Autodesk Announces AutoCAD 2010

And the list of cool features is a mile long. Check it out at Shaan Hurley's blog.

More information is available on Ellen Finkelstein's blog as well.

Stay tuned to Avatech.com for additional details on the products and maybe we'll talk about when you can see them for yourself sometime very soon.

How to fix a blown out Hatch pattern

This little gem has plagued AutoCAD for years and years. You place a Hatch (AR-Conc, Gravel, AR-Sand) at a huge coordinate like 500000, 500000,0 and it just doesn't look right. It's like someone exploded it and the lines went everywhere. This doesn't happen if the drawing is near the UCS 0,0,0 origin.



This is a known issue but it only happens with certain hatch patterns.

You can fix this in AutoCAD (2006 and higher) by making some minor adjustments. By default the origin for the hatch is the UCS origin (0,0,0). However, you can specify a new Hatch Origin to avoid this issue.

Double click the Hatch to bring up the Hatch Edit dialog


First select the option "Specified Origin" in the lower left of the hatch dialog. Then to use a default "Bottom Left" (you have 4 choices here) just check the box "Default to Boundary Extents".

When creating a new Hatch in a drawing like this, ensure you change the option to "Default to Boundary Extents" to avoid this problem.

Suppressing Spaces In Revit Dimension Strings

If you've been using Revit since the 2008 release or earlier you probably know that the dimension strings in Revit can be too long some times. This is because by default Revit puts a space between the foot, the inch and the fraction measurements. A lot of people asked why can't the dimensions be more like how AutoCAD dimensions work. Take a look at the examples below.

Fortunately with the release of the 2009 Revit product line the ability to suppress these spaces was included. You can have the spaces suppressed for a single dimension or for all dimensions in the project. To make the change on a project wide basis, go to the settings pulldown and select "Project Units". Click the button next to the length parameter. Click the ckeck box next to "Suppress Spaces" in the Format dialog box. Click OK on all dialog boxes to apply the change.

You may also want to be able to make this change on an individual basis. To do so, highlight a dimension and select Element Properties. In the element properties dialog box, click Edit / New. In the resulting Type Properties dialog box, Click Duplicate, this is so we don't affect this change across the entire project. In the name dialog box, enter a new name and hit OK. Next scroll down and click the Units Format button in the Text parameter group. Uncheck the "Use Project Settings" check box. Place a check next to Suppress Spaces and finally hit Ok to close all dialog boxes. Your dimensions should now look something like this, much better!

One of my Top Tens

Perhaps one of the most common and easy-to-fix calls I still get on a regular basis, despite having supported AutoCAD for close to 15 years is this:

"I want to edit more than one object at a time in my drawing, but when I try to select more than one object, it deselects the one I picked before."

This is due to a system setting labeled "Use Shift to Add to Selection" in the options dialog box, on the Selection tab. This setting sets the system variable "PICKADD". When this is enabled (turned on or the PICKADD variable set to 1), AutoCAD forces you to hold the Shift key down while picking to select multiple objects to edit.

So, if you want to select multiple objects to edit WITHOUT having to hold the shift key down while picking, make sure the "Use Shift to Add to Selection" is NOT enabled (PICKADD set to 0).