these files rather quickly.
I want to show you one more thing, in
| | 11:00 | addition to bringing in drawings from
MicroStation; we can also export our
| | 11:04 | AutoCAD drawings to MicroStation. Let
me come up and click the menu browser,
| | 11:08 | I'm going to come down to File, I'm
going to come over and down to Export. Once
| | 11:14 | again in the Files of type area, I
will click the drop down and we'll select
| | 11:19 | DGN. We can determine which version we
want to use, the more current V8 version
| | 11:24 | or the older V7 version. Let me click
Save, when I do this brings up the Export
| | 11:30 | DGN Settings dialog.
| | 11:32 | Notice this right side is very similar.
The only difference being it's going
| | 11:36 | the other direction, I'm going from
DWG to DGN that means that I can create a
| | 11:41 | Mapping Setup that will convert my DWG
properties to the DGN properties that
| | 11:46 | Fred needs. One last thing, let's look
at this left side. Since we are going
| | 11:50 | from DWG to DGN now, we have got a
couple of things to consider; external
| | 11:55 | reference files, what do I want to do
with them. Do I want to translate them?
| | 11:58 | Do I want to bind them? Or do I want to
ignore them? Do I have any external DGN
| | 12:02 | references attached to my DWG? What do
I want to do with those? Do I want to
| | 12:06 | export those or not?
| | 12:08 | Lastly, probably the most important,
since I'm going to a DGN file, I need to
| | 12:11 | specify a seed file. In MicroStation, a
Seed file is like an AutoCAD template.
| | 12:17 | Every MicroStation drawing has to
start from a template and the template is
| | 12:20 | called the Seed. Let me click the drop
down, pretty easy choices, are we doing
| | 12:25 | Imperial or are we doing Metric? Once
we have chosen that, are we doing a 2D
| | 12:30 | drawing or a 3D drawing? So we can
choose the appropriate seed and then we can
| | 12:34 | choose our units. Do we want the
AutoCAD units to be translated to
| | 12:38 | MicroStation's Master or Sub units?
| | 12:42 | In this case I'm going to click Cancel
to close the dialog. Converting drawings
| | 12:47 | between MicroStation and AutoCAD will
never be a perfect science, that being
| | 12:50 | said, AutoCAD 2009's improved DGN
support has made it much easier to
| | 12:55 | collaborate and exchange
drawings with MicroStation.
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| Exploring additional tool changes| 00:00 | I'd like to take this opportunity to
run through a couple of noteworthy tool
| | 00:03 | changes in AutoCAD 2009. Now none of
these changes were significant enough for
| | 00:08 | its own video, but I felt these
changes were worth mentioning. So I put them
| | 00:11 | all together into this session.
Let's start by creating a new drawing.
| | 00:14 | I'm going to come up and click my New
icon and we'll start by using the acad
| | 00:20 | template. This is the standard AutoCAD
template. Now within my AutoCAD drawing,
| | 00:26 | let's bring up our Text Style Manger.
I'm going to click the dropdown,
| | 00:30 | I'm going to click Text Style.
Noteworthy change #1. Notice the standard text
| | 00:36 | style, in AutoCAD is now assigned to
the Arial font. Never again can we say
| | 00:40 | that the default text in AutoCAD is
as ugly as it gets, because now it's
| | 00:44 | assigned a true type font.
| | 00:46 | Let me close this, and let's open a
drawing. I'm going to come up and click
| | 00:52 | Open and we are going to go inside the
Exercise Files folder, we are going to
| | 00:57 | look inside the Chapter 4 folder and
we are going to look at the number 7 the
| | 01:02 | soft drink can. So I'll
highlight that guy, and we'll click Open.
| | 01:06 | Now this drawing contains a couple of
clipped viewports. Let me trun on my
| | 01:10 | Viewports Layer, just like I'll show
you what I mean, I'm going come up click
| | 01:13 | the Layer control, and I'm going to
come down and turn on the Viewport layer.
| | 01:17 | Let me click on the light bulb and
then we'll click again on the layout.
| | 01:21 | Now I can see my viewport edge. What I
have done is I have created a clipped
| | 01:25 | viewport. Notice as I pan this over,
my screen gets messed up a little bit.
| | 01:30 | Sometimes that happens, depending on
your video card. Let's fix this, this
| | 01:34 | little sidebar here. If I want to fix
my view on screen, what I want to do is a
| | 01:38 | regen all. I can do that by coming up
and clicking on my menu browse. I'm going
| | 01:43 | to come down to View and I'm going to select
Regen All, and then I'll clean up my screen.
| | 01:48 | Now this is a clipped viewport. Once
again, I clipped this so I would have a
| | 01:51 | little bit of space from my text. I'm
going to click the viewport edge. Let me
| | 01:55 | do that. Noteworthy tool change #2,
clipped viewports now display information
| | 02:02 | in the Property Changer. I have
clipped the viewport edge and my Property
| | 02:06 | Changer is smart enough to give me the
settings for the viewport. In previous
| | 02:09 | versions of AutoCAD, we would usually
see this all two, because there is a
| | 02:15 | viewport and a clipping boundary there,
and in previous versions of AutoCAD, it
| | 02:18 | was always default to selecting both
objects. In AutoCAD 2009, it'd be false to
| | 02:24 | selecting the viewport. So that's kind
of handy. Let me hit Escape to clear the grips.
| | 02:30 | Our final noteworthy change has to do
with the eTransmit command. I'm going to
| | 02:35 | launch that by going to my Output
tab and selecting eTransmit. Notice the
| | 02:39 | dialog that comes up. The current
drawing is not saved, do you want to save the
| | 02:43 | drawing. In AutoCAD 2009, I no longer
have to save the rawing, before I do an
| | 02:47 | eTransmit. You know what? No, I don't
want to save the drawing, and you click No.
| | 02:52 | One more change to eTransmit, if we go
into the Transmittal Setup area, and I
| | 02:57 | modify an existing transmittal setup, I
now hae an option to purge the drawings
| | 03:03 | when I'm making my transmittal. This
will insure that the transmittal file that
| | 03:06 | I'm sending via email is as small as
it possibly can be. So once again that's
| | 03:11 | another touch, another nice feature
added to the software. I'll come up and
| | 03:15 | close the box, and we'll dismiss
these guys to get back to our layout.
| | 03:22 | Even though these change we have just
looked at are relatively minor, sometimes
| | 03:26 | the smallest change may make a big difference
to someone who needs that functionality.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. New Visualization ToolsManipulating 3D views with the ViewCube| 00:00 | To efficiently work in 3D, you need to
know how to quickly manipulate your view
| | 00:04 | around your objects. AutoCAD 2009
makes viewing three-dimensional parts much
| | 00:08 | simpler by using the new View Cube.
