Still using an older version of AutoCAD (not 2013 yet)? Got a spare hour next Tuesday?
Then join Lynn Allen for a free webcast!
Keynote Speaker: Lynn Allen
Date & Time: Tuesday, June 5, 2012 11:00am- 12:00pm PDT
Get the scoop on all the new features in AutoCAD 2013, as well as info on some of the upgrade & cross-grade incentives currently on offer.
Hope to see you there!
It’s been quite a week for announcements, and we’re not done yet. But don’t worry, tips & tricks will be back again soon.
A new service pack for AutoCAD 2012 and AutoCAD LT 2012 is now available at the following links:
AutoCAD 2012 Service Pack 2
AutoCAD LT 2012 Service Pack 2
Consult the readme file for installation instructions and a list of addressed issues, and be sure to get the correct update for your operating system (32-bit or 64-bit).
Okay, all you pressure-prompted people! The time for procrastinating is past!
Today’s the LAST DAY to answer the Call for Proposals for AU 2012.
You don’t have to have the whole class written, just a synopsis. Classes can be tips & tricks (your favorite hints for a particular product), workflows & processes (how you use multiple products together), case studies (how Autodesk software made a project run faster/smoother/cheaper)…the content is truly limited only by your imagination.
So be creative, and get those proposals in!
Autodesk Labs has a limited number of spots available for users who want to try out Project Blink, which provides the ability to access your design software from anywhere. To participate in this beta, please fill out this short survey.
If you're in India, we invite you to join us for this free Autodesk Virtual Event to see how the latest Autodesk software can help you lead the way in bringing your ideas to life and transforming your business.
Our solutions for Building Information Modeling (BIM), Manufacturing, and Digital Entertainment Creation can help you gain greater production efficiencies, save time, stay within budget, and solve even the most complex production challenges. And now you can hear straight from Autodesk executives—including Lynn Allen, Technical Evangelist—and learn more about the latest AutoCAD® software, Autodesk Design Suites, the all-new Autodesk® 360, and more.
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Date: May 24, 2012
Time: India, Sri Lanka - 09:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Bangladesh -10:00 a.m. to 01:00 p.m.
Presentations begin at 9:30 a.m. IST — attend one or attend all.
Autodesk experts will be available until 12:30 p.m. IST for live online Q & A.
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When we left off last time, we’d just finished creating three projected views from a base 2D view of 3D model space geometry.
So far, so good. But let’s take this to the next level, and modify some individual views.
When I select the isometric view, I get 2 grips and a contextual ribbon tab.
The two grips are pretty straightforward. The square one enables you to move the view, while the arrow grip enables you to change its scale.
Notice that the default scale is “From parent”, so if you change the scale of the main view, this one will change too. If I set this to a different scale, it will stay the same size even if the parent scale changes.
On the contextual tab, there’s a panel for creating new views—projected (which we’ve already covered), and section and details (which we’ll cover later). You can also manually update the view, if its source geometry is modified.
Edit View brings up yet another contextual tab.
Note that it looks a lot like the Drawing View Creation tab, with many of the same tools. The special icon above Hidden Lines indicates that the view style is controlled by the parent view.
I’ll change this isometric view to Visible Lines, 1/16” scale, and move it to be more in line with the other views:
One last note about grip-editing projected views before we wrap up for today.
By default, projected orthogonal views are constrained to align with their parent view. This makes sense, as this kind of alignment is generally good drafting practice.
But if for some reason you need to break the alignment (maybe your views won’t fit on the sheet without it), it’s easy.
Just press Shift after you’ve made the Move grip active to switch to free motion, and press it again to switch back to normal alignments.
This only applies to orthogonal views (top, bottom, left, right, etc.); since isometric views don’t have axes to align to, you can always move them freely.
See you next time!
In Part 2, I showed you how to create a base 2D view of a 3D model. Now it’s time to add extra views.
