Tips

You may have read here and other places where I have been critical of some of the new features in AutoCAD over the years. Things like the Ribbon, the Action Recorder, Infocenter, Quick View Drawings instead of simple tabs, etc.

But the purpose of this post is to discuss some things that really make AutoCAD better, some real time savers. Here is my Mt. Rushmore of new features. Read more »

Various Cadalyst readers and contributors have helped to compile this list of 100 FREE tools for CAD users. Chances are you will find something in this list that you were not aware of.

Also, the Summer 2010 edition of the print magazine is now available in two custom tailored versions; AEC and Manufacturing. Read more »

Almost five years ago, I ran across an issue where the SHIFT key was not working as expected, specifically when trying to "hot grip" multiple grips. At the time, I found that Raster Design had hijacked the shift key to allow for image selection. Read more »

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. Read more »

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. Read more »

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? Read more »

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

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... Read more »

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.