Spongebob

You could set the trim to 0" and then add a custom block to the window style. You would have to attach a unique block to each and every size of window tho - very sloppy and inconvienient. Only way I can think of right now tho. Jeffrey

I agree with both sampowell and cribeiro. The best approach to learning ADT is to fully understand the concept of using ADT to create a parametric BIM for construction drawings. This difference in the way you work and think is more radical than you think. Paul F. Aubin fully understands this concept and is very good at explaing not only how a command works but the best way to implement multiple commands and concepts together to transform the way you think about AutoCAD and more importantly ADT. I also recommend the tutorials in the help menu and the on-line e-learning available through the subscription program if you have it. I personally started off by focusing on wall, door, windows and openings as purely 2D. Then I expanded to include other objects like Door/Window assemblies, column grids, spaces (my favorite), and so on. Lastly, ask questions. Both here and in the Autodesk newsgroups. The people who are willing to learn ADT are typically the same people who are willing to share this knowledge with anyone who is willing to listen (unfortunately no one in my office) Jeffrey

I guess I don't understand exactly what you are asking. Can you expand on your question? Are you working directly from the drawing window or from within a dialog box? What are you trying to do? Jeffrey

I think the best work around is in stead of zooming and panning try pulling your monitor closer to your face to zoom in, slide it side to side to pan. That should do the trick ;-) Jeffrey

I too have noticed this change made to my ADT 2006. It is unfortunate and I have been meaning to fire a message off in the ADT newsgroups voicing my saddness in seeing this functionality gone. I have since found that there is a 'recent input' available in the right-click menu, but it only seems to list recent commands and not recent distances or direct distance/polar coordinants. Jeffrey

If you have a drawing created in ADT which was not converted prior to being sent to you I believe the AEC objects within the drawings will show up as 'proxy objects' and are entirely un-editable to you. If this is the case you may need to ask the source of the drawing to 'Export to AutoCAD' from the file menu and then re-send it to you. On the other hand if the person who sent you the drawings had the foresight to convert the drawings beforehand they will most likely show up as blocks and can be edited using the 'refedit' command. Jeffrey

I don't know if you guys didn't see it but Videha gave you the exact answer you needed. I use this command almost every day to start a new block from an existing one, however I didn't realize that this could work for multiple blocks at once until I tried it today. It does work this way as well. Jeffrey

Yes, you are right. Gaming cards are made for just that, gaming. These card are sometimes adequate for CAD, but typically you need something better. An NVIDIA card is fine - especially a 128MB card. I would not recomment an ATI card. Some people think they are fine, but I have had alot of problems with them. What might help you is to turn on the hardware accelleration through your ADT. By default it is off. Go to Options -> System then click the 'Properties' button in the 'Current 3D Graphics Display' area. In the '3D Graphics System Configuration' dialog box toggle the Hardware option under the 'Accelleration' area. This will tell AutoCAD to send all video processes to your video card rather than your computers processor. I hope this helps,

Point filters are one of the most useful tools which i have recently discovered. When someone tried to explain them to me I just glazed over and nodded because the concept is difficult to understand at first. However, stick with it and you will not be sorry. I will try to briefly describe a few uses of point filters and I hope I do better than the cold, unforgiving and frankly boring help files. However, if you glaze over I appologize. 1. When inserting details into a detail sheet it looks muck nicer and more professional to have the details lined up horizontally, vertically or both. To do this I begin the 'insert' command and then type '.y' at the insert location prompt and select the insert point of another existing detail on the sheet. This will limit your on-screen movement to only one direction (x) in line with the other detail. 2. When working with 3D models sometimes it becomes necessary to cut up a solid using the 'slice' command. A common slice which I use is one which is parallel to the current UCS. To do this I type 'SL' and select the object. Then I type 'XY' (the dot is not required in this command because the point filters are so useful here that Autodesk made them as a permanent option) Then all I need to do is select one 3D point in lieu of three to select the slicing plane. 3. When attempting to move a rectangle to a specific location sometimes it is necessary to find and select the center of that rectangle. If the rectangle is aligned to the current UCS the easiest way to do it is to use point filters. Here are the steps. Type "m" for move and select the rectangle. When prompted for the base point type '.x' and select the midpoint of the bottom chord of the rectangle. Then you will be prompted for the 'y' and 'z' - select the midpoint of one of the side chords and it will pick the center of the rectangle. Many of the useful traits of using point filters can also be accomplished by drawing temporary reference lines to find these points. However, I consider this as sloppy drafting practice because I find that these reference line are sometimes forgotten and make it to the final drawings. Once you become proficient with point filters I think you will prefer using them. Good Luck Jeffrey K. Ries

