SPAUG-Tip of the Month 1999

December's Tip of the Month

Tips when using OLE objects in AutoCAD^™ 2000

When working with OLE objects in AutoCAD 2000, keep the following points in mind:

OLE objects are neither displayed nor printed if they form part of an inserted block, inserted drawing, or externally referenced drawing.

OLE objects are neither displayed in Full Preview nor printed when using an HDI Microsoft^® Windows^® driver. They are, however, displayed and printed using a Windows System printer driver.

When a drawing contains OLE objects, the Windows System printer driver does not respond to drawing rotation changes made in the AutoCAD Plot dialog box. You can still rotate the drawing, however, by changing the orientation (portrait or landscape) from the Windows System printer settings.

Microsoft Excel spreadsheets pasted into AutoCAD drawings are in picture (metafile) format. If a spreadsheet is too large, only part of it will be pasted into the drawing.

by HP DesignJet Online

November's Tip of the Month

Lost your IMAGE command in R14?

Your "ISM has fallen off" which is a bug in R14.
To reload it, invoke the APPLOAD and browse for ISM.ARX in the main R14 directory.
This will restore the functionality of your IMAGE command.

by Saara B. Kuure
Vice President EAUG

October's Tip of the Month

Paperspace Double-Click Tip

In ACAD 2000, there are some new features like double-click support.

Within PAPERSPACE, you can now double-click on an MVIEW to quickly switch to MSPACE.
Double-click outside the MVIEW and you will switch back to PSPACE.

by Jeff Tippit

September's Tip of the Month

February 1997 Revisited

This pop-down is used for zooming in Paperspace.
Added Metric Units.

Note: When using Metric, you must be in the same units
in model and paper spaces.
(i.e. meters-meters or millimeters-millimeters)

Download Updated ZoomPS.Mnu Version 3.0

modified by Mitch Thaxter and Jeff Tippit

August's Tip of the Month

Helpful pop-down for Gauge thickness.

This pop-down can be used as a reference or use it
with the offset command. When you select a thickness,
only the value is returned (no command).

Note: Sample image is cropped off to save space.

Download Gauge.Zip

created by Mitch Thaxter

July's Tip of the Month

How to draw a line perpendicular from an arc's endpoint.

1. Set a permanent snap mode to end+center

2. Draw the line from an endpoint of the arc

3. move the cursor on the center of the arc, but don't click

4. type in the length of the line, in negative mode (-50 for a length of 50 for example)

by Patrick Emin of Lyon, France

June's Tip of the Month

Middle button working different?

If you are new to AutoCAD 2000, and the middle button of a 3 button mouse appears to keep
executing real time PAN, regardless of menu definition: the system variable MBUTTONPAN
should be changed to 0 (off) in order to enable the old middle button functionality again.

by Sydney Derbyshire of Lancashire, England

May's Tip of the Month
Grip a Group.
If you have a Group of objects that includes blocks, you can easily use grips to copy a block from within the Group. For this example we are going to copy the chair block.
1. Select the Group to show the grips unselected (blue). 2. Make the grip of the desired block "HOT" (red).
3. Right-click and select Copy. This will allow you to STRETCH (multiple). Once copied the new blocks will no longer be part of the original Group. Tested in R13-2000. By Jeff Tippit

March's Tip of the Month
Trick to line up MVIEWS.
If you have a building that is too long to fit on a sheet, you have to do a match line. An easy way to do this is to stretch the MVIEW over itself. 1. Copy an already formatted MVIEW over itself. So that you have the same MVIEW, one on top of the other. 2. Pick the grip of the Top MVIEW on the opposite side of the match line. Drag the grip across the matchline so that you inverted the MVIEW. Now you have 2 MVIEWs that perfectly match each other. By Jeff Tippit

February's Tip of the Month

Tip for making Complementary ARCS.

"Use the MIRROR command to create a complementary arc from an existing one.
Select one end point as the first mirror point, and the SAME point as the second
one. Ignore the warning message, then complete the command. Use the command
option to delete the first selected arc. You've got it! If it's not a bug, it's close to it!"

By Patrick Emin
From WebWorks Newsletter 2/15/99 Volume 4 No. 3

January's Tip of the Month

One button selection between multiple plotters or paper sizes.

If you use multiple plotters and/or paper sizes, you can shorten the time it takes to send your drawing to the plotter by creating individual buttons on your toolbar menus to do the job. Here are the steps involved:

1. From the pull-down menus, select Tools>Preferences to open the Preferences dialog box.

2. Select the Printer tab and create multiple printer definitions – a separate definition for each different plotter and/or paper size. When selecting the printer driver, name the printer appropriately in the "Add a description:" input box. For our example, we’ll name the printer "Plotter A".

3. Once you have created your printer definitions, make a different toolbar button for each printer and/or paper size. Use standard AutoCAD toolbar button customization procedures for this step.

4. When you are in the dialog box to edit the button menu code, add the following script for the button to perform:

Example: ^C^C_PLOTID;Plotter A;PLOT;

5. Repeat the above steps for all other plotter definitions, sizes, etc.

Click the Toolbar above to download the NEW Printer BMP's.

From Automated Design Systems Newsletter - February 1999