Engineered Design Solutions

CADTutor

CADTutor. forums is by far the best resource on the internet to get your AutoCAD questions answered.

Steve Johnson's

Steve Johnson is known for his AutoCAD bug watch.

Brian Benton's

Brian is very involved in all things Autodesk. He is Cadalyst Magazine's Tip Patroller, AUGI HotNews Production Manager, and Infinite Skills AutoCAD training video author.

Ellen Finkelstein.com

Ellen has a plethora of AutoCAD tips and tutorials. She seems to have a weird fascination for breaking lines.

Robin Capper's blog

Robin always has something interesting to read, whether AutoCAD related or not.

Mark Kiker's blog

Mark's covers many aspects of Cad management at his CADDManager Blog.

Melanie Perry's blog

Melanie is all about AutoCAD (those are her words) but she doesn't let that stop her from other topics. In her spare time Melanie conducts the Augi Annual Salary Survey

R.K. McSwain's blog

R.K McSwain has some very nice tutorials on his blog.

Welcome! You have likely arrived here looking for ways to improve your AutoCAD performance or perhaps increase your AutoCAD knowledge and skills. I hope I can add to your current skill set or somehow contribute to increasing your productivity. I continue to use AutoCAD 14 to do my machine design and detail work so If you would like up to date information regarding the latest AutoCAD releases, you may be interested in visiting some of my favorite blogs and web sites that I have linked to on the left.

A gentle plug for my software "CadTempo". While developing the methods and procedures I use in my daily activities, one of the first AutoLISP programs I wrote was a time logger. My reasoning was, if I could determine the work that required the most amount of time, my customization efforts would be best spent addressing those items. Additionally, I would be able to determine if my efforts were of value, and just how much value. As the saying goes Time Is Money, and I wanted to know where my money was!

I have since created a commercial product and made it available to the CAD community. Please visit the CadTempo web site to see how it may fit your needs. Download a free 30 day trial and take some measurements of your current drawing practices. Then, as you implement changes to your CAD modeling and drafting routines you can easily determine the successful (and perhaps not so successful) changes.

CadTempo is an automatic time tracking utility for CAD.

Download the free 30 day trial of CadTempo now.

AutoCAD Tips:

Massively redefine all blocks in a drawing.

Have you ever found yourself in a position where a large number of library blocks need to be redefined in a drawing? It can be a tedious task and if you have multiple drawings that need updating it can be even tediouser.

The problem is each block in your drawing needs to be inserted individually in order to redefine it in the current drawing.

Here is how it can be done to a drawing in one fell swoop.

Create a new drawing that will contain all of the blocks that will need to be updated. We will call this the "MasterBlock.dwg" Insert the new blocks into your new drawing.

Now, here's the trick, invert the process - that is rather than inserting the updated block drawing into the working drawing go the other way, insert the working drawing into the "MasterBlock.dwg"

This will result in all blocks in the working drawing updating to what is in the MasterBlock.dwg.

Now that the inserted working drawing is updated WBLOCK it out to its original name overwriting it. Or, if you prefer a more cautious approach WBLOCK it to a revised file name.

Purge the updated drawing from the MasterBlock drawing and you are ready for the next one.

I've used this technique to update dozens of blocks at a time and by using AutoCAD scripts I've successfully updated whole folders of files in a matter of minutes.

You might be interested in knowing that CadTempo includes a script builder that can be used for this purpose.

Set the FILEDIA system variable to 1

It seems the most frequently asked question I've come across in the various forums is "I've lost my File Open/Save dialog box" How do I get it back? The answers is always: Set your FILEDIA to 1.

Typically this is followed by the comment/question: I don't remember ever changing that, how could that have happened?

Often times the FILEDIA sys var is set to 0 to allow for uninterrupted operation of certain lisp files and batch scripts that open multiple files, certain menu macros may also change the variable. If the lisp file is cancelled out of and proper error handling is not in place the variable will be left as set and you will no longer have your Open/Save dialog box available. The same is true for a script file when the script is cancelled or encounters an error in execution.

If you find this happening on a frequent basis then it may be time to finally take care of the problem. In Windows Explorer navigate to the location where you have AutoCAD script files (*.scr) and AutoLISP files (*.lsp) and perform a search for those file types that contain the word FILEDIA. You can examine the file contents in Notepad. You will want to learn how AutoLISP error handlers work and make the appropriate changes to those lsp files. In the case of a fix for a script file you might want to make a change to your Acad.lsp or Acaddoc.lsp file to set the variable to 1, however this may interfere with the operation of the script.

Convert a 3d perspective view into a 2d dwg

After creating the perspective view of your 3d model plot to a DBX file. Open a new drawing and use the DBXIN command. The downside of this technique is the new drawing is composed of short line segments.

Some 3d drawing tips:

AutoCAD will always construct geometry on the current x,y plane when entering 2 dimensional coordinates at the command line.

Always have your UCS icon on.

Always examine your UCS Icon before constructing objects.
Manipulation of the UCS is key to success in 3D modeling.

If you are in a busy drawing it may be difficult to even see your UCS Icon if it is set to follow (where the location of the icon follows the origin you place it at). I personally have this turned off so my Icon is always in the lower left corner.

Always create geometry using Osnaps and point filters. Guessing at a point location is not allowed.

Set your UCS back to world before exiting the drawing. You'll come to appreciate this when inserting models into other drawings.