AutoCAD Express Tools: NCOPY

Copy entities from nested objects or files.
Català - Castellano
The NCOPY command is a very useful one when we are working with XREFs or Blocks. NCOPY stands for Nested Copy which means that it will allow us to copy objects that are nested in XREFs and Blocks.
Instead of opening the xref and copying an pasting the entities we want to move from the reference file to the drawing we are at we can use NCOPY and directly copy this entities without opening the file.
The same applies for Blocks, no need to open the Block Editor to copy objects from inside the block to outside of it.
Show me more...

AutoCAD: Avoid the Blue and Green Selection Boxes

Control the colors and transparency settings of the selection boxes.Some people don't like change and when upgrading to some newer versions of AutoCAD might find disturbing to have the green and blue colors in the selection boxes. Well although I find them pretty cool to work with, here is the way to modify them or get rid of those colors.
We have to go to Format --> Options --> Selection --> Visual Effect Settings (see below).

After Clicking there, another dialog Box will appear. There we will have the option to change the color of the selection boxes or to simply get rid of any color. On the "Area Selection Effect" we can turn the opacity to 0 and we will see only the outline of the selecton boxes. We can also change the colors of them or simply adjust the opacity to a setting that matches better ou personal taste.

Show me more...

AutoCAD: MAXSORT or How many objects to be listed

Show those missing layers in the layer Manager.Did you ever encounter that the "Layer Properties" toolbar doesn´t show all the layers you think it should? First thing you should do is to check if there is any filter applied to the layers. To do that go to Layer Manager (LA) and check on the left upper corner if any of the filters is applied.

If that desn't solve your issue, your problem might come from the MAXSORT system variable. This variable controls the maximum number of items to be shown in any list in AutoCAD, for example, in the layer list of the Layer Properties toolbar. Your problem might be that you have (together between your drawing and the XRefs) more than 1000 layers. The default MAXSORT value (in AutoCAD architecture 2009) is 1000, so having more than 1000 layers will turn into some layers not being shown.

The only thing you need to do is set MAXSORT System Variable to a higher number and you will be able to see all your layers listed in your Layer Properties Toolbar.

I am not sure if increasing this value will affect in any way the performance of the program, so please don't hesitate to leave a comment about it if you know something about this issue.

Show me more...

Blog update and new domain

Cad Addict is updating and upgraing.So after deciding to get a bit more serious about writing here I talked with a friend of mine about how to get a more personalized look to blogs. He explained me how he transitioned from a blogspot domain to his personalized domain at www.enricbiosca.es .Following some of the steps he explained I acquired the domain www.cad-addict.com so this will be from now on the home address of the blog.
On a similar note I tried (and still working on it) to give the blog a more unique style. I am still using the 565 template from blogger, but as you can see not much is left from the original one. I got a new header with my parents house as an AutoCAD scfreenshot, and some quick design that I am pretty happy with. Oh!, and I also added a search box up on the upper part of my sidebar and tweaked a bit the position of the AdSense, please let me know if any of it makes the blog less reader friendly.
On the next weeks, other than a long list of posts that I have ready to publish, I´ll try to go over all the old posts, try to make some sense of the lables I am using, and maybe start to Add some directory to make it easier to search within the blog...But that is just a will, you never know how much time you have for your blog...
Show me more...

AutoCAD: Missing Dialog Boxes

If you can't find a dialog box that is supposed to appear here you'll find the solution.
Català - Castellano
Recently my company upgraded from Autodesk Architectural Desktop 2006 to AutoCAD Architecture 2008. We found the problem that in any computer we ran AutoCAD architecture, the dialog Boxes were missing when running commands such as HATCH or calling the Layer Manager.
The problem seems to come from some sort of hardware issue. We couldn't figure out the way to solve it till we found out that the dialog boxes were not missing, but far away on the left side (outside the screen resolution area).
The solution we found might not fight the source of the problem, but it definitively worked as a solution for us.
After running a command that should call a dialog box like Hatch, we press together Alt+Space+Enter. Then press the right arrow and keep pressing it until, surprise, the dialog box appeared from the left side of the screen.
This is a basic Windows procedure, If you click Alt+Space in any explorer window you will see a dialog open with the options Restore, Move, Size, Minimize, Maximize and Close. The same happens with the Dialog Boxes in AutoCAD, but the only options in most of them are Move and Close. Since Move is the default one, by pressing Alt+Space+Enter we will have selected to move the dialog box without the need to see it. Then we will use the arrows to move it till it appears on scree.
Show me more...

