Autodesk keeps making our lives more difficult. Fortunately, there is a way around most of the time... Català - Castellano - Deutsch I wrote the other day about how to ditch the ribbon and recover the standard Menu Bar. Well, that solution worked for my AutoCAD 2010 at work. Unfortunately at home I installed the AutoCAD Architecture 2010 Student Version (I am a student too). When I tried to follow the steps exposed on that previous post, I got a message saying, "No Menus are Defined". Apparently, Autodesk is trying to force the use of the Ribbon, so is supplying copies of AutoCAD "menu naked" The partial solution to this problem was found via the Autodesk Discussion Group. If you download this Zip File and follow the instructions described in it, you will get some of the menus back. Although I think I am still missing some of them...With this solution I got the Menus: File, Edit, View, Insert, Format, Window and Design, is that all??
You can run scripts on multiple files using ScriptPro Català - Castellano - Deutsch Imagine that you want to purge 100 files to be sure that not unnecessary information is saved, wasting space. Or imagine that you want to save all the drawings of a project to a previous version of AutoCAD so a consultant of yours can read your files. You don't want do it yourself or appoint someone to do it manually. What you want is a software to Batch process scripts on multiple files, Autodesk actually provides the application for free. This application is called ScripPro. You can directly download it here, or go to the information page.
For versions of AutoCAD previous to 2007, you'll need this version instead. For thsoe who don't know what scripts are in AutoCAD, just imagine them as entering a set of commands without typing them manually. You can save them in a text file, and when you run the scrip file (by entering the SCRIPT command) all the set of commands will run one after the other. I will post an example script soon, so those who are new to scripts can get a better idea of what they do. I already posted another example before explaining how to create a script to generate all your standard layers.
Update: The installer of ScriptPro is for 32Bit windows only...my 64bit windows doesn't like it, i get "not compatible with operationg system,,,crap!" Update 2: I found this freeware software called Autoscript that runs on Windows 7 64bit. It adds a new menu called autoscript, that actually doesn't work!!! but if you type AUTOSCRIPT as a command it will run a program that works the same way as ScriptPro. Via Cadig.
A set of free AutoLISP routines for AutoCAD Català - Castellano - Deutsch My friend Aarti just sent me a link to a website that has collected a bunch of free AutoLISP routines. I haven't had time to check them one by one but I thought I'd post the link here in case you want to give it a look.
The one she told me she used was TLEN.lsp, that allows you to callculate the total length of a set of linear objects (lines, polylines, ecs) etc. Saving a lot of time when you have to do some measurements.
The most visited posts of 2009 by month. Català - Castellano - Deutsch As I already did last year here comes the list of the most visited posts of each month. This is just a way to make old posts accessible to those who joined CAD Addict recently. Hope you find something interesting. This is the list.
Note that there are some months when the shown post is the second one because the most visited one was the same as the previous month. I did it like this so there could be 12 different posts here.
Give a bit to help Haiti Català - Castellano - Deutsch After the Earthquake in Haiti the situation in the country is much worse than already was before. The reports I've been reading by some journalists, are really heartbreaking. If you feel like you want to help, but you don't want to do it through religious organizations, the link on the image below will allow you to donate through Paypal to Red Cross International and Doctors without Borders. It takes 1 minute and less than 5 clicks. It's your call.
Click on the image or here to go to the donation page.
Do you hate the ribbon? Do you want to get back your old menubar structure with toolbars? Easy and simple Català - Castellano - Deutsch I hate the ribbon, I confess it. It is not only the Ribbon in AutoCAD, its the whole Ribbon concept, I hate it too since it appeared in the new version of the Office package (2007). Fortunately, AutoCAD allows you to switch back to the old system, it is a pretty simple process. You just need to do the following:
Type RIBBONCLOSE (it will close the ribbon)
Enter MENUBAR in the command line and type "1" as a new value (it will show the menubar)
Then go to the EXTRAS Menu and go to Toolbars, here you will be able to select the toolbars you want to see displayed
Update: On the bottom right of the screen there is a Workspace control button that by default reads "2D Drafting and Annotation". If we change that to "AutoCAD Classic" we will get the standard interface we were used to before the ribbon appeared. Thanks to Helen for this tip.
Control which objects are highlighted in the selection preview Català - Castellano - Deutsch The selection preview is very useful to know before clicking which object you are going to select. The only problem it has is that if your objects are very complex, generating the preview might take some time, slowing down your workflow. A clear example of objects that create issues if previewed are hatch patterns. Some time ago, I already wrote a post on How to Disable selection preview for Hatch Patterns. This post just wants to be a more comprehensive overview of how to control which objects are highlighted. There is a system variable that allows us to control which objects are "selectionpreviewed". Te SV is PREVIEWFILTER, and as in other SV, the sum of the following values will result in some objects beeing excluded from the preview feature.
