SPAUG-Tip of the Month 2004

December's Tip of the Month

Removing the Add/Remove White Space

Here's a little information that will help anyone to fix the Add/Remove "white space".

First, a word of caution: Always backup your registry before attempting to change a setting, not doing so could prove disastrous.

This is generally due to the DisplayIcon having a negative number.

Go to: START...Run...and type REGEDIT and press Enter.

Go to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Highlight the Uninstall and Ctrl+F, enter DisplayIcon and press Find.

Next

When you find the String Value "DisplayIcon" relative to acad.exe, you will find a negative number (-1), either change it to 0 or remove it altogether by removing the String Value "DisplayIcon".

by Bob Abernethy, Gray, TN

June's Tip of the Month

Offset Command Tip

When using the offset command you may wish to offset the line or object only half of a know distance ie from the center line of an object, without reaching for your calculator to work that distance out try this. You have an overall distance of say 12345 but you only want to offset half that distance. On the command line input 12345/2 ie 12345 divided by 2, and do the offset, AutoCAD calculates this for you ie 617.25 and offsets that distance. It also works for other divisors ie 3,4,5,6 etc. One word of warning though for some reason using 123.45/2 does not work so its back to the calculator.

This has worked on REV 12,13 AND 2002

by Mike Stilgoe, Warrington, England

January's Tip of the Month

Paperspace Block Out

Question:

I was wondering if there is a way to put a small view port inside a big view port & be able to "block out" with the smaller view port everything showing behind it.

Answer:

First, you will want to set current the layer that you usually use for MVIEWS. Then begin a polyline in the upper left corner, following points 1 through 6. At point 6 type "A" for arc and draw the arc to point 7. From point 7 continue the arc to point 8, which is the same as point 6. At point 8 type "L" for line and continue to point 9, which is the same as point 5. At point 9 you can type "C" for close to close the polyline.

After the polyline is created, use the "MVIEW" command. Type "O" for object and select the polyline. This will change the polyline into an MVIEW. After the MVIEW has been created it can be stretched and resized to cover any location.

requested by Scott Heter, Greenville, SC
answered by Jeff Tippit