ATP254_Autocad 102 Improving Skills

8/8/2019 ATP254_Autocad 102 Improving Skills

1/20

1

ATP254AutoCAD 102 Improving Your

AutoCAD Survival SkillsSegment 1

Date: October 5, 2009

Instructor: Kenneth LearyLevel: Beginning

Category: AutoCAD

Web: www.AUGI.com


2/20

2

Introduction

Welcome to AutoCAD 102, the second in this series of beginner AutoCAD classes. If you took the firstcourse in this series you should now know many of the dos and donts and how to survive in the

AutoCAD world. This course will delve more into the program and reveal some lesser known and,sometimes nearly hidden, powerful commands in AutoCAD. Before long youll be able to amaze yourcoworkers with your knowledge of the timesaving features created to increase productivity.

Well also look into the 2006 CUI menu interface to show you how to create some basic custom menus.Lastly, well throw in some more tips and tricks, because the fans demand it.

Powerful Hidden Commands

There are a lot of powerful commands in AutoCAD that arent always taught in most Drafting programs.A majority of experienced AutoCAD users dont use more than 30 percent of the program. While nocommands are actually hidden there are a lot of commands that are not well known but can be verypowerful.

The Properties Command

Its always good to make new friends. One of yourbest new friends is the Propertiesdialog box.Keeping with AutoCAD tradition, theres more thanone way to open it. You can type the wordProperties at the command prompt, press the CTRLand 1 buttons. or select it from the Tools menu asshown on the right.

The Propertiesdialog box is content sensitive,depending on what object or objects you select willchange what properties you can modify with thecommand. This is such a powerful tool I wouldsuggest leaving it open and moving it to one side ofthe other of your screen.

The dialog box can be minimized just like the DesignCenterand Tool Paletteswindows. When you moveyour mouse over the minimized tool bar it will expandto the full dialog box.

Good idea: You can dock it to side by simply dragging and dropping it beyond the drawingwindow.


3/20

3

There are several methods for adding your selection tothe Propertiescommand. The most straight forward wayis to pick the Select button. You can type pselectat thecommand prompt or click on the icon. The icon islocated on the upper right hand corner of the Propertiesdialog box. The image to the left shows where it islocated.

Simply select the entities and hit the enter key and theentities are selected and opened in the Properties Dialog

Of the three icons, the one on the left is kind of the oddman out. This icon is actually a toggle for a systemvariable, not a command. It toggles on or off thePickAddsystem variable. PickAddcontrols howselected items are added to the selection set. Hereshow it works.

Setting PickAddto 0 turns off the variable. When thishappens the object or objects that were last selectedbecome the selection set. All objects that werepreviously selected are removed from the selection set.You can still add more objects to the selection set bypressing SHIFT while selecting.

Setting PickAddto 1 turns on the variable. Each object selected, weather you pick it, use a window orcrossing, is added to the current selection set. In this case you can use SHIFT while selecting toremove objects from the set.

Quick Select

Quick Selectis in itself a powerful command. You caneither select the icon in the properties dialog or typeQselectat the command prompt. With Quick selectyoucan select or remove objects by their specific properties.

Using you Quick Selectyou can filter selection sets byproperty (such as color or linetype) and by object type(circles, text, plines). You can either choose the specific

objects from a group of objects in a selected set (windowor crossing) or from the all the objects in the drawing.For example, you can select all of the yellow text in a

drawing without selecting any other objects or you can select all objects except the yellow text.

Note: Keep in mind when selecting entities by property first consider whether theseproperties are by entity or BYLAYER for any objects in your drawing. For example, an


4/20

4

object may appear red because its color is set to BYLAYER and the layer color is red.

Divide and conquer

The Dividecommand is a great

drawing tool that rarely gets theattention it deserves. With it you canplace a specified number of pointson an object.

When you type Divideat thecommand line it will prompt you toselect an object to divide. This canbe a line, polyline, arc, etc. TheDividecommand will not actuallymodify the object you select.

After you select the object it will prompt you with Enter the number of

segments or [Block]: Well cover the Block in a little bit. Theconfusing part of this command for some people is segments option.You count the spaces not the number of points. For example, if youwant to place two points on a line then you would input 3 for thenumber of spaces. The figure above should help explain it too.

Once you input the number ofspaces it will place points (nodes)along the entity that you selected.Your other option is to choose toinsert a block rather than points.

At the prompt where you can enter

the number of segments type B forthe Block option. You will then beprompted for the block name to

insert. When you type in the name of the block you want you are thenasked Align block with object? [Yes/No] : The image on the leftis an example of one that is not aligned with the object.

This is a case where the object is inserted with the default rotation ofthe block being used. When you select to align a block with theobject it will insert the block with a rotation to match where the pointfalls on the object. See the figure to the right.

