Image Frames and PDF Frames

Some of you already know about the IMAGEFRAME variable. Basically this is the system variable that controls how the frame of a referenced image acts.

Set to 0 (zero) The image frames are not visible and they are not plotted
Set to 1 The image frames are displayed and plotted
Set to 2 The image frames are displayed but not plotted

Well, with the ability to now reference PDFs into drawings there is a new variable that does the same thing for PDFs. The variable is PDFFRAME

Set to 0 (zero) The PDF underlay frame is not visible and it is not plotted

Set to 1 Displays the PDF underlay frame and allows it to be plotted

Set to 2 Displays the PDF underlay frame but keeps it from being plotted

OSNAPZ = 1

This happens a lot when dealing with aerial topo. You want to measure the distance between an existing curb line to a centerline or another known object. You use the distance command to measure and snap to the existing curb line and you expect a distance around 40' and you end up getting 568.94'. What happens is the topo element has a Z value that. So the distance that is being calculated is that actual 3 dimensional distance and not the horizontal distance you want. There is a way around this.... OSNAPZ


OSNAPZ controls weather objects snaops are automatically projected onto the plane parallel to the XY plane of the currect UCS at the current elevation..... HUH?

Basically, since we do not work on 3D mechanical or architectural files that have constantly changing UCS's, this variable sets the Z value to your current UCS Z value which is zero.

So when you set your OSNAPZ to 1 you will get XY distances, not XYZ (3D) distances.

3 ways to save a file...

I am not sure if everyone knows this but there are three ways to save a file you are working on. I will start off with the one you are most familiar with.

Quick Save
This is the most common one. The one you do when either hitting the save icon at the top of your screen or doing a "Ctrl+S". This basically just saves the file you are working on while you keep working on it. Pretty simple.

Save As
This is useful option when copying a file. It takes the file you are in and saves it as a completely different file without modifying the original and makes this new copy the active drawing. You can perform this with a "Ctrl+Shift+S". This is also a way to save down to an older version of AutoCAD.

Save
This is an underused command. I find it perfect for making backups or archiving files. What this command does is take the file you are working in and saves a copy as a completely new file, just like Save As. What makes this different than Save As is that you are not active in this new file, you are still in the original file. I find it perfect when working on major design changes and you want to save different iterations of your design. By using the SAVE command you can "backup" before making any major changes. Try it out!

Take Ctrl

There are a bunch of quick things you can do with the control (Ctrl) key in AutoCAD. I will quickly go through them....


Ctrl+C - Copy to Clipboard
Ctrl+X - Cut to clipboard
Crtl+V - Paste from Clipboard
Crtl+R - toggle between viewports
If you have two or more viewportss in paperspace you can switch between active viewports with Ctrl+R

Ctrl+P - Plot
Ctrl+O - open
Ctrl+N - new drawing
Ctrl+S - Quick Save
Ctrl+Shift+S - Save As
Ctrl+Q - Quit
Ctrl+A - Select All
Ctrl+F - Toggle OSnap on/off
Ctrl+G - toggle grid on/off
Ctrl+L - Toggle Ortho on/off
Crtl+Tab - toggle between open drawings
Ctrl+1 - Toggle on/off properties palette
Ctrl+2 - Toggle on/off design center palette
Ctrl+3 - Toggle on/off tool palette
Ctrl+4 - Toggle on/off Sheet Set Manger
Crtl+9 - toggle command line on/off
Ctrl+0 - Toggle on/off clean screen

Where did my dialog box go?

This used to happen a lot more in Land Desktop but I am sure it has happened to everyone at least once. You go to open a file and the open dialog box is no where to be found. After some searching around you noticed that the command line is asking you to type in the entire path of the file you want to open, like this...

Usually this will happen right after a crash now a days but back in the LDT days it would happen mostly when you would hit the esc key before finishing a command.

Instead of going into a long blog about why this happens I will just tell you how to fix it...

Type "FILEDIA" at the command line and set the value from 0 to 1...

 

 

Voilà!

Upgrading to 2011...

Here is the video from the lunchtime workshop we had in Anaheim on the AutoCAD 2011 upgrade. Hopefully it works ok, the video file is unedited and is over an hour long.



AutoCAD 2011 Workshop (7-7-10) from Randy Shadowen on Vimeo.