- 0 all objects are previewed - 1 Objects on locked layers excluded - 2 Objects in XREFs are excluded - 4 Tables are excluded - 8 Multiline objects are excluded - 16 Hatch patterns excluded - 32 Objects in groups are excluded
To exclude several object types, you need to enter the sum of the different values for this objects. For instance, if you want to exclude Hatch Patterns and Groups from selection previews, you will need to enter 48 as the value for the PREVIEWFILTER System Variable. Alternatively, the controls for which objects are previewed can be accessed through Format --> Options --> Selection -->Visual Effects Options --> Advanced Options
Place components along a path with this awesome plugin from Chris Fullmer. Català - Castellano - Deutsch Placing components along a path is now a piece of cake with this Plugin from Chris Fullmer. The components allows several options like rotating the components as they are placed, scaling them etc. It is a very useful tool. I usually had to do this sort of task in AutoCAD using the MEASURE and DIVIDE commands. Now this can be done direclty and very easily in SketchUp. See Chris's video to get a better idea of what this does.
Anyone else hates windows 7 as much as Vista? Català - Castellano - Deutsch I just got a new laptop and it comes with Windows 7, I was XP user and was quite satisfied with it. Windows 7 (which to me it looks exactly like Windows Vista, my theory is that they just renamed it...)is killing me slowly...it is such a pain, so reatarded and so full of useless stuff that I am already trying to get a copy of Win XP x64 and format the laptop... Anyone else having similar problems?
Just a few things I am struggling: - Some programs do simply not start (like I was using Carbonite online backup, and now only works when Windows 7 decides it wants it to work) - The notification icons on the taskbar appear and disapear when they want, the saved settings get randomly reverted to default for no reason - Folders "don't load totally" being unable to see the icons for each type of file.
I mean, Mr Gates, stop playing with the stupid display and transparency options, and put please some time on making the system at least as fast and stable as XP. Sorry all for the whinning, but I had to complain to someone that would listen, what is ur experience with windows 7??
The ten favourite posts by the users in 2009 by the number of Unique Visitors Català - Castellano - Deutsch As I did last year with the Top Ten List of 2008, here comes the list of the top 10 visited posts all year round in 2009. Happy New year to Everyone! Keep visiting and commenting on this 2010. All the Best.
Record your moves and export them as a set of images to create an animation Català - Castellano - Deutsch We saw on a previous post how to create an animation using the Flightpath.rb plugin. If what we want is to create a walkthrough, the Camera Recorder Plugin works better (at least for me). With this Plugin by Chris fullmer, you can walk through the mode using the walk tool from sketchup, and record the moves and get them exported to a series of images. See the video where Chris Explains how to use this Plugin.
SketchUp animations exports are pretty bad in quality, how to improve that? Català - Castellano - Deutsch I had to export an animation for a recent project at school, and the regular exports from SetchUp were way to bad in quality. So I set myself to try to find a better way to do that. A bit of research on the internet showed me that if you export the animation as individual images and compile them on a movie file, the results should be better. Following some of the advice from Colin Holgate on this thread I exported my different scenes as series of JPEGs (I didn't realise it was better to export as PNG, I read the thread to quickly). The export resolution as 2048 x 1152 for a 16:9 widescreen format. Colin on his post explained he exported at 4096 x 2304 px, but my machine is old and I was time pressed to finish this, so i had to sacrifice quality for time. Also, the methodology is slightly different, since he was exporting from a Mac and I was doing it from a PC. In any case, the steps I followed were these:
Configure the Animation so it does not pause on each scene (see this post about it)
Export the Animation ( I used export as JPEG and quality 2048x1153px, ideally you want to export a bit higher quality and PNG format)
Reduce the Exported Images to a lower resolution (I reduced them to 853 x 480px)
Compile the images in a Movie file using Quicktime Pro
Combine the different scenes and add credits + music using Adobe Premiere Pro
This is the video after following these steps.
As you can see, the quality is still not impressive. This is due to several reasons:
I exported as JPG by mistake instead of PNG
I should have exported the original images in higher quality to reduce the flickering of lines
It was my first time using Premiere, so I had no idea which settings I was using.
As you see, I am still a newby on this, I just wanted to share the work done. Anyone who has some advice on how to better attempt to get a high quality animation out of SketchUp that is still manageable in size, feel free to comment.
Autodesk keeps making our lives more difficult. Fortunately, there is a way around most of the time...