After you press Enter to accept the placement of your base view, you’re immediately put into projected view mode. As you move your cursor around the drawing, you see previews of the different views that will be created if you click.
In the image below, I clicked 3 times to create left, top, and isometric views, then pressed Enter.
Notice that the preview was shaded, to help identify views, but the end result is the “hidden line” style as I had selected in the previous post.
Each view is a single object, as you can see when I hover over it:
Here, the “Type” is Projected, because this view was generated from another view. The view is aligned, meaning that if I want to move it, I can only move it along the imaginary vertical line that connects it to its parent view. The visual style and scale from this view are inherited from the base, so if I change the base (front) style or scale, this projected view would change also.
And if I wanted to change any of that? That’ll be our topic next time.
In the first post in this series, I showed you the various places you can get 3D content from which to create 2D views in AutoCAD. Now it’s on to what happens after you’ve selected your content.
I mentioned the Drawing View Creation tab last time, in relation to using Model Space Selection to choose only part of your model space contents to document:
But once you’ve got that—whether it’s some of model space, all of model space, or Inventor content—it’s time to move to the rest of the tab.
In the Orientation panel, you can choose your initial view. AutoCAD uses Front by default, but you can choose any of the standard orthogonal or isometric views instead.
Appearance controls—what else?—how your base view will look. You have four choices when it comes to shading and hidden lines: Only visible lines, visible and hidden lines (shown as dashed), shaded with visible lines, and shaded with visible and hidden lines.
You can also choose an appropriate scale, and turn on interference and tangent edges if you need to see them.
Once you’ve set these, click in the drawing to place the base view. You instantly get a preview of the view, complete with contextual menu, and the Move and OK buttons (grayed out above) become active.
This gives you the option to make adjustments to your view before you click OK or eXit. (In this case, “OK” and “eXit” both finish your view placement—use Esc or Cancel to get out of the command completely.)
As soon as you finish placing your base view, you get to immediately create projected views from your base view…but that’ll be our next topic.
This is the first post in a multi-part series on creating 2D views of 3D models in AutoCAD 2013.
As more and more people create complex 3D models in AutoCAD, more and more people wish creating real things from those models was as easy as snapping your fingers. We may be getting close with 3D printing, but in the meantime, most of us still have to create 2D drawings of those 3D models before the designs can be built or fabricated.
AutoCAD 2013 makes this process easier than ever with the new & improved tools on the new Layout tab.
(You can see, from the number of tools on this tab, why this will be a multi-part series.)
The first two panels, Layout and Layout Viewports, contain tools you’re already familiar with, for creating and modifying layouts, page setups, and layout viewports.
Let’s move on, then, to the third panel: Create View.
Today’s topic is where to get the 3D geometry that will be the source for your 2D views. In AutoCAD 2013, you have a choice: AutoCAD or Inventor.
If you choose “From Inventor”, your base view will be created from an Inventor assembly, part, or presentation. In this dialog, you have options for the Design View, Positional Representation, and Level of Detail, which you can set before you click Open.
Creating a base view from an Inventor file creates a link between the DWG and IAM/IPT/IPN files, rather than importing the model. This means that when changes are made to the source model, your base view will update.
You can also choose “From Model Space”, if your 3D model already exists in your AutoCAD file.
By default, AutoCAD grabs everything in model space to create the base view. If you’d rather be more particular, you can use the “Model Space Selection” feature on the Drawing View Creation contextual tab.
This temporarily pops you in to model space, where you can add and remove objects from your selection with the standard A and R shortcuts.
When you’re finished refining your selection, you can return to the layout.
The above is what happens if you choose "From Model Space" when you're already in a layout. If you start in model space, you're immediately taken to object selection mode. After you select your objects (or press Enter to use the whole drawing), you're asked to specify a layout on which to create the view. From there, all the steps are the same.
In the next post, we’ll cover the rest of the Drawing View Creation tab—stay tuned!