tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-39575580011326886722024-03-05T00:53:33.025-07:00Comm-Tech CAD CaféLuAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504386691340037718noreply@blogger.comBlogger61125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957558001132688672.post-22118480624005235952009-04-13T11:40:00.006-06:002009-04-13T11:56:45.952-06:00North America Software Release DatesBecause there are so many people who are not our customers who have clicked on this blog, I thought it would be helpful to them if I put down the dates that all the versions of Autodesk Software would be released. This is for North America, so if you don't live there, adjust according to what you have experienced in the past.Some of these dates have already passed, so you might want to call a LuAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504386691340037718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957558001132688672.post-20600782143385727442009-04-10T09:18:00.006-06:002009-04-13T10:41:28.405-06:00When Do I Get My New Software? Hello, folks. If you're on Subscription, here are the dates when your next Autodesk products (the ones that we sell here at Comm-Tech) will be mailed out. This applies to North America only:Autodesk 2010 Products Launching - First Customer Shipment datesAutoCAD® 2010 --March 24AutoCAD LT® --2010 March 24AutoCAD® Map 3D 2010 --March 30Autodesk MapGuide® Enterprise 2010 --March 30Autodesk® LuAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504386691340037718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957558001132688672.post-48385378251461911092009-04-03T09:08:00.022-06:002009-04-03T11:52:21.180-06:00Another Way to Save CustomizationsHello again, I hope this note finds you all in a good mood. Here in Boulder it's a beautiful sunny morning, but we're supposed to get another snowstorm tonight that could continue into tomorrow. At least tomorrow there won't be as many people who have to get to work, so there won't be as many idiots - those who refuse to slow down! - sliding into the ditches. I think you'll like this little tip. LuAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504386691340037718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957558001132688672.post-66844895329479295752009-03-26T12:30:00.012-06:002009-03-26T15:39:11.315-06:00Changes in the weatherHi all! This is a little note totally off the subject of AutoCAD - I like to talk about the weather once in a while. Especially when it's so dramatic!The weather service had been telling us a big snowstorm was coming, and this time they were exactly right.It was a beautiful day yesterday, just like spring. When the front started rolling in I took a photo of the clouds, they looked too pretty to LuAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504386691340037718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957558001132688672.post-56215827853835926452009-03-24T15:59:00.050-06:002009-03-26T15:16:16.411-06:00Putting Annotative Objects to WorkYesterday I did a review of how to create Annotative Styles, in Text, Dimensions and Multileaders. It's pretty obvious that these styles are worse than useless if you don't know how to use them, so let's get right into that.You can put Annotative Dimensions, Text and Multileaders in your drawing either in Model space or Paper Space through a scaled viewport. The benefit of putting these objects LuAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504386691340037718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957558001132688672.post-10876448499555776102009-03-23T09:01:00.035-06:002009-03-24T16:03:56.107-06:00Annotative Objects RevisitedSince Annotative objects became part of AutoCAD in the 2008 version, there have been some changes, mostly simply in how it looks when you're using them. I'm going to go through the basics again of how to use annotative text, dimensions and leaders ( called Multileaders now ). In my humble opinion, this was the best thing to come out of the 2008 release. If you ever print out your project with LuAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504386691340037718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957558001132688672.post-75130068405855299512009-02-27T16:53:00.037-07:002009-03-20T15:28:41.485-06:00Creating a Ribbon from a ToolbarRecently when I right-clicked on a toolbar in the CUI, I noticed that I could create a Ribbon right there. I thought that would be a pretty cool way to customize - but there are a few pitfalls you might want to be aware of! So, to start off I created a custom Toolbar with a bunch of commands I wanted to use all together. (This is really an easy process. 