LT Unlimited

A New Year, a New Webcast

Happy New Year, everybody! Although 2008 did have its highlights, I'm sure I'm not the only one who wasn't sorry to see it go. Here's hoping that 2009 is full of. The blog had a good year, though, with 107 posts and 12,805 unique visitors from 122 countries. (The visitor stats are only May-December, too, since the blog moved to its new home here on TypePad. Not bad for only 7 months!)

And what better way to kick off the new year than with a new webcast? I hope you'll join me for Introduction to Macro Writing on Thursday, January 22nd, at 10:00 a.m. Pacific -- the third in the AutoCAD LT webcast series. The content will be similar to the class I presented at AU 2008, which, I'm happy to say, was rated 9.14 out of 10!

In this webcast, I'll show you how to write macros that perform sequences of commands and options, and how to use them in CUI elements and tool palettes for easy access.

Just click on the link above to register, and I hope to see you there!

Maintain Text Orientation Relative to Layout

Have you ever needed to rotate a view in a viewport, but wanted the text in that view to stay horizontal relative to the paper? If you're using annotative text styles, making this happen is as simple as checking a box.

In the Text Style Manager, an annotative text style can be set to "match text orientation to layout" -- in other words, no matter what the angle of your view is, the text will always stay horizontal.

This property can also be set on the fly for individual annotative text objects. When it's set to Yes, you can see that the Rotation property has been grayed out, because the orientation is now determined by the view angle.

The screenshot below shows two views of the same plan area, with the view on the right rotated 90 degrees. "Den" has been set to maintain orientation, while "Office" has not. (Note: this works best if you use the UCS and PLAN commands through a layout viewport. If you try to work with this in modelspace, you won't be able to rotate the text, but you also won't necessarily see the text at the correct orientation. Makes sense, really, since it's the layout and not the model that determines the rotation.)

Well, this is it -- the last post of 2008! Autodesk traditionally takes the week between Christmas and New Year's off, and the way it worked out this year, we'll be off all the way to January 5th. So, Happy Holidays to all my blog readers, and look for more tips, tricks, and news in the new year!

Calculate Area Enclosed by Objects or Points

AutoCAD LT includes a number of "inquiry" tools to help you pull information out of a drawing. One of these is the AREA command, located on the Inquiry panel of the Tools tab, or under Tools-->Inquiry-->Area.

When you start the command, you're prompted for corner points. Just keep clicking in the drawing until you've defined your polygon, then press Enter to see the area and perimeter in the current units.

If the object whose area you want is already drawn, you can use the Object option instead (very helpful when the object has a lot of corners).

And if you'd like to see the sum of multiple areas, you can use the Add option. Keep in mind that you have to know in advance that you'd like to add areas -- if you pick a point or object first, the command will end with the results of that object. There's also a Subtract option, which you can use either if you make a mistake adding objects, or if you'd like to see the net area defined by smaller objects within a larger one.

Set Object Snaps to Ignore Hatches

Object snaps are wonderful things, but occasionally you don't actually want to use them. For example, intersecting lines in a hatch pattern probably aren't part of your design, and you'd rather not have them appear as an option when you're looking for intersections.

Fortunately, removing hatches as object snap targets is simple. Just go to the Options dialog, Drafting tab, and check the box marked "Ignore Hatch Objects" under "Object Snap Options". (You can also use the system variable OSOPTIONS.)

New AU Online Now Live

AU Online, the year-round home for Autodesk University content recently received a makeover, and launched on Tuesday with a brand-new look.

It's a great place to find class materials, keynote recordings, and all the news and announcements you could possibly want. Maybe it's not quite as good as being there, but it's the next best thing!

The login procedure has changed with the new site, so you may need to re-create your profile (a fairly painless process).