CAD oriented BLOG for Willdan CAD users

Hey Guys,

I have a bunch of little tips and tricks I have collected over the years. I thought it would be a good time to start a blog and share these tips with everyone plus it is a good way to archive them.

So I will start this first post of with a few quick tips for ACAD 2009 since our office got everyone upgraded to 2009 this week.

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Hey, where did the menu bar go?

You might notice that all the file pull downs across the top are gone (File, Edit, View, etc...) They are still there. You just have to click the big A in the upper left hand corner. A little different, but they are all there. If you want them they way they used to be without switching your workspace to the classic view, which will get rid of all the cool new ribbon functionality, they just enter the following system variable at the command line

MENUBAR (system variable)
0 = no menu bar at the top of screen
1 = menu bar back at the top of the screen


OSNAPZ (system variable)
0 = default, give you the true distance between using the Z-value of the specified point
1 =Osnap substitutes the Z-value of the specified point with the elevation (ELEV) set for the current UCS

I know this has happened to you. you measue from the centerline to the topo curb line and you get a distance of 1400'. You realize that the centerline is drawn at a Z of zero but the topo lines are at elevation. So if you sent OSNAPZ to 1, you will get a distance in XY dirrection as if everything is at the same elevations.


You can Right Click on the command line to see a list of recent commands


TASKBAR (system variable)
0 = (default) displays only the name of the current drawing on the Windows taskbar
1 = display multiple open drawings as separate items on the Windows taskbar


SETBYLAYER (command)
This is a command to set any object back to bylayer. Including blocks and the elements within the blocks.... BAM!!!!


LAYDEL (command)
ever get that layer that just wont go away. Use LAYDEL to get rid of that layer. Just make sure these isnt ANYTHING you need on that layer still. You might want to backup the drawing before you do this command.


TEXTTOFRONT (command)
Bring all of the text to the top of the draworder


TXT2MTXT (express tool)
converts single line text to multiline text. You can select multiple text objects and it will join them together into one multiline text object.