1. Right-click on the Toolbars node in the LuAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504386691340037718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957558001132688672.post-69242203485896942922009-01-30T14:43:00.009-07:002009-02-02T10:23:01.293-07:00Embarrassing MomentsHere's a good laugh for you all, unfortunately the joke was on me, but it's still funny- at least, everyone who works here seems to think so...Any of you who try to help others with their computers will sympathize, I'm sure!My colleague Bob (not his real name!) has a class in Wyoming next week, and they rented 4 laptop computers for him to bring along. Since he's leaving Sunday night, he's LuAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504386691340037718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957558001132688672.post-86231548657367149662009-01-28T10:15:00.009-07:002009-03-24T16:05:34.623-06:00Correction on Subscription BenefitsHello, everybody, I hope you're having a better day than I am. I want to always be accurate when I'm passing along information in this blog, so it really bothers me when I tell you the wrong thing. Let me apologize first, and then tell you the correction.I'm sorryOn my December 18th entry, I stated that Home Use was only for commercial licenses. That's true, but government offices that buy LuAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504386691340037718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957558001132688672.post-31304777142163215862009-01-21T09:05:00.027-07:002009-01-28T10:14:38.491-07:00Disappearing Ribbons I received a question from Filipa from Portugal about what to do when the Quick Access Toolbar disappears, and I've had it happen too. In fact, I've opened AutoCAD 2009 and not had any toolbars show up! It kind of throws you off balance when that happens, but usually it's an easy thing to fix.The first thing to do is open the CUI, and the easiest way to do that is to type CUI (and then of courseLuAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504386691340037718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957558001132688672.post-90441921635234558882009-01-14T15:08:00.045-07:002009-03-24T16:06:20.947-06:00Building Dynamic BlocksI have been working on a custom class called Advanced Blocks, it'll have elements from level 2 & level 3 classes. In that class I'm going to be showing people how to add attributes to blocks, how to extract them, and how to add Dynamic functions to blocks. With this in the back of my mind, I was looking through my archives and I realized that I haven't written about Dynamic Blocks yet.So let LuAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504386691340037718noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957558001132688672.post-55545161616651783012008-12-24T10:15:00.017-07:002008-12-24T12:05:31.625-07:00A Little Rotation TipHi folks, today's a half-day at the office here, with not much going on - lots of people on vacation this week! I was just in the mood to write a little note to all of you. I meant to include this quick tip about an option in the Rotation command when I wrote about offset, but that subject just got too long. This Rotation tip is one of those things that works pretty slick. Slick as a country roadLuAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504386691340037718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957558001132688672.post-76125624935877249202008-12-22T14:59:00.017-07:002008-12-22T17:05:33.748-07:00A Little Text ThingHi all! Great weather we're still having, eh? Especially all of you poor folks back east!I wanted to add a couple tiny tips about text, one new for 2009, the other is old but you may not know about it.In this picture I have an Mtext object, I just made it on Friday when I was showing someone how fields work. There is some text I typed and a Date field, formatted so that every time I saved the LuAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504386691340037718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957558001132688672.post-62746607196520617122008-12-18T15:09:00.022-07:002009-01-28T10:02:46.923-07:00No More Late Nights in the OfficeHave you ever had a deadline that meant you had to stay at the office until the project was finished, no matter how late it got? I know it can be exciting in a scary-movie kind of way to be alone in an office building late at night, long after even the cleaning crews have gone home...or not! Honestly, I'd rather be home at night. Even if I have work to finish I like it better if, once the job is LuAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504386691340037718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957558001132688672.post-75953292563725875942008-12-15T14:36:00.046-07:002009-01-28T10:11:25.001-07:00Meet Some Old OptionsI'm in the deep freeze today, like a lot of you all over the United States - did the weather ever change! In my town in Colorado it got up to 55 degrees F last week, it was such an unexpected gift...Then the big snow on Saturday, and now this morning it was -14! The drive in to work today was slow and painful, with the roads covered in snow that had been packed down and then frozen solid. HoweverLuAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504386691340037718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957558001132688672.post-49324453939641286492008-11-21T09:52:00.024-07:002008-12-30T11:34:10.708-07:00Gold Support to the RescueHow Autodesk Subscription Gold Support Can Save Your DayYesterday I wrote extensively about the benefits of getting your Autodesk software on subscription, except I left out one important benefit. I had a good reason, so bear with me.The benefit I left out was that with subscription you can log your own support requests with Autodesk. One of their techs will research your problem and email you. LuAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504386691340037718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957558001132688672.post-6914728755547687982008-11-20T14:15:00.023-07:002009-03-24T16:06:55.445-06:00Hidden Subscription BenefitsMany of you get your AutoCAD software through subscription, which means that you basically buy it for the full price the first time, and then every year you pay a much lower fee to get the next new version