Let's open a drawing. I'm going to come up
| | 00:12 | and click Open, we are going to go
inside of our Exercise Files directory where
| | 00:17 | we'll look inside the Chapter 5
folder and I would like you to open up the
| | 00:20 | number one drawing, the brick character.
Let me highlight this guy and we'll click Open.
| | 00:28 | Now, what we see on screen is an
example of a three-dimensional AutoCAD
| | 00:31 | drawing. This guy was created using
3D solid objects. Since this is a 3D
| | 00:36 | example, I'm going to load the 3D
Workspace. I can do that by coming down and
| | 00:41 | clicking on the Workspace Gear and I'm
going to select 3D Modeling. This will
| | 00:46 | populate my ribbon with tools
that are appropriate for 3D.
| | 00:50 | Now, I don't need this palette, so
I'm going to come up and click the X to
| | 00:53 | close this guy. I don't need the
Steering Wheel over on the left side of the
| | 00:58 | screen, so let's turn that guy off.
Let me move over, this is the first time
| | 01:01 | this guy has been launched, so let me
hover over the top. I'm going to click on
| | 01:04 | the tool and we'll click this X. We
will talk about the Steering Wheel feature
| | 01:08 | in the next video.
| | 01:09 | Now, since we are in a 3D environment,
we can see something on screen that we
| | 01:13 | haven't seen before. This is
AutoCAD's new View Cube over here on the upper
| | 01:16 | right-hand corner. Now, this guy can
be turned on and off and the toggle for
| | 01:21 | him is located in the View panel, it's
right here. If I click the icon, it goes
| | 01:25 | away; click it again, it comes back.
| | 01:27 | Now, when it's inactive state, the
View Cube is semitransparent; it's just
| | 01:31 | waiting to be used. If I place my
cursor over the cube, it becomes opaque and I
| | 01:35 | now have access to these hot spots. If
I click on a hot spot, AutoCAD will take
| | 01:40 | me to that view in space. I'll click
another one, I will click another one.
| | 01:46 | Changing our view is now more
intuitive than ever. If I select the view
| | 01:52 | slightly above my part, we can see
the compass beneath the cube. Even the
| | 01:56 | points on the compass are hot spots; I
can click these hot spots as well to go
| | 02:01 | to these specific views.
| | 02:02 | Let's take a look at the Face view.
If I move my cursor into the face of my
| | 02:06 | cube, I get a large hot spot. Let me
click this, this gives me a Front view.
| | 02:10 | When I'm in a Face view, AutoCAD will
bring up additional triangles that will
| | 02:14 | allow me to jump to an adjacent face.
Also, when I'm in a Face view, I have
| | 02:20 | access to these arrows; each click on
the arrow rotates my view on screen. The
| | 02:26 | View Cube believe and act similar to
the Orbit command. If I move into the cube
| | 02:30 | and click and hold and move my mouse,
I can adjust my view dynamically. Now,
| | 02:38 | adjusting our view around our part
is more intuitive than it's ever been.
| | 02:41 | Let's take a look at this little House
icon. This guy represents a Home view.
| | 02:45 | Let me click this guy. A Home view is
a saved view in space. Now by default,
| | 02:51 | AutoCAD sets the Home view to a
southwest isometric view. Personally, I would
| | 02:55 | rather have a southeast isometric
view for my home. Let's make that change.
| | 03:00 | If I come over to my cube, I'm going to
click the corner that would represent a
| | 03:03 | southeast isometric view. Let me set
that guy Current. Now, I'm going to
| | 03:07 | right-click on the cube and select
Set Current View as Home. Now, no matter
| | 03:13 | where I'm, I can come up and click my
Home icon to go back to that saved view.
| | 03:19 | If I look beneath the cube, I can
see an icon that I can use to create
| | 03:23 | coordinate systems. Currently, since
this is WCS, I can see that we are at the
| | 03:27 | World Coordinate System.
| | 03:29 | Let me click the drop-down and I'm
going to select New UCS. Let's create a UCS
| | 03:34 | on the face of this wrench. Now, right
now, AutoCAD is looking for the origin
| | 03:37 | of my UCS, let me zoom-in, let me zoom-
in the pane over here a little bit. I'm
| | 03:43 | going to grab the endpoint right here.
Now, I need to specify a point on the
| | 03:47 | x-axis, I will grab the endpoint right
here. Now, I need to specify a point on
| | 03:51 | the xy-plane, I'm just going to grab
a point right here. Now, we have just
| | 03:57 | defined a UCS on this face of the wrench.
Notice my View Cube; the View Cube is
| | 04:02 | now oriented to the new UCS. That
means if I would like a Top view of that
| | 04:06 | face, I can come over and click the Top
hot spot. If I would like a right-side
| | 04:11 | view of that face, I can click this triangle.
| | 04:15 | Watch this, even though I'm using a
different UCS, if I come up and click my
| | 04:19 | Home icon, AutoCAD will still take me
to my saved view in space. Let's go back
| | 04:23 | to the World Coordinate System. I'm
going to come down and click the fly-out
| | 04:27 | and select WCS. Let's look at some of
the settings that are associated with our
| | 04:32 | View Cube. If I place my cursor over
the View Cube and right-click, this is
| | 04:36 | where I have access to the Parallel and
Perspective projections. We have a new
| | 04:40 | one in 2009 called Perspective with
Ortho Faces and what this does is it
| | 04:45 | maintains a perspective view unless I
happened to be view in my part from a
| | 04:49 | perpendicular direction then it
will revert to a parallel projection.
| | 04:53 | Let me show you what I mean. Right now
we are set to Perspective, I'm going to
| | 04:57 | come over, I'm going to click a Front
view. Let me push my guy over to the
| | 05:02 | left. Now, I'm going to right-click
on the cube and let's set this for
| | 05:07 | Perspective with Ortho Faces and watch
how it changes. Notice, he is now a true
| | 05:12 | perpendicular projection. If I
flip to another view, he goes back to
| | 05:16 | perspective; if I flip back to the
Front view, he snaps back to a parallel
| | 05:21 | projection.