AutoCAD Architecture: Working with AEC Polygons

Forget about Polylines, AutoCAD Architecture has a much better entity.Forget about Polylines, AutoCAD Architecture has a much better entity than polylines, the AEC polygon (type "AECpolygon").

Once you draw one and select it you will realize that in opose of polylines that only have grips on their vertexes, the AEC polygons, have grips both in vertexes and middlepoint of each edge.

This is the first feature that makes them much better to work with than simple polylines. If we click those grips, we will be able to move that edge parallel to its original position, extending th adjacent edge to fit with the new position. See the picture.
But this is not the only thing we will be able to do. Click Ctrl and instead of ofsetting the edge you will be adding a new vertex.Click Ctrl again and you wil transform that edge into an arc.


And for a last useful trick, press Ctrl again and you will get to offset all the edgs at a time.

Similar great features will happen if you click contr after selecting one of the vertex grips instead of the egde ones.

- Click the grip to move the vertex

- Press Ctrl once to remove the vertex

- Press Ctrl twice to Offset both edegs that intersect on that vertex.

As a last cool feature of the AEC polygons try to select the middle grip og an AEC polygon with an arc segment. You will also have several options:

- Click the grip to offset the arc segment (it might add some segments to the AEC polygon)

- Press Control Once and you´ll be able to modify the radius of the arc segment

- Press Ctrl again and you will straighten the segment

- Press Ctrl Again and you will add a vertex (and two arc segments)

- Press Ctrl again and you will offset all the faces of the AEC polygon.

I would say that, combined with the AEC modify tools, there is no reason to keep using the polylines.

Show me more...

AutoCAD: Disabling selection preview for Hatches

Do you get stuck in the selection preview of complex objects?A nice feature like the selection preview can become really annoying if we are working with dense hatch patterns.
What selection preview does is that it highlights the object we are going to select if we click the left mouse button. This works very nice and smooth with simple objects like lines, polylines, arcs, etc. It happens though that when we have a dense hatch, specially if it is a hatch made of dots it might take several seconds to show the selection preview due to the amount of objects in the hatch pattern.
Although we can turn off the selection preview turning the SELECTIONPREVIEW system variable to 0, what we actually want to do is to keep it on for some elements and off for some others like hatch patterns.
We have two options to do that.

1. Set the system variable PREVIEWFILTER to 16, this will only exclude hatch patterns from the selection previews.
2. Go to Format --> Options --> Selection Tab -->Visual Effects Options --> Advanced Options --> Uncheck the Box in front of Hatch Patterns.
   

See it in a couple of images for more detailed reference.









Show me more...

AutoCAD: Creating New Palette Group

Organize your blocks on a custom made tool palette.. We might want to create a new Tool Palette Group, let´s say to store all our blocks. The default groups in AutoCAD Architecture 2008 are Design, Document, Detailing and Visualization.

Lets assume that we want to create a new palette group for all the blocks we have.We have to right click on the lower corner of the tool palettes bar and select "Customize Palettes". We will get the following screen.

On the righ portion of the window we right click on a blank portion of the screen and we select "New group". We will name the new group "Blocks". Now to be able to see the new group it needs to have at least one palette. We can drag one palette from one of the default groups to our custom created one.
We click close and right click again the bottom corner of the tool palettes bar. A new line with the name of our group will appear.

Once in the new group we can add as many palettes as we want to it, and drag and drop the blocks to them so they can be easily accessed from any file.
Once we have created our grup and configured our palettes we might want to transfer them to other computers. See this post to know how to do that.

Show me more...

AutoCAD: Transferring Tool Palettes

Transfer your tool palettes from one computer to another.
Català - Castellano
After creating tool palettes in any of the AutoCAD versions, you might want to transfer them to other computers in your network. There is no Export command so finding the way to do so it might be a bit complicated.
Here is a link to the support site from autodesk about the topic. Basically it explains the following steps to do that. You have to use the content browser. But the explanation from autodesk I think is a bit short and might not be enough fo a newby. So here comes a kind of extended version of it.
To store the palettes you have created do the following:

• Click on the content browser icon or type CONTENTBROWSER in the command line window.
• Right click and "Add Catalog" --> Create New Catalog
• Browse to a network location that all computers can access.
• Save the catalog there.
• Double click the new catalog that you have created.
• Drag and drop the new palettes to from you palettes side bar to the Catalog.
  