Are you saying that when you select an object in the drawing window that the correct layer does not show up in the layer spinner above the drawing window? ...or is the layer spinner gone altogether? If so, you may just have that toolbar turned off. Otherwise, Edri is correct, if you are truly within the layer manager then you cannot select an object until you finish what you are doing in the layer manager and click OK. I personally prefer the properties dialog box myself. You can view or change damn near anything from there. Jeffrey K. Ries

Great program. Very easy to use and helps alot when you want to visualize something fast. Our company purchased one seat of this program once we played with the demo and liked it. Now that we have it we dont use it very often. Go figure. Its kind of a fast and dirty 3D package. If I had any time alloted in the budget at all for 3d I would use 3D Studio. If I had no money in it but feel that something could be easier explained or displayed in 3D I would use sketchup. Anyway I'm sure Autodesk will buy it one day and integrate it into Architectural Studio (a program whos 3D is greatly limited) Once that happens it will be one awesome package. Jeffrey Ries Detroit, MI

Yep, you vizwiz. Odd, its the only routine I was looking for and you dropped it in my lap. Thanks again, Jeffrey Ries

Talk about an odd coincidence. We recently made the switch over from AutoCAD R14.0 to ADT 2004. In the move we lost alot of commands and shortcut keys. I had multiple requests from users here for the creation of two commands to replace the missing ones. The two commands were 'Continuous Copy' & 'Draw by Example'. I created continuous copy with a more basic version I found on the internet as a start and help from a friend to work out the bugs. Here is the resulting code: code: (defun C:CC (/ A INPUTDIST INPUTANG G-PR G-PR2 G-QTY G-INPUT) (princ "\nSelect entities to Continuous Copy: ") (if (setq A (ssget)) (progn (if (not DEFAULTANG) (setq DEFAULTANG 0.0) ) (if (setq INPUTANG (getangle (strcat "\nAngle to copy :"))) (setq DEFAULTANG INPUTANG) (setq INPUTANG DEFAULTANG) ) (if (setq INPUTDIST (getdist (if DEFAULTDIST (strcat "\nDistance to copy :") "\nDistance to copy:" ) ) ) (setq DEFAULTDIST INPUTDIST) (setq INPUTDIST DEFAULTDIST) ) (if INPUTDIST (progn (command "._copy" "P" "" "0,0,0" "0,0,0") (command "._move" "P" "" "0,0,0" (list (* (cos INPUTANG) INPUTDIST) (* (sin INPUTANG) INPUTDIST)) ) (setq G-PR2 "Press to continue, to stop..." G-QTY 2 ) (prompt (strcat ">> Qty: (2) " G-PR2)) (setq G-INPUT (grread NIL 4 0)) (while (or (= (nth 1 G-INPUT) 13) (= (nth 1 G-INPUT) 32)) (command "copy" "P" "" "0,0,0" "0,0,0") (command "move" "P" "" "0,0,0" (list (* (cos INPUTANG) INPUTDIST) (* (sin INPUTANG) INPUTDIST)) ) (setq G-QTY (1+ G-QTY) G-PR (strcat ">> Qty: (" (itoa G-QTY) ") " G-PR2) ) (prompt (strcat "\015" G-PR)) (setq G-INPUT (grread NIL 4 0)) ) ) ) ) ) ) The other - Draw by Example - is intended to do exactly what your routine does. Do you mind if I use it in lieu of creating from scratch? Thanks, Jeffrey Ries