| | 05:23 | So, using this option will always
guarantee if I'm viewing perpendicular, it
| | 05:27 | will be a parallel projection. Let's
come down to ViewCube Settings. I will
| | 05:31 | select this option. This brings up a
dialog that allows me to make changes
| | 05:34 | the way my cube functions. Right up
here is where I can control the display;
| | 05:38 | right now, it is in the top right
side of my screen. I can also control his
| | 05:41 | size as well as his opacity. Do I want
to show the UCS menu beneath the cube?
| | 05:47 | The lower half of the dialog
contains several self-explanatory settings. If
| | 05:50 | you do have any questions about how
these work, simply place your cursor over
| | 05:53 | the setting and AutoCAD will bring up
the help in the form of a tooltip. If
| | 05:57 | more information is
necessary, simply hit your F1 key.
| | 06:00 | I'm going to come up and dismiss the
dialog by clicking the X. AutoCAD's new
| | 06:05 | View Cube simplifies the viewing of
our 3D geometry and makes working in 3D
| | 06:09 | much more intuitive.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Navigating with SteeringWheels| 00:00 | AutoCAD drawings can go way beyond
the simple three-dimensional part.
| | 00:04 | It's quite possible for an AutoCAD
drawing to contain a 3D model of an office
| | 00:07 | building or a shopping mall or maybe
even an entire airport. Using the new
| | 00:12 | Steering Wheels features in AutoCAD 2009,
we can easily navigate our way around
| | 00:16 | in larger three-dimensional spaces.
| | 00:18 | Now, I have got a drawing on screen. If
you would like to open this drawing and
| | 00:22 | work along with me, you can find this
drawing inside the Chapter 5 folder
| | 00:26 | inside your Exercise Files directory
and this guy is the number two drawing,
| | 00:30 | the log fort. Now, this drawing is an
example of a 3D AutoCAD drawing, so I'm
| | 00:35 | going to load the 3D workspace. I can
do that by coming down and clicking on my
| | 00:39 | Workspace Gear and I'm going to
select 3D Modeling from the menu.
| | 00:45 | Now, my ribbon is using tools that are
appropriate for 3D work. I don't need this
| | 00:50 | palette; let me close this, when I come
up and click the X to make that guy go away.
| | 00:53 | Now, this drawing is quite a bit
larger than a single object. So, what I'm
| | 00:57 | going to do is I'm going to use a
Steering Wheel to navigate my way around this
| | 01:01 | drawing. Now, we can find the Steering
Wheel feature right up here in our View
| | 01:04 | panel of our ribbon. It's also located
down here in our Status bar and it can
| | 01:10 | be launched by right-clicking and
selecting Steering Wheels from the menu;
| | 01:14 | very easy to use this feature. I'm going
to launch it from here, I'm going to go
| | 01:17 | ahead and click to bring up the tool.
Notice, when the tool comes up if I move
| | 01:21 | my cursor around, this tool will follow
me wherever I go. It will never leave my side.
| | 01:27 | The Steering Wheel tool itself is
divided up into eight wedges. Each wedge
| | 01:31 | represents an AutoCAD tool and to use
the tool what I will do is I will place
| | 01:35 | my cursor in the wedge and I will click
and hold. Let's do the Zoom tool first.
| | 01:40 | I'm going to click and hold and I'm
going to move my cursor forward and back
| | 01:44 | and notice, I'm zooming in and out on
this drawing. Now, the quality of the
| | 01:48 | motion that you see on your screen is
directly proportional to the quality of
| | 01:51 | your video card and the speed of your processor.
| | 01:53 | Let me release my mouse button. Let me
come down, we'll try the Pan tool. Once
| | 01:58 | again, I'm going to move into the
wedge, click and hold, and as I move my
| | 02:02 | cursor, I'm panning this drawing. Let
me release the mouse button. Let's try
| | 02:06 | Orbit. I'm going to click and hold,
I'm now orbiting this drawing around that
| | 02:12 | pivot point. I'm going to release my
button. Now, those three commands are
| | 02:17 | pretty standard; we have used those
before. Let's try a new one. I'm going to
| | 02:20 | try the Center command. Let me click
and hold to access this tool and notice, I
| | 02:25 | get a circle with a line through it.
That's because what I'm doing is I'm
| | 02:27 | establishing a center point or a
pivot point in this drawing and I can only
| | 02:32 | establish that on top of an existing part.
| | 02:35 | So, I'm still holding my mouse button
down, let me place this on top of the 3D
| | 02:38 | object. Notice, I get my pivot ball, I
will then release my mouse button and
| | 02:43 | the drawing is centered on that point.
Since I have placed the pivot, let me
| | 02:47 | come over and we'll launch the Orbit
command again. If I move into this wedge
| | 02:50 | and click and hold, notice, I can
orbit the drawing around that new pivot point.
| | 02:58 | Probably the greatest strength of the
Steering Wheels is that they give us the
| | 03:02 | ability to do a walk through. Let's try
that. Now, before I do my walk through,
| | 03:06 | I want to adjust my view and space.
Currently, I'm above my fort looking down,
| | 03:10 | I would like to be down on the ground
before I start my walk through. I can do
| | 03:13 | that by right-clicking on the Steering
Wheel tool and selecting Level Camera.
| | 03:19 | This levels my camera; I now have a
more appropriate view for a walk through.
| | 03:23 | Let's try using the Walk tool. If I
click and hold on the Walk tool, AutoCAD
| | 03:27 | brings up a blue disk at the bottom of
the screen and this represents my point
| | 03:30 | of reference. As I move my cursor, the
farther I get away from the blue disk
| | 03:35 | the faster I will walk. And as I
take and move my cursor, I can steer my
| | 03:40 | direction. Let's walk right through the
front door, I want to slow down, so I'm
| | 03:44 | going to back up to the disk and
then I will release the button.
| | 03:48 | Once again, the quality of what you see
on your screen is directly proportional
| | 03:51 | to the speed of your processor and
your video card. Now that I'm inside the
| | 03:54 | fort, let's try another tool; let's
try the Look tool. This allows us to look
| | 03:58 | around. I'm not going to move at all;
I'm just going to be turning my head in
| | 04:00 | space. I will move into the wedge and I
will click and hold and then as I move
| | 04:04 | my cursor, I can look around my drawing.