In any computer where you want to add those palettes, follow these steps

• CONTENTBROWSER
• Add catalog --> Add an existing Catalog
• Browse t the network location you specified before
• Double click the new added catalog
• Drag and drop the palettes you want from the catalog to your tool palettes bar. (see that it is not a simple drag and drop operation, you have to click in the palette you want to load in the contend browser and keep pressing the mouse button till a syringe icon loads, then drag to the tool palettes bar in AutoCAD

Note: After the initial transfer operation, you can add new tool palettes that you created by drag and dropping them to the Catalog in Content Browser. That will make any palette you created in one computer available to the other users on your network.


Show me more...

AutoCAD System Variable: VISRETAIN

Control if you want your XREFs to retain the visual changes or not.
Català - Castellano
Sometimes we change colors of the layers of an XREF for different reasons. Eventually we might want to get the layers to they original state. If we inserted the XRef on 0,0,0 coordinates and didn´t move it, scale it or clip it, we can just detach it and attach it again.
But in many circumstances we might have moved, clipped or scaled the xref, so we don't want to do that again. If we want to get the layers to they original color, we can use the command VISRETAIN. This system variable controls whether the changes made to XREFs are retained or are only temporal. If the variable is set to 1, the changes are kept, if we set it to 0, reloading the XREF will bring back the original colors.
Show me more...

AutoCAD: Offsetting options

The offset command has more options than you think.The Command "Offset" has more options than we generally use. I used to only use the "Through" option when I needed to offset a line or polyline to match with another one and I didn't know the distance.
Recently a clleague of mine asked me if I knew how to offset a line to both sides and erase the source line. So I went and check more carefully what the Offset Comand allows us to do.
When you type offset you will get the following response from AutoCAD:

• "Specify offset distance or [Through/Erase/Layer] :"

Let's go from left to right. I already said what "through" will do. It will offset to the point we click on the screen instead of setting a distance.
Erase: this will give us the option to decide if we want to erase the source object or not. Remember that this option remains the way you used it last time so if you type yes on erase, any time you use the offset command again it will erase the original object unless you chose again not to erase.
Layer: this will allow us to choose between keeping the offset object in the source layer *the layer the original object is on) or place the new offset object in the current layer.

But this is not all. Once we chose the options we wanted and click on the object to be offset we will get the following prompt:
Specify through point or [Exit/Multiple/Undo] :
It is good to know what "Multiple" would do. It will allow us to ofset the object multiple times by just keep clicking on the side we want it to go.

So this is how I solved the question about offsetting to both sides an erasing the source object. Let's say she wanted to ofsset a line 1o units to both sides and erase the riginal object. The process would be the following.
o (for offset) --> 10 (we set the offset distance) --> e (call the erase options) --> Y (yes to Erasing source object) --> Click the line -->M (we want multiple offsets) --> one click to each side of the line --> Enter (end the command so the original line is erased)
It might seem a complicated process but it is actually not. Combining this with the layer options really brings the Offset command to a much powerful level that most of people might not know it is capable of.
Show me more...

AutoCAD Modifying the Background Color in the Block Editor

Get rid of the nnoying background color of the Block Editor.A question a lot might have is "who did choose that annoying color for the background color in the Block Editor?" I think it is realy a bad choice and makes it hard to work in it because the creamy color will be similar to a lot of lines and will make it hard to work.

It is easy to change the Background color. We just have to go to

Format --> Options --> Display Tab

We click the "Colors" Button. This will bring us to the "Drawing WIndow Colors" Menu. Where we can actually change the display colors of almost anything in AutoCAD. TO change the Background Color of the Block Editor we select "Block Editor" On the Left and "Uniform Background" on the second option. Then on the right pper corner we can change the color to the one we want. A lo of people like to use the same black color as in normal drawing, I personnally prefer to choose a dark grey, so although easy to work with it still reminds me that I am in the Block Editor and not in the main drawing. See the image beow for details.

Quick Reference

Format --> Options --> Display Tab --> Colors --> Block Editor --> Uniform Background --> Choose Color

Show me more...