Note: The start point (listed as Vertex 1 in the properties dialog) of the object that you

pick will determine the starting point of the Measure command. Keep this in mind whenyoure creating the object

Good idea: Make sure that your PDMODE setting is one that will allow you to see the points youjust placed. PDMODE settings of 0 or 1 will make the points virtually invisible.


5/20

5

Measure is not the same as Distance

It may seem laughable once youvealready learned about it, but a lot ofpeople expect the Measure

command to do what the Distancecommand does. It does notmeasure the length of an object. Itworks in similar manner to the Dividecommand. The difference being thatthe Measurecommand places pointsor blocks along an object at a specified distance rather than a specified number of spaces. Forexample you can place points at 50 intervals along a pline. Just like Divideyou can also place blocksas well as placing points.

Note: Measuredoes not place a point or block at the endpoint of the line that you pick.

An array of possibilities

The Arraycommand allows you to createmultiple copies of objects in a rectangular orpolar (circular) pattern. At times you may needto create multiple regularly spaced objects,when that happens; arraying is a lot faster thancopying.

For rectangular arrays, shown in the figure on

the right, you control the number of rows andcolumns and the distance between each.

On the right side of the dialog box youcan see the preview window whichshows how the settings affect thearray. Its not an exact preview likeplot preview, but it does represent howthe array will copy the object. Thedarker square represents the originalobject that is selected for the array.

A rectangular array is built along abaseline, this angle is zero by default.The rows and columns of arectangular array are orthogonal (leftto right and up and down) with respect to the X and Y axes. The angle of the array baseline can bechanged in the Angle of Array box shown highlighted on the right. A positive angle will rotate the copiedobjects counter clockwise and a negative number rotates in a clockwise direction.


6/20

6

The same positive and negativenumber input works with the offsets aswell as rotation. The image on the leftshows how negative inputs for theRow and Column offsets change thearray. In the preview you can see thatit is now down and to the left of theselected object.

When you create a polar array, you controlthe number of copies of the object, the

angle, and whether the copies are rotated.

The items are spaced by both the totalnumber of items to be copied and either thetotal angle to fill or the angle between thecopied objects.

A polar array functions much like therectangular array, its drawncounterclockwise or clockwise, dependingon whether you enter a positive or anegative value for the angle to fill.

The radius of the array is determined by thedistance from the center point to a referencepoint on the last selected object. You canspecify a new base point to be used as thereference point or use the default, which isusually an arbitrary point near the objectselected.

The highlighted box in the figure to the right

allows you to go into the drawing and specifythe information rather than typing the numberinto the box next to it.

The small box in the lower left hand corner of the dialog box is the toggle to rotate the items as copied.This works in the same manner as rotating objects in the Measureand Dividecommands


7/20

7

You can change the limit of copies that Arraycreates by setting the MaxArraysystemvariable with a number between 100 and 10000000 (ten million). When changing thevalue of MaxArray, you have to enter it with the capitalization shown.

In the next Segment

I hope you found some useful information in this first segment. In the next segment well tackle the CUIinterface and creating custom menus.


8/20

1



Date: October 19, 2009Instructor: Kenneth Leary

Level: BeginningCategory: AutoCAD

Web: www.AUGI.com


9/20

2

Introduction

Welcome to Segment 2, in this segment were going to tackle the CUI menu interface to show you howto create some basic custom menus. The Custom User Interface gives you the ability to customize

AutoCAD to better fit your needs. Well cover some of the main concepts and go into more specifics onseveral of the topics that will have the biggest impact on your efficiency.

What is the Custom User Interface

In previous versions of AutoCAD customization was possible by editing the menu files. These .MNUand .MNS files were made with ASCII text and could be edited with a simple text editor like Notepad.Customization was often tricky because a simple syntax error like a semicolon in the wrong place ormisplaced quote and your menu file was invalid. It often ended in a trial and error method of testing themenu and returning to the text file to fix any errors.

AutoCAD 2006 remedied this situation with the introduction of the Custom User Interface (CUI). Thenew environment involves a graphic interface and now allows modifications to be done inside AutoCAD.

Instead of editing the menu files in ASCII text the CUI interface uses an Extensible Markup Language(XML) based format.

Once you become familiar with the interface it actually simplifies the task of customization. This givesyou the ability to customize menus, workspaces, toolbars and even keyboard short cuts all from oneinterface. How nice would it be, to be able to have different sets of toolbars open for different tasks?

Accessing the Custom User Interface

This could come as a completeshock to you but there is morethan one way to access theCustom User Interface Dialog.You can type CUIat the commandprompt or you can go to the Toolspull down menu and selectCustomizeand then Interface(shown in the figure on the right).