| | 04:12 | Let's try the Up Down tool. If I move
into this wedge and click and hold, I get
| | 04:17 | a slider. If I push up or down, I can
adjust the elevation of my view. Probably
| | 04:24 | the most powerful tool in the Steering
Wheel is the Rewind tool. If I click and
| | 04:28 | hold on this guy, I can see that
AutoCAD has been maintaining a history of
| | 04:32 | where I have been. If I drag my cursor
left and right, I can back through my
| | 04:36 | progress in this drawing and I can
stop at any point and AutoCAD will leave
| | 04:40 | that view on the screen. This could
be a fantastic tool when you're doing a
| | 04:43 | walk through, you can back out of the
living room and back into the kitchen,
| | 04:46 | you can move forward into another
room. You can also use it to restore a
| | 04:50 | previous location in space such
that you can work on your drawing.
| | 04:53 | I'm going to click Rewind again and
I'm going to move forward until we are
| | 04:56 | inside the fort and I will release. Now,
what we see on screen is considered
| | 05:00 | the full steering wheel; this guy has
all of the tools. If I come over and
| | 05:04 | click this fly- out, this brings up the
Wheel menu. What we are using right now
| | 05:10 | is the Full Navigation Wheel. Notice,
I also have a Basic Wheels option; this
| | 05:15 | allows me to choose between the View
Object Wheel and the Tour Building Wheel.
| | 05:19 | Let's select the View Object; exact
same concept, just fewer tools. I would use
| | 05:25 | this steering wheel if I was manipulating
my view around a 3D object, something small.
| | 05:29 | Once again, I'm going to bring up the
menu. Let's go to Basic Wheels and we'll
| | 05:33 | select Tour Building Wheel. This is
the steering wheel that I could use if I
| | 05:37 | was concerned only about doing a walk
through. We have seen these commands
| | 05:41 | before, the only one we haven't
addressed is the Forward command. If I want to
| | 05:44 | launch the Forward command, I will move
into the wedge, click and hold, notice,
| | 05:48 | I get the circle with the line through
it again. That's because I can only walk
| | 05:52 | towards a 3D object. Let me release
my mouse, let me move up, I'm going to
| | 05:58 | click right here and hold and now AutoCAD
recognizes, oh, he is walking towards something.
| | 06:02 | If I move my cursor forward or back, I
can adjust my position. Let me release
| | 06:10 | my mouse to dismiss the tool. One more
time, we are going to go to the menu,
| | 06:13 | let me open this open. In addition to
the Full and the Basic Wheels, I also
| | 06:17 | have Mini versions of the Full Wheel
and the Basic Wheels. Let's launch the
| | 06:23 | Mini Full Navigation Wheel. When
I click this, I get the exact same
| | 06:27 | functionality just in a much smaller
space. As you become more proficient with
| | 06:32 | the steering wheels, you may want to
use a Mini Wheel just because it takes up
| | 06:35 | less space on your screen.
| | 06:37 | Now, if I want to bring up the Wheel
menu when I'm using a small wheel, I can
| | 06:40 | right-click and I can choose another
setting. Let's come down and see how we
| | 06:44 | can control how our steering wheels work.
I'm going to select the SteeringWheel
| | 06:48 | Settings option. This brings up a great,
big dialog box. Over here on the upper
| | 06:53 | left, I can control how my big wheels
look both the size and the opacity. I can
| | 06:57 | do the same thing for my Mini Wheels.
If I come down here, I can control the
| | 07:01 | speed at which I walk. If I come down
here, I can control how my thumbnails are
| | 07:06 | handled. If you have any questions
about any of the settings in this dialog,
| | 07:10 | simply place your cursor over the
setting and AutoCAD will give you more
| | 07:12 | information. I'm going to move up to
click the X to dismiss this dialog.
| | 07:18 | Steering Wheels give us more
flexibility when working in larger
| | 07:21 | three-dimensional environments.
Adjusting our view around our drawing or
| | 07:24 | simulating a walk through is made
simple by having all of the necessary
| | 07:28 | commands on a single tool.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating presentations with ShowMotion| 00:00 | In previous versions of AutoCAD, there
was never a good way to show off your
| | 00:03 | work. We could create some screen
shots using the MSLIDE command, but playing
| | 00:08 | them back required writing
complicated script files.
| | 00:11 | With AutoCAD 2009, we can create custom
slideshows that include transitions and
| | 00:16 | animations. Now, I have got a drawing
open on screen. If you would like to open
| | 00:19 | the same drawing, this guy is located
inside the Chapter 5 folder inside our
| | 00:23 | Exercise Files directory. This
drawing is called number 3, brick character.
| | 00:28 | Now, I would like to create a
presentation inside AutoCAD that highlights this
| | 00:32 | drawing. I can do that by using the
new ShowMotion command. Now that tool is
| | 00:36 | located right down here in the Status
bar. Let me come down and click the icon
| | 00:39 | to bring the tool up on screen.
| | 00:41 | Now, when the tool first comes up, all
we see is the control panel. We will use
| | 00:46 | this control panel to create and play
our saved shots. Let's create a saved
| | 00:50 | shot of what we see on screen. I'm
going to come down and click my New Shot
| | 00:54 | icon to bring up the dialog. Now,
when this guy comes up on screen, he looks
| | 00:58 | very similar to the saved view dialog.
That's because it is the same thing.
| | 01:03 | If I click the View Properties tab,
you will see it's identical. There is no
| | 01:06 | magic to creating a saved shot; all we
are doing is creating a saved view. We
| | 01:11 | set this back to Shot Properties and
I'm going to come up and give my saved
| | 01:15 | view a name. I'm going to call this SE
Iso because that's approximately what we
| | 01:21 | are seeing on screen.
| | 01:22 | I can organize my views into categories.
I'm going to create a category called
| | 01:27 | boring still shots. Let me come down
to View type. I'm going to select the
| | 01:33 | drop-down, and I'm going to click Still.