That is very interresting. I see alot of peeps using AutoCAD in their own custom way but I have never seen anyone shake it up like you do. Kudos! I am personally one to attempt to leave AutoCAD and a computer in general as it comes and merely add commands and functions. In other words if I want to create a command to add doors in ADT, I think about a simple two key shortcut like 'DR'. Then I find out DR is taken by the command Draw Order, I'd rather pick another shortcut then to hear a user upset about the change. (So far all of my routines are centralized on the server for all computers on the network to use.) I believe that using numeric commands is a great way to avoid this but I don't think I could remember them all. Mostly my commands are for inserting blocks. For instance 'ETAG' will insert an elevation tag at the current scale set in drawing setup and consists of two separate blocks which are linked together at the end of the command with grouping. One block is the attributes and the other block is the arrow - keeping them separate allows for the user to rotate the arrow to any angle. Here's the code if you want to see it. (defun c:etag (/ InputELEV InputELEVSHT INSPOINT BLKENT ETAGENT ARRENT) (SETQ OLDORTHOMODE (GETVAR "ORTHOMODE") OLDPOLARMODE (GETVAR "POLARMODE") OLDSNAPTYPE (GETVAR "SNAPTYPE") OLDAUTOSNAP (GETVAR "AUTOSNAP") ) (gai-layer "A-Anno-Note" 7 "Continuous" 1) (SETVAR "ATTREQ" 0) (SETVAR "ATTDIA" 0) (SETVAR "OSMODE" 0) (PROMPT "\nTag Location:") (vl-cmdf "._-INSERT" "TAG" "_x" (tagscale) "_y" (tagscale) "_r" "0" PAUSE ) (setq INSPOINT (getvar "lastpoint") BLKENT (entlast) ) (SETVAR "ATTREQ" 1) (if (/= (setq inputELEV (getstring t (if defaultELEV (strcat "\nEnter elevation number defaultELEV ">:" ) "\nEnter elevation number:" ) ) ) "" ) (setq defaultELEV inputELEV) (setq inputELEV defaultELEV) ) (if (/= (setq inputELEVSHT (getstring t (if defaultELEVSHT (strcat "\nEnter sheet elevation is on defaultELEVSHT ">:" ) "\nEnter sheet elevation is on:" ) ) ) "" ) (setq defaultELEVSHT inputELEVSHT) (setq inputELEVSHT defaultELEVSHT) ) (entdel BLKENT) (vl-cmdf "._-INSERT" "ELEVTAG" INSPOINT (tagscale) (tagscale) "0" inputELEV inputELEVSHT ) (setq ETAGENT (entlast)) (setvar "autosnap" 63) (setvar "snaptype" 1) (command "polarang" "15.00") (setvar "polarmode" 2) (vl-cmdf "._-insert" "ETAGARR" INSPOINT (tagscale) (tagscale) PAUSE ) (setq ARRENT (entlast)) (vl-cmdf "._group" "_c" "*" "Elevation tag and arrow" ETAGENT ARRENT "" ) (SETVAR "AUTOSNAP" OLDAUTOSNAP) (SETVAR "POLARMODE" OLDPOLARMODE) (SETVAR "SNAPTYPE" OLDSNAPTYPE) (SETVAR "ORTHOMODE" OLDORTHOMODE) (SETVAR "ATTDIA" 1) ) Other routines are for setting up standard layers or plot settings and creating my dim styles and text styles. They take a while to create but once done I can work faster than ever. I have a growing list of about 100 routines which I am constantly working on. It really allows me to be as picky on my drawings as I like without costing me billable time. I would very much like to exchange ideas with someone like you to see what direction others are going. I'm sure there are some extremely useful tools created with lisp which I have never considered. Spongebob

Thsi is for the real in-depth stuff. AutoCAD customization. Afralisp I have been using AutoCAD since I was 14 years old and I feel I am quite proficient with it. I thought I was running out of stuff to learn until I discovered Lisp. Now I feel like a kid again, gobbling up information like pacman. Also, with my own custom commands I cut down on my drawing time considerably. Sorry I know you were referring to NooB tuts, but this is such a good site I couldn't resist. Spongebob