You can also right click over an icon or right click in the toolbar area but noton any toolbar and select the Customizeoption. This is shown in the figureon the left.


10/20

3

Understanding the Custom User Interface

The figure above shows the Custom User Interface Dialog, well briefly cover the different parts of thedialog box and help get you familiar with their functions. The CUI interface is divided into two tabs, thefigure above is displaying the CustomizationTab. Most of your work will be done in this Tab. The othertab is the TransferTab, this where you transfer menu items from existing menus to the new ones. Letslook at each section of the CustomizationTab in more detail. Just like a real window each section isreferred to as a pane.


11/20

4

Customizations In

The figure to the right shows the CustomizationsInpane. This pane is very import, it determineswhich menu file is being modified and offers atree view of all the elements in that menu file.

The menu bar across the top has a drop downmenu that allows you to choose which CUI file tomodify.

The three icons on the right are used to partialload menus, save the changes made to thecurrent menu, and to change the appearance ofthe tree view.

The tree view shows the different elements of thecurrent CUI file. Each one of these is commonlyreferred to as a node. This is only really importantto know when youre speaking to programmersand dont want to sound stupid.

Good idea: Try right clicking on all of thenodes and see what options are availableto each.

Command list

This pane is located directly under theCustomizations Inpane. It is a list of all thecommands in the currently loaded menu file.

The Newbutton is used to create a newcommand. When you click on it the two paneson the right side show the information for thenew command you are about to create.


12/20

5

Preview Pane

This pane is located on the upper right handside of the Dialog box. This pane doesexactly what the name says; it previews thenew toolbar or the icon for a new command.Its content sensitive and will change toshow what you are editing or creating.

Properties Pane

This pane is located in the bottom right hand cornerof the dialog box. It functions much like thePropertiesdialog box that we covered in the lastsegment. Depending upon what object you aremodifying the content will change.

The figure on the left shows the properties of thetoolbar that Im using as an example in the Preview

Pane above. The properties it displays will changefor different objects that are being edited.


13/20

6

The Transfer Tab

Im showing you this one last but its really the one youll most likely use first. The Transfer tab is used

for exactly what the name says, you can transfer menu elements from the main CUI file to a new CUIfile. The default when you open the transfer tab is to create a new file, but you can use the roll downmenu to open another file or save the current one.

Creating a custom Toolbar

The safest way to customize your AutoCAD

menu file is to create a new CUI file andmake your modifications there. You want toavoid modifying the default AutoCAD menufor several reasons. First off, if things gowrong you dont want to corrupt your mainmenu file. Second, services packs orupdates might overwrite your changes.Lastly when you upgrade to a new version(we can all hope) your changes wontmigrate to the new version.

First, open the CUI interface and click on

the Transfertab. In the New CUI Filepaneon the right side, right click on the item youwant to add. In this case the Toolbars. Thefigure on the right shows the options. Usethe New option to create your new toolbar.


14/20

7

Once you create the toolbar you can drag items from main menu on the left and drop them into the newmenu. In the figure below the command that is selected in the right Ive

In the next Segment

I hope you found some useful information in this segment. In the next segment well cover how tocreate custom commands with macros and lisp routines. Well also cover some more tips and tricks.


15/20

1



Date: October 26, 2009

Instructor: Kenneth LearyLevel: BeginningCategory: AutoCAD

Web: www.AUGI.com


16/20


17/20

3

Command: -purge

Enter type of unused objects to purge

[Blocks/Dimstyles/LAyers/LTypes/Plotstyles/SHapes/textSTyles/Mlinestyles/Tablest

yles/Regapps/All]:AEnter name(s) to purge : *

Verify each name to be purged? [Yes/No] : N

From this we can create the macro which would be Purge a * n. With semicolons instead of spacesand running the command three times the end result is this purge;a;*;n;purge;a;*;n;purge;a;*;n.

Note: any space represents a Return, make sure you dont place any extra in yourmacro. Its a common mistake to leave one at the end.

Adding macros to your Custom Toolbars

Open the custom user interface dialog box, selectthe Customize tab. Do not make any changes tothe main CUI file. In the Customization Inpane usethe pull down menu to select the custom menu fileand make it current. In the Custom User Interfacedialog box in the lower left hand corner CommandList pane, click New.

A new command (automatically named Command1)is displayed in the Command List pane and theProperties pane. A blank button image is displayed

in the image pane. The figure on the right showsthe image I selected from the scroll down list. Youcan also create a custom icon using the edit button.

In the Properties pane, do the following: In theName box, enter a name for the command in thiscase Purge All. The name will be displayed as atooltip or menu name when you select thiscommand.