I would like to create a nice still image.
| | 01:37 | If we come down into the Shot
Properties tab, if we look in the transition
| | 01:40 | area, I can see a setting that will
allow me to control how we transition into
| | 01:44 | our slide. Right now, this guy is set
to Fade from black into this shot. I'm
| | 01:48 | going to leave that alone. Let's come
down to the Motion area and I'm going to
| | 01:52 | set the Duration for 2 seconds. Let's
click Preview to take a look at our saved shot.
| | 01:57 | Now, the quality of the fade that you
see on screen is going to be directly
| | 02:02 | proportional to the quality of your
video card and the speed of your processor.
| | 02:06 | Let me click OK to save this shot.
| | 02:10 | Now that I have a saved shot, AutoCAD
is giving me a preview that represents my
| | 02:15 | View category and just above the
preview, I will see any view that has been
| | 02:19 | associated with that category. Now,
these previews that we see on the screen
| | 02:24 | are quite large, I would like to resize
these. To do that, I'm going to use the
| | 02:28 | Control key on my keyboard.
| | 02:29 | The first thing I'm going to do is,
I'm going to click this preview to select
| | 02:32 | it. Then I'm going to hold down my
Control key and I'm going to roll my mouse
| | 02:36 | wheel backwards to make these previews
smaller. Now, I'd like to have these as
| | 02:40 | small as possible.
| | 02:43 | Let's create another saved view. I'm
going to adjust my view on screen. Let me
| | 02:46 | come up and we'll set this to a right-
side view. Let's save this. Once again,
| | 02:50 | I'm going to come down and click the
New Shot icon. View name, I'm going to
| | 02:55 | call this Right Side. We will
associate this with our boring still shots
| | 02:59 | category. View type, let me set this
for Still, and in the Shot Properties
| | 03:04 | area, let's change the transition;
let's see what else we have. I'm going to
| | 03:07 | click the drop-down and I'm going to
select Fade from white into this shot.
| | 03:12 | Once again in the Motion area, I'm
going to set this for 2 seconds. We will
| | 03:16 | click OK.
| | 03:19 | Now that I have created two saved views,
let's play our presentation. I can do
| | 03:23 | that by placing my cursor over the
preview where I have access to a Play
| | 03:27 | button. Let me click Play. Notice,
AutoCAD plays through both slides. Also
| | 03:34 | available in the preview is this Go
icon. If I click the Go icon AutoCAD will
| | 03:39 | restore that view.
| | 03:41 | If I move up into the saved views, I
can also restore anyone of the saved
| | 03:46 | views. Let's take a look at some of
the more dynamic properties that are
| | 03:50 | available in the ShowMotion command.
| | 03:52 | I'm going to create another saved view.
Let me adjust my view on screen. I'm
| | 03:56 | going to click and hold on my View Cube
and I'm going to drag my cursor and I'm
| | 04:02 | going to adjust my view to
this. We will just accept that.
| | 04:05 | Let's save this as a view shot. Let me
come down and click the New Shot icon.
| | 04:11 | View name, I'm going to call this
custom view. View category, I'm going to
| | 04:17 | create a new category; I'm going to
call this dynamic shots. In the View type
| | 04:22 | area, this time I'm going to leave it
set to Cinematic. Cinematic allows me to
| | 04:25 | record movement with my shots.
| | 04:28 | Since this is set to Cinematic, let me
come down to the Motion area and notice,
| | 04:31 | the Movement type is set to Zoom In.
Let's click Preview and take a look at the shot.
| | 04:40 | Okay, much more dynamic. Notice, I have
got a 3-second duration and I'm zooming
| | 04:44 | a distance of 7 units. This looks good,
let me click OK to save this view.
| | 04:49 | Notice, when that guy finishes, I now
have a preview for each view category.
| | 04:55 | Let's create another saved view. I'm
going to go to a Top view. Let's save this
| | 05:00 | guy. I'm going to come down and click
New Shot. View name, we'll call this Top
| | 05:06 | View. We'll associate this with the dynamic
shots. We will go with a Cinematic view type.
| | 05:13 | Let's come down to Movement type and
we'll click the drop-down. Notice, all of
| | 05:16 | the options that we have. This time I'm
going to try Orbit. Let me select Orbit
| | 05:21 | which gives me new controls
and I'm going to click Preview.
| | 05:28 | Now that wasn't very exciting. In the
Degrees left area, I'm going to set this
| | 05:31 | to zero degrees and in the Degrees up
area, let's set this to 90. We will click Preview.
| | 05:39 | Once again, not exactly what I wanted.
Instead of Degrees up, let's click the
| | 05:43 | drop-down and set that to Degrees
down. Once again, let me click Preview.
| | 05:47 | That's more like it. I'm going
to click OK to save this view.
| | 05:51 | Let me make one more view and what I
would like to do is I would like to start
| | 05:55 | my next view from where the last view
left off. I can do that by moving into my
| | 06:00 | last view and clicking Play. AutoCAD
will play the view and leave me at that
| | 06:06 | location. Let's create the new view from here.
| | 06:08 | I'm going to come down and click New
Shot. View name, I'm going to call this,
| | 06:15 | walking view. View category, we'll set
this to the dynamic shots category. In
| | 06:20 | the View type area, I'm going to click
the drop-down and I'm going to select
| | 06:22 | Recorded Walk.
| | 06:24 | If I use the Recorded Walk feature, I
can record myself doing a custom walk
| | 06:29 | through going through the interior
or around the exterior of a building.
| | 06:32 | Notice, there is not a lot of controls
; pretty much I just clicked the button
| | 06:35 | and I start recording.
| | 06:36 | Let me click. AutoCAD is now saying,
click and drag in the direction you want
| | 06:41 | to walk. So, I'm going to click on
screen which will bring up my Walk tool and
| | 06:45 | I'm going to push forward and I'm
going to walk right through my guy.
| | 06:48 | There we go. I'll release the mouse
button to finish and when I'm all done, I
| | 06:55 | will click OK. Now, when it comes time
to playback my presentation, I have a
| | 07:01 | Play button that I can use to play
just a particular category. I can play
| | 07:05 | either one or if I come down to the
control panel, I can click Play to play
| | 07:09 | them all. In addition, during playback,
I can click my Looping button and then
| | 07:14 | this presentation will loop forever.
| | 07:23 | The next time you want to impress
your client, use the ShowMotion tool to
| | 07:26 | create a dynamic animation of your
drawing. ShowMotion makes it easy to create
| | 07:30 | a professional looking
presentation of your work.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. Updated Visualization ToolsSetting a geographic location| 00:00 | GPS, which stands for Global
Positioning System, is the system most widely used
| | 00:05 | for mapping. If our AutoCAD geometry
is to be used for mapping purposes, it
| | 00:09 | may be necessary to reference our
drawing to a Global Coordinate System.
| | 00:12 | The Geographic Location tool in AutoCAD
2009 allows us to position our drawing
| | 00:17 | using a latitude and longitude. It
does this through the use of a Geographic
| | 00:20 | Marker. Now, I have got a drawing up on
screen. If you would like to work along
| | 00:24 | with me, you can open up the same
drawing. This guy is located inside our
| | 00:27 | Chapter 6 folder, inside the
Exercise Files directory and this is drawing
| | 00:31 | number one, the parking plan.
