Tips

Here is a menu macro that will open Windows Explorer to the directory of the current drawing in AutoCAD.

^C^C(startapp "explorer" (strcat "/e, "(getvar "dwgprefix")));

Create a new command in the CUI, add this macro, give it a name and create an icon, then drop this in your QAT. Now you have a quick way to access the current drawing directory.

There are a number of ways to convert splines to polylines. Here are some of them.

• Flatten - if you have Express Tools installed, run the flatten command and select the splines. They will be converted to LWPOLYLINES regardless of the setting of PLINETYPE.
• AutoCAD 2009 with Bonus Pack 1 or later - Spline to Polyline is included in the PEDIT command.
• SPL2PL.VLX - This is a free tool from dotsoft.com. After you download it, drag and drop the .VLX file into the AutoCAD editor, then run the command SPL2PL. This tool will create a POLYLINE or LWPOLYLINE depending on the setting of the system variable PLINETYPE.
• WMFOUT/WMFIN - Run the WMFOUT command, enter a filename, then select the splines. Now erase the spline, and then run the WMFIN command. Use the upper left corner of the viewport as the insertion point, and then scale it 2X. The resulting entity is a POLYLINE.
• Save As R12DXF - If you save a drawing as R12 DXF format, all splines will be converted to POLYLINE entities.

I have seen a few people recently inquire about "exploding linetypes"...

If you have a non-continuous linetype and you want to "explode" it into its component parts, you can do this by using WMFOUT and WMFIN.

Questex Media Group, Inc. announced last week that Cadalyst magazine will become a bimonthly publication starting with the January/February 2009 edition. Do you receive the print edition now? If so, what do you think of this move?

One of the most misunderstood commands in AutoCAD is the SAVE command. Note that SAVE, QSAVE, and SAVEAS all do different things.

The Cadforum has published some tips regarding 'hidden commands' in DWG Trueview 2009. Using this, I created this list of all of the available commands. Some of the interesting ones that add a bit of capability to Trueview are...

If you try to open a dialog in AutoCAD but nothing happens, there is a chance that the dialog is open, but it's just "off your screen".  You can use a windows trick to move it back.

When the dialog is supposed to be visible, but you can't see it, press ALT+Space, then "M", then use the arrow keys to move the dialog.

Here is an animation of this procedure.

So you have installed SP1 and you know how to fix drawings with a bloated scale list. But what if you have dozens or hundreds or thousands of "infected" drawings each containing hundreds of scale list entries?

Autodesk has released a tool to fix these bloated drawings. You can select any number of drawings and batch process them.

New to 2009 is the default icon mode for the drawing tool buttons. You know what these are, the SNAP GRID ORTHO POLAR OSNAP, etc. buttons down in the status bar. They take up less room as icons, but you will need to figure out what each one does.

Out of the box, they look like this:

Workspace switching has been made easier in AutoCAD 2009 by a new tool in the status bar that mimics the functionality in the current Workspaces toolbar.

See the animation below.

This tool is visible by default no matter what workspace is current, unlike the Workspaces toolbar in earlier versions.