In the Description box, enter a description for thecommand. The description will be displayed on the

status bar when the cursor hovers over the menuitem or toolbar button.

In the Macro box, click on the box with three dots init, this is highlighted in the figure on the left.


18/20

4

Clicking on the box will open the Long String Editor. In thisbox you can enter the macro for the command.

In the Element ID box, you can enter an element ID for thecommand. This is for new commands only. You cannotmodify the element ID of an existing command.

Once the command is complete you can drag and drop itfrom the Command Listpane into the toolbar you wish toplace it in, located directly above it in the Customizations Inpane.

You now have a new custom command in your toolbar.

Lisp Routines in custom menus

Lisp routines function much like a script file, they are external files that are brought in to AutoCAD when

needed. A lisp routine can be added to a custom menu with a macro that loads it into AutoCAD. Anexample for a lisp routine called notate would look like this in the command macro;^c^c(load notate) notate; The

Profiles and Workspaces

You may be confused about profiles and workspaces. If youre not confused its probably because youhavent learned about profiles and workspaces yet. Let me try to explain it in a way that wont requirethe use of Tylenol.

Profiles are used more for the background settings in AutoCAD. Theyre used to store user options,support paths, and system variables. One of the best benefits to profiles is that they are portable. Youcan export the profile to a .arg file and import the file to another computer.

The down side to using profiles is that you have to export the profile and then import it back intoAutoCAD in order to update the changes that you have made. You cant simply save the changes to it.You also have to manage your profiles from the Options dialog box, there is no Profile menus ortoolbars.

Workspaces are used to control the things that you see on the screen. They control what menus,toolbars, and dockable windows are open and where theyare located. When you use or switch a workspace, youchange the display of your drawing area. You can easilyswitch to another workspace within a drawing session. Thiswill allow you to have different toolbars and menus open for

different tasks.

The Workspacestoolbar, pictured on the right, has a pulldown menu that allows you to scroll through the workspaceprofiles and set one to current. You can also save thecurrent configuration as a new workspace. The Customize option will open the CUI editor, which youmay recall from Segment 2.


19/20

5

The figure on the left shows the My Workspacesicon. You canset this to your favorite workspace and switch back to it byclicking on this button.

The button to the left of the My Workspacesbutton is theWorkspace Settingsbutton, this opens the WorkspaceSettings Dialog box.

In the top of the dialog box is a pull down menu fromwhich you can choose a workspace to assign to the MyWorkspace toolbar button.

The Menu Display and Ordercontrols whichworkspace name you want to display in the workspacetoolbar and menu. You can change the order of thoseworkspaces using the Move upand Move Down

buttons. The Add Seperatorbutton does that it adds aseparator between the workspace names you choose.

You can also set the When Changing Workspacestoeither automatically save changes when you switchworkspaces or to not save changes when you switch toanother workspace.

Tray settings and Status Bar

In the very bottom right hand corner of the AutoCAD window is asmall triangle, clicking on it will open the Status Bar Menu. Thiswill allow you to turn on or off any of the buttons that appear in thestatus bar that runs across the bottom of the AutoCAD window.

The Tray Settingsat the bottom of the menu will open the traysettings dialog box. This will allow you to turn on or off the DisplayIcons from Services. In case you dont speak fluent computergeek what that that means, translated into English, is you can turnoff the icons in the status bar tray like the Communication Center,Lock Toolbarsand Notification balloons.


20/20

6

Being able to change the Notification balloon settingsis a really nice feature. If you have several drawingsopen and update a reference file it can be annoying tohave to keep turning off all the balloons that pop up totell you the reference drawing was updated.

In the Tray Settings dialog box you can set a Displaytimefor all notifications so they will turn themselves offafter an amount of time that you can set.

Command Line WindowWith AutoCAD 2006, you can now close the Command Line window by choosing the Command Lineoption in the Tools menu or hitting Ctrl + 9. The Dymanic Inputfeature displays command line

information in a tooltip near the cursor so the Command Line window is no longer necessary for mostcommands. All commands or input entered while the window is closed, are still captured in theCommand Line window. If for some reason you need to re-open the Command Line window, simply hitCtrl + 9 to toggle it back on.

Good Idea: If you dont want to close it completely instead of closing the window you couldundock it and enable Auto-hide so that it will only expand when you place your cursor over it.

In Conclusion

I hope you found some useful information in this segment. If you want more tips and tricks go to theAUGI Tips and Tricks forum, there are a lot of great minds coming up with wonderful short cuts in there.

Remember that this is only part of the course, support is always available online in the course forum. Iurge you to go to the visit the course forum and as ask any questions that you may have about thissegment. Its our mantra that the only stupid question is the one you dont ask.

Documents

ATP254_Autocad 102 Improving Skills