| | 00:32 | Now, what we see on screen is a
proposed site plan for a property located in
| | 00:37 | Chicago, Illinois. The existing site
and its current state is an empty parking lot.
| | 00:42 | What we see on screen are the
proposed conditions that we would like to
| | 00:45 | construct on this site. What we have
is a restaurant, a drive through, and a
| | 00:50 | limited amount of parking. Our goal in
this session is to apply a Geographic
| | 00:54 | Marker to this site.
| | 00:55 | Now, before we go any further, let's
take a look at the existing property. I'm
| | 00:58 | going to do that by going to Google
Earth. I have a version of Google Earth
| | 01:02 | running, I'm going to come down and
click this icon. Now, the Google Earth is
| | 01:07 | on screen, I'm going to come up to
the Fly to area and I'm going to type a
| | 01:10 | place that's very easy to find. I'm
going to type, Wrigley field, and then
| | 01:17 | Google Earth will take me
directly to that location on the globe.
| | 01:20 | Now, our existing site is located
just northwest of the ballpark, its right
| | 01:32 | here and I can navigate my view in
Google Earth very similar the way we do it
| | 01:36 | in AutoCAD. If I want to pan, I can
hold down my left mouse button and drag,
| | 01:41 | and I can adjust my view. If I
want to zoom in, I can roll my wheel.
| | 01:47 | So, what we see on screen is the
current conditions at the property. Now, I
| | 01:51 | want to emphasize that this is a
fictitious example. I can just imagine
| | 01:54 | somebody watching this saying, hey! I
know the guy that owns that lot, and he
| | 01:58 | doesn't know the stuff going on. This
is just a fictitious example, it's all pretend.
| | 02:02 | What I would like to do is I would
like to apply the latitude and longitude
| | 02:06 | information from this site to my
AutoCAD drawing. Let's do that. I'm going to
| | 02:10 | come back to AutoCAD. I'm going to come
down and click the icon on the taskbar.
| | 02:14 | I would like to insert a Geographic
Marker into this drawing. I can do that by
| | 02:18 | going up to the menu browser and
clicking, I'm going to come down to tools and
| | 02:21 | then I will come over, and I will
come over down at the bottom, and I will
| | 02:28 | select Geographic Location.
| | 02:31 | Now, there are three ways that we
can insert a Geographic Marker in our
| | 02:34 | drawing. We can do it by using a KML or
KMZ file, these are Google Earth native
| | 02:39 | files. KML stands for Keyhole Markup
Language, and the KMZ is a zipped version
| | 02:46 | of a KML file. Another way we can
apply a Geographic Marker is by extracting
| | 02:50 | the information directly from Google
Earth and finally, I can apply Geographic
| | 02:54 | Marker by entering the location values manually.
| | 02:56 | We are going to get our latitude and
longitude information directly from Google
| | 03:00 | Earth. So, I'm going to select this
option. Now, when this dialog comes up on
| | 03:04 | screen, AutoCAD is telling us to
navigate to the location in Google Earth and
| | 03:08 | get as close as we can. So, I'm going
to leave this dialog on screen, I'm going
| | 03:11 | to come down to Google Earth and click,
and let's zoom in and pan as close as
| | 03:17 | we can to this corner of the lot. All
right, that's as close as I'm going to
| | 03:23 | get, let me go back to AutoCAD and I will click.
| | 03:27 | Now, I'm going to come up here and
click Continue. AutoCAD has just extracted
| | 03:31 | that latitude and longitude information
and now at the command line, AutoCAD is
| | 03:34 | asking me to select a point for
that location. I'm going to select the
| | 03:37 | southwest corner of my property. Now,
AutoCAD is asking me to specify a north
| | 03:43 | direction, my site does have a slight rotation.
| | 03:46 | My Ortho happens to be locked, so I'm
going to pull straight up and click to
| | 03:50 | define my north rotation. I can now
see the Geographic Marker in my drawing.
| | 03:55 | Now, one thing to note about the
Geographic Marker; no matter how we much we
| | 03:59 | zoom in or out, that little symbol will
never get any bigger or smaller on the
| | 04:04 | screen. If I place my cursor over
the marker, AutoCAD will show me the
| | 04:08 | information that was
extracted from Google Earth.
| | 04:11 | Now, some people find this marker a
little bit annoying, we can turn him on and
| | 04:14 | off. We can do that by using a set
variable called GEOMARKERVISIBILITY. Now,
| | 04:20 | that's fun to type in. Let me show you
a shortcut. I'm going to type g-e-o-m-a,
| | 04:26 | I'm going to start typing the command,
and then I'm going to start hitting my
| | 04:28 | tab key. When I do, AutoCAD will cycle
through every command or system variable
| | 04:33 | that starts with those letters.
| | 04:34 | Fortunately, there is just the one.
Now that, that guy came up, I'm going to
| | 04:37 | hit Enter and his value is currently 1,
which means on. Let's set it to 0,
| | 04:42 | which means off, and now the marker is
no longer visible on screen. Let me turn
| | 04:46 | him back on, I'm going to do that by
right-clicking and selecting Repeat
| | 04:50 | GEOMARKERVISIBILITY and
we'll set that back to 1.
| | 04:55 | Since we have a Geographic Marker in
our drawing, I can now set my coordinates
| | 04:59 | area in my Status bar to read latitude
and longitude values. I can do that by
| | 05:04 | coming down to the coordinate area and
right-clicking and selecting Geographic.
| | 05:09 | I'm now seeing my latitude and
longitude information via decimal values.
| | 05:13 | Now, as I move, we don't see the
values change very much, that's because our
| | 05:16 | latitude and longitude lines are pretty
far apart. Let me back up a little bit
| | 05:20 | and as I move, we can see the values
change slightly. Now, in addition to
| | 05:26 | seeing decimal values for our
latitude and longitude, I can also set my
| | 05:29 | latitude and longitude to be degrees,
minutes, seconds. I can do that by
| | 05:33 | entering another system variable.
| | 05:34 | The system variable is called
GEOLATLONGFORMAT and you're right, I'm not going
| | 05:39 | to type all that in. I'm going to
type in g-e-o-l-a, let me hit my tab key.
| | 05:44 | AutoCAD finds the system variable, I
will hit Enter and I will set this guy to
| | 05:48 | 1. When I hit Enter, I can see that
my coordinates are now read in degrees,
| | 05:53 | minutes, seconds. If I look to set my
coordinate reading back, I can come down
| | 05:57 | and right-click and set it back to Absolute.
| | 06:00 | Let's zoom in on this guy a little bit.