automatically sent to you. Even if you weren't in the habit of buying every new release, this is still a good bargain. But did you know how many other things you are entitled to by being on LuAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504386691340037718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957558001132688672.post-40864583416579230082008-10-22T14:56:00.033-06:002008-10-23T11:19:44.629-06:00New Multileaders and Old QuickleadersIt's 3 in the afternoon and I just made a fresh pot of coffee, so I'm wide-awake and ready to roll through the rest of the day. This blog entry, like so many, comes from a problem one of our clients was having. Being the kind-hearted person that I am, I thought I'd be helpful to some unknown CAD operator out there and keep them from tearing their hair out in frustration. So here's my little tip LuAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504386691340037718noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957558001132688672.post-29965256067819221092008-10-01T16:22:00.028-06:002008-10-23T11:12:50.959-06:00Directions for the RegApp Cleanup Utility Hello, this is part 2 of the RegApp Cleanup Utility.I'm sure there must be at least one person who went to the link and downloaded the exe file, and now would like a little more help with this.If you've never done this before, you might double click on the exe file and then wonder why nothing happens. So, here's what you have to do:Once you download and run the .exe file (the one I sent you a LuAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504386691340037718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957558001132688672.post-36054368960867736582008-09-29T11:17:00.011-06:002008-09-29T15:14:03.801-06:00RegApp Cleanup UtitilityHi again,Have you ever gotten drawings from another company and they were enormous files for no discernible reason? Last week we had a client who was having strange problems with a whole lot of drawings. I enlisted the help of our Civil 3D instructor, Ken Martinez, and he showed me the difference between the typing in "purge" or "-purge" at the command line, as the only way to get rid of RegApps.LuAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504386691340037718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957558001132688672.post-69028299698525970462008-09-26T09:05:00.033-06:002008-09-26T16:35:49.213-06:00AutoCAD 2009 Update #2When I opened up my AutoCAD this morning, I had a little message pop up telling me that I had update information. I was pretty surprised, it seems like I just updated my software! But when I clicked on it, there it was, Update #2. I guess you could call these the Updates formerly known as Service Packs.If you do not see a pop-up, the picture on the right shows you how to get new updates.Here is LuAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504386691340037718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957558001132688672.post-2489321657460212682008-09-16T13:46:00.028-06:002008-09-17T13:06:51.275-06:00AutoCAD 2009 View Cube Have you ever felt like you were lost in space?Autodesk really came up with a winner when they decided to add the View Cube in AutoCAD 2009! Any of you who've ever worked in three dimensional drawings know just what I mean. You're drawing and moving around and somehow you think you're looking from the top when actually you're underneath your drawing! (This has the potential to mess things up in LuAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504386691340037718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957558001132688672.post-29484522917551010442008-08-18T15:26:00.020-06:002008-08-19T10:49:28.757-06:00AutoCAD 2009 Quick Access Toolbar Hello everyone, how's the weather in your area? In Colorado we've had a lot of really hot weather for the past few weeks, in the high 90's every day (like 35-37 C) but this past Saturday it rained. Saying "it rained" really doesn't give you a picture of it, it RAINED, it just poured - buckets of rain! It's been so dry here, we did badly need the rain - but why did the only day of rain have to beLuAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504386691340037718noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957558001132688672.post-87549888884527545582008-07-30T14:22:00.013-06:002008-07-30T15:15:10.326-06:00Software AuthorizationOur salespeople often get calls from our customers when they have software authorization problems. I'm writing today to address one thing that comes up all the time.If your Autodesk product won't authorize automatically over the internet, on the form you fill out to authorize via email they'll ask you to fill in your computer's server name and MAC address. Many customers call us wanting help to LuAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504386691340037718noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957558001132688672.post-59254939338230250262008-07-24T09:46:00.009-06:002008-07-24T11:07:00.843-06:00AutoCAD 2009 UpdateToday when I opened my AutoCAD 2009, I received a notice to install an Update, which I thought was curious. I clicked on the link, and read through the Instructions for Updating my Product. At the bottom there was a link that said 'Read Me'. I clicked on it, because I was wondering what exactly an 'update' was. After telling me who should install this update, it had a listing for "Primary Issues LuAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504386691340037718noreply@blogger.com0