CAD Panacea

Massive PDF Files

rkmcswain — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 12:21:44 +0000

I see a lot of posts in the discussion groups where someone creates a PDF from a drawing and the PDF file size ends up being several times larger than the drawing itself.

OLE objects or images in the drawing. Both can cause the resulting PDF to be large. Remember that images are referenced into drawings and they are not included in the file size of the DWG file.

AUGI Board of Director Voting has started

rkmcswain — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:32:17 +0000

Time once again to vote in the AUGI Board of Directors election of 2009.

Please make note of the following items.

There are 8 positions to be filled
There are 9 candidates on the ballot
You may vote YES for (0) candidates, up to 8 candidates
This election is being conducted using a "Ranked ballot" (as defined in the By-Laws), so the 8 candidates who receive the most votes will be put into office.
Voting "NO" for a candidate has no effect whatsoever.
Voting closes at 12:01am (CST), December 16th 2009.

Click here to vote now

Civil 3D 2010 now supported on Windows 7

rkmcswain — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:25:43 +0000

Peter Funk from Autodesk commented in this thread earlier this month that Civil 3D 2010 would run on Windows 7.

The list of Autodesk applications that are supported on Windows 7 was recently updated to reflect this: http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=TS14053691

External Reference Tips

rkmcswain — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 02:13:29 +0000

Here are a couple of quick tips on External References.

Rather than opening the External References palette, then right clicking to attach a reference, you can go use the ._XATTACH command to go directly to the "Select File" dialog.
You can still access the old "Xref Manager" and "Image Manager" dialogs by running the ._CLASSICXREF and ._CLASSICIMAGE commands, respectfully.
If you want to attach multiple DWG references at one time, you will have to use the older ._CLASSICXREF command mentioned above.
Starting in AutoCAD 2010, the XDWGFADECTL system variable controls the dimming of referenced DWG files.
read more

Autodesk Advantage Packs for 2010

rkmcswain — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:01:00 +0000

Yes, I'm way late on this, but in case you have been in a cave for the last week or so, Autodesk released their latest Advantage Packs for AutoCAD 2010, and several verticals last week. These Advantage Packs are available for subscription members only.

I'm going to cover the tools included in the Advantage Pack for AutoCAD 2010 below. The "Subscription" tab for the ribbon for this Advantage Pack is shown above. Keep reading for more....

Do you use Dynamic Input in AutoCAD?

rkmcswain — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:56:37 +0000

Yes, all features (Dynmode=3)

34% (25 votes)

Yes, pointer input only (Dynmode=1)

5% (4 votes)

Yes, dimensional input only (Dynmode=2)

0% (0 votes)

No. (Dynmode=0)

60% (44 votes)

Total votes: 73

Civil 3D Update 2 is out

rkmcswain — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 17:59:07 +0000

Update 2 for AutoCAD Civil 3D 2010 is out. You can find it using the link below.

http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=DL13921667

This update fixes over 40 issues, and it contains all the previous fixes from C3D update 1, AutoCAD update 1, and Map update 1. As always, be careful with any new software patches on production machines. A similar update is out for AutoCAD Civil 2010 also.

Disabling Infocenter - AutoCAD 2010

rkmcswain — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 23:41:07 +0000

Thanks to Tony Tanzillo for posting the information needed to disable the Infocenter. This was repeated by others such as Jimmy at JTBWorld, and Owen at Outside the Box. I even linked to it here also.

Anyway, we are rolling out some 2010 products and I thought it would be a good idea to perform this step as early as possible and per user (not per machine - since this is a per user setting now)... So why not put it in a windows startup script...? So I turned it loose on a set of test machines...

Using the AutoCAD License Transfer Utility

rkmcswain — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:48:59 +0000

Starting with AutoCAD 2010, the old Portable License Utility (PLU) has been replaced by the License Transfer Utility (LTU). The old PLU essentially created a "license file" that you could move from one computer to another using a network, flash drive or any other method. If you bought a new computer for example, you could install AutoCAD on the new computer, and use the PLU to transfer the activation from the old machine to the new one.

The only problem with this is that the PLU failure rate was about 50%, and because you had to define the target machine when you exported, you could not re-import back onto the same machine.

So along comes the LTU. So what is the difference? The LTU copies your activation up to the Autodesk servers where it can sit until you are ready to import it. So far in my testing, it has not failed once. Of course you will need an internet connection on both machines, and you will need an Autodesk UserID and password. If you don't have one, you can create one.

AutoCAD's Support File Search Path

rkmcswain — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 01:31:15 +0000

Since at least R14, inside the OPTIONS dialog, on the Files tab, the first expandable checkbox contains the Support File Search Path (SFSP).

This is a list of local and/or network paths in which AutoCAD looks for support files when needed. You might not put too much thought into this, and the settings on your machine may even be set by your CAD manager. But it's good to know how this affects AutoCAD.