If you have a Geographic Marker in your
| | 06:07 | drawing and you would like to edit the
marker, we can do that by going back to
| | 06:11 | the menu browser, we are going to come
back down to tools and then we'll come
| | 06:15 | over and down, and select Geographic
Location. AutoCAD says, hey! you have
| | 06:21 | already got a Geographic Location in
this drawing, do you want to edit the
| | 06:23 | location? Do we want to redefine the
location or do we want to remove the
| | 06:27 | location? In this case, I'm going to remove it.
| | 06:30 | I will select Remove and I will click
Yes and the Geographic Marker is now been
| | 06:35 | removed. The Geographic Location tool
can be very helpful if we intend to use
| | 06:39 | AutoCAD geometry for mapping purposes.
By setting a Geographic Marker in our
| | 06:43 | drawing, we identify the place
where our geometry exists on the earth.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding a background| 00:00 | Adding a background to a rendering
has become easier in AutoCAD 2009.
| | 00:04 | In the past, if we wanted a background,
we needed to assign the background to a
| | 00:08 | specific view. Now, we can apply a
background whenever we want by simply using
| | 00:12 | the Background command.
| | 00:13 | I have got a drawing open on screen.
If you would like to work along with me,
| | 00:16 | you can open this exact same drawing.
This guy is located inside the Chapter 6
| | 00:20 | folder inside our Exercise Files
directory and this drawing is called
| | 00:24 | number 2, Package Design. Now, this is a
three-dimensional drawing and because of
| | 00:29 | that, I'm going to load my 3D Workspace.
| | 00:31 | I'm going to come down and click
the gear that will allow me to switch
| | 00:35 | workspaces and I'm going to select 3D
Modeling. This will populate my ribbon
| | 00:41 | with tools there essential for 3D
drafting. Now, I don't need this Tool
| | 00:45 | palette. So, I'm going to come up and
click the X to close that guy. Let's
| | 00:49 | assume we are using
AutoCAD to do package design.
| | 00:51 | Now, this drawing represents a
package concept for a fictitious soft drink.
| | 00:55 | What I would like to do is I would
like to create a rendering of this drawing
| | 00:58 | that I can ship to my client to get
their approval. Now, since I'm going to be
| | 01:02 | creating a rendering, I would like to
have a little bit more of an interesting
| | 01:04 | view on my screen, let's adjust our view.
| | 01:08 | Now, I could come over and do this
through the View Cube, I could click and
| | 01:11 | hold on this guy and I could drag
around and I could try and create an
| | 01:14 | interesting view. But if I want to
create a very precise view, the View Cube is
| | 01:19 | really not the best way to do that.
The View Cube is a little on the chunky
| | 01:22 | side to do that. If I would like to
create a very precise view, I'm going to
| | 01:25 | use the Orbit command.
| | 01:26 | Now, the Orbit command is located
right here inside the View panel. If I come
| | 01:31 | up and click the fly-out, I'm going to
come down and select Free Orbit. Using
| | 01:36 | this tool, I have no limits on my
movement. Now, this tool is very easy to use.
| | 01:40 | I have got a circle on my screen.
Imagine, if this circle is a basketball and
| | 01:44 | my bottle is currently sitting
on the inside of this basketball.
| | 01:48 | So, if I place my icon right here, and
click and hold with my mouse, I can push
| | 01:53 | away and I'm rotating the basketball.
Let me release. I'm going to come over
| | 01:57 | here and click, rotate down a little
bit, release. Let me come over here and
| | 02:03 | click, we'll rotate the bottle,
so it is facing me. There we go.
| | 02:07 | If I move my cursor outside the circle,
notice the icon changes. If I click and
| | 02:12 | hold it at this point, I can rotate
my view on screen. That's not bad. Now,
| | 02:19 | even though I'm in the Orbit command,
I can still pan and zoom. Let me hold
| | 02:22 | down my middle wheel to pan, we'll
pan this guy over, and then I'm going to
| | 02:26 | roll my wheel forward to zoom in.
| | 02:27 | We'll pan this guy down a little bit
and when I'm finished using the command, I
| | 02:35 | will right-click and select Exit. At
this point, I want to mention one thing;
| | 02:39 | there is more to this drawing than
just the DWG file. This label that we see
| | 02:43 | wrapped around the outside of our
bottle is a JPEG image that I created and
| | 02:48 | it's been mapped on to the bottle
using a mapping function inside AutoCAD. If
| | 02:52 | you do not see the label on your bottle,
it's because you have separated the
| | 02:55 | DWG file from the label. The drawing
and the label must stay in the same folder
| | 03:00 | in order for AutoCAD to find it.
| | 03:01 | All right, now that I have created my
interesting view, I could render this,
| | 03:04 | but unfortunately, it would render
with a black background, I would like to
| | 03:07 | render this with an image in the
background. I'm going to do that by using the
| | 03:11 | Background command. In AutoCAD 2009,
Background is now a standalone command.
| | 03:16 | Unfortunately, we have to launch it
from the command line. So, I'm going to
| | 03:19 | type background, and hit Enter and
this brings up the same Background command
| | 03:25 | we have been used to. In my type area,
I'm going to come over and click the
| | 03:28 | drop-down and then I'm going to select
Image, and in the Image options area,
| | 03:32 | I'm going to click Browse and I can
search my network for an image to put in
| | 03:35 | the background.
| | 03:36 | Now, I would like you to look inside
the chapter_06 folder inside the Exercise
| | 03:40 | Files directory, because I have placed
an image in there called background-red.
| | 03:45 | If I click this, we can see a preview
over to the right side and as I mentioned
| | 03:49 | before, if I click grape-tornado,
this happens to be the JPEG image of the label.
| | 03:55 | Let's select the background image, I'm
going to come down and click Open, and
| | 03:59 | then I'm going to click OK, and
AutoCAD just applied that image to my
| | 04:04 | background. At this point, I'm going
to create a rendering. I'm going to do
| | 04:07 | that by going to my Output tab, and
I'm going to come down and click Render.
| | 04:38 | Now that my rendering is finished, I
have got a nice product shot that I can
| | 04:41 | email to my client. If I wanted to
save this image, I can always right-click,
| | 04:46 | select Save Copy and I can save this
to any one of several image formats. Let
| | 04:52 | me Cancel, close out of the dialog and
we'll return to AutoCAD. I'm going to
| | 04:57 | come up and click the X.
| | 05:01 | Now, adding backgrounds is easy. The
problem that you will find is how to
| | 05:04 | remove your background. Watch this; if
I change my view in space, notice, the
| | 05:09 | background sticks around, it doesn't
go away. From now on, I'm going to be
| | 05:13 | working with this background image.
Let me show you how we can remove a
| | 05:16 | background.
| | 05:16 | I'm going to come up and click the Home
tab in my ribbon, and in the View area,
| | 05:21 | I'm going to create a view. You see,
the only way to remove a background is to
| | 05:26 | restore a view that doesn't have a
background. Let's create a view. I'm going
| | 05:30 | to click this fly-out. Here is a
little bug in the program, AutoCAD is not
| | 05:34 | giving me enough space to see the names
of these views. I'm going to come down
| | 05:38 | and select New View. For a view name,
I'm just going to call this kill
| | 05:44 | background.
| | 05:47 | This view does not have a background.
Let me click OK to save and if I want to
| | 05:53 | get rid of the background, we'll just
restore that view. Once again, I'm going
| | 05:56 | to click the fly-out and the name is
right here. I will click on it to restore
| | 06:00 | the view and the background is now gone.
| | 06:02 | Hopefully, in a future service pack
or in the next release of the software,
| | 06:06 | we'll have the ability to remove a
background without having to restore a saved
| | 06:10 | view. So, if you want to create a
quick rendering that utilizes background,
| | 06:14 | there is nothing faster than launching
the Background command. Just remember
| | 06:17 | that as with this release of the
software if you wish to remove the background,
| | 06:21 | you'll need to restore a saved view.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Exploring additional visualization changes| 00:00 | I have got two very minor visualization
changes that I would like to share with you.
| | 00:04 | Now, neither of these guys warranted
an entire video. So, I thought it
| | 00:08 | would make more sense to put them
together, so we would get an opportunity to
| | 00:11 | talk about them. Now, I have got a
drawing open on my screen. If you would like
| | 00:14 | to work along with me, you can open up
the same drawing. This guy is located
| | 00:17 | inside the Chapter 6 folder inside
our Exercise Files directory and this is
| | 00:22 | the number 3 drawing, the Package Design.
| | 00:24 | Now, the drawing that we see on screen
is a concept package design for a new
| | 00:28 | fictitious soft drink. Since it's a 3D
AutoCAD file, I'm using the 3D AutoCAD
| | 00:34 | workspace. Let's change our view to a
southeast isometric. I'm going to come
| | 00:39 | over and click my View Cube to adjust my view.
| | 00:42 | Let's look at our first noteworthy
visualization change. In AutoCAD 2009, we
| | 00:47 | can now turn off our light glyphs.
If we look around the outside of this
| | 00:50 | bottle, I can see that I have three
light sources in this drawing and these
| | 00:54 | icons that we see are called glyphs.
Let's turn them off. To do that, I'm going
| | 00:58 | to come up to my Visualize tab, I'm
going to come over to my Lights panel and
| | 01:02 | click the fly-out and I'm going to
click the Light glyph display button and
| | 01:07 | they are turned off.
| | 01:10 | Now, you may think, you know what,
since those guys are now turned off, how do
| | 01:14 | I select my lights. Let me show you.
If we come up, we can click this icon,
| | 01:18 | which represents our light list. When
the Light List palette comes up, I can
| | 01:22 | see a listing of the three lights in
my drawing. If I select a light in the
| | 01:26 | list, AutoCAD will select the
light even though the glyph is off.
| | 01:32 | At this point, if I wanted to make
changes to my light, I can right-click and
| | 01:36 | select Properties to bring up my full
property changer. Let me close this and
| | 01:40 | I'm going to hit Escape to clear the
glyph. So that's a small change, but it
| | 01:45 | can be helpful. I'm going to turn off
my Light List. One more visualization
| | 01:50 | change I want to mention. There is a
new system variable in AutoCAD that will
| | 01:54 | improve the quality of the
lighting in our renderings.
| | 01:57 | This system variable is called
VSLIGHTINGQUALITY. Now, I'm not going to type
| | 02:01 | all of that in; I'm going to show
you a shortcut. I'm going to type
| | 02:04 | v-s-l-i-g-h. We will type that much and
I'm going to hit my tab key and AutoCAD
| | 02:10 | will cycle through every command or
system variable that starts with those letters.
| | 02:13 | There we go; the first time I hit tab,
I have got the system variable, I will
| | 02:16 | hit Enter. Currently, he is set to 1,
which stands for smooth lighting. In
| | 02:21 | AutoCAD 2009, I can bump him up to 2,
which stands for per-pixel lighting that
| | 02:26 | is the highest quality of lighting
setting. What this means is that the colors
| | 02:30 | are computed for each pixel on the
faces of my objects. Now, one thing to note;
| | 02:34 | we can set this guy to 2, but it's
only going to work if our video card
| | 02:38 | supports it. Let's take a look.
| | 02:40 | To check my video card setup with
relation to AutoCAD, I'm going to go to my
| | 02:43 | Options dialog box. So, I'm going to
right-click in middle of the screen, I'm
| | 02:46 | going to come down and select Options
and we are going to go to the System tab
| | 02:51 | and we'll select the
Performance Settings button.
| | 02:56 | When the Performance Tuning dialog
comes up, I'm going to come over and click
| | 02:59 | Manual Tune. The Per-pixel lighting
feature shows up right here in the list and
| | 03:05 | I can see that the video card on this
machine will support this feature, yours may not.
| | 03:10 | Now, it is possible to go in and try
and tweak some settings, you can try and
| | 03:13 | check things and uncheck things and try
and change things around to see if you
| | 03:17 | can get a little more out of your
video card than what AutoCAD thinks you
| | 03:20 | should. If you get to a point where
you can't remember how things were
| | 03:23 | originally set, you can always come
down and click Reset to Recommended Values
| | 03:28 | and then we'll click OK
to dismiss the dialog box.
| | 03:30 | Now, I'm going to go through and close
these guys to return to AutoCAD. As you
| | 03:36 | can see, these changes appear to be
pretty small, but you never know what
| | 03:40 | appears to be a minor change to one
person may, in fact, be a feature that
| | 03:43 | someone else has been anxiously waiting for.
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ConclusionGoodbye| 00:00 | Well, the AutoCAD 2009 new features
tour has come to a close. I hope you
| | 00:05 | enjoyed the journey. I know I certainly
did. Now, it is the time for you to go
| | 00:08 | out and start using the new features that
are included in AutoCAD 2009. Good luck!
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