Poll: Help Me Help You
Posted By Mike Williams on February 22, 2009
Poll: Help Me Help You
Vote for All that Apply
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About the author
Mike Williams
Michael E. Williams has been using AutoCAD since Release 2.1. He's been providing AutoCAD drafting, training and consulting to the Architectural, Industrial, and Engineering communities for over 20 years. Mike has trained entire drafting departments of a Fortune 500 companies and held classes and seminars for Architects, Engineers and Contractors. He's taken people with zero experience, training or knowledge of drafting, architecture or CAD and turned them into highly productive and knowledgeable drafting professionals. As owner and operator of Michael E. Williams Computer Graphics, he has personally drafted on thousands of projects for hundreds of clients. The tips and tricks he teaches come from personal experience and a pursuit of efficiency and productivity in a production environment. Mike lives in Lake Charles, Louisiana with his wife Tanya and their three girls (Alex, Kate and Eden).Comments
36 Responses to “Poll: Help Me Help You”
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I am interested in doing photo realistic renderings in 3D.
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I like to see more about 3D, rendering lights materials.
keep up the good work !
René
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IProject Navigator.
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one thing that i have had trouble with is the properties pallet disappearing from the work space. i then have to reload autocad to get it back. can you help on this one.
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Mike Williams Reply:
February 26th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Jeff,
Make sure you have the correct path set for your tool palettes
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Interesting to see the three areas I need help in at the top
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The AutoCad 2009 Recorder
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publishing
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I don’t know what some of this stuff is. For instance dynamic blocks.
Little things give me the hardest time and waist time. one example I was trying to move a block from one version of AutoCAD to AutoCAD 2000. It would not copy. I have no idea why.
How do you delet layers when you know the layer is not being used?
It is the little things (inexperance) that kill my time. I am self taught without any formal training.
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QuickCalculator
Sometimes I put information ie: cost of a window or item on the defpoints layer. Result is I see it on the computer but it does not print out on the customers print. Is this an easier way than doing this with attributes? Iam a one man operation.
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How to PERMANENTLY delete the Dimensioning Override in the Dimension Style Manager. I delete it but it comes back!! I read all of your tips, keep it up!
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I have been ignoring learning to manage sheet sets. I just keep them as seperate files. For your readers that are interested in 3-D, try Vis and Max. There are good tutorials with them. Everybody probably knows this but you can get free and legal 13mo liscense to anything autodesk if you have a university or college web address through the autodesk student community site off the home page.
Thanks
Paul
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Mike Williams Reply:
February 26th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Paul,
Thanks for the info on the 3D tutorials. I forgot to put 3D on the poll, but from the looks of it, there’s lots of interest in it. I will be developing some 3D tips in the future as well.
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I am in the same boat! I would like some more info and tips on ‘Sheet Sets’: establishing, managing, naming etc. etc.
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Hi,
Thanks for the tips, I would like some info on how to control hatching in particular hatching in x-refs, one problem which seems to come up often, is multiple x-refs which have been formed from a common base drawing, featuring the same hatch patterns, when put into the finished drawing will not display the hatch at the same scale. Consequently it wil be necessary to go into the individual x-refs and edit the hatch scales – messy and slow.
Thanks
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Mike Williams Reply:
February 26th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
Sol,
This sounds like an annotative scale issue. Verify that all the hatches are set the same.
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I agree 3d stuff interacting with 3D Max, that would be cool, Thanks.
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Since I am SUPER new, I want to learn how to transfer my drawings to print out on my pre-created title block. I am sure it’s a simple process, I just haven’t figured it out yet.
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Mike Williams Reply:
February 26th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Laura,
I don’t know about it being “super simple”. It really depends on your plotter. I used to plot on pre-printed paper and it was a pain. I drew an AutoCAD version exactly to scale and used it as a guide. But then you may have to shift things around through trial and error to get it to hit just right. We would put small dots (nodes) so AutoCAD would calculate it into the extents of the drawing and move them till the sheet plotted correctly. We would plot our CAD title block on top of the pre-printed one until everything hit right. Then we saved the title block, put it on a no-plot layer and kept the dots to make sure it aligned correctly. There was still issues sometimes due to differences in loading the paper. Good Luck.
Mike
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Do you know of a way that when you “Convert Text to Mtext” using Express Tools, the newly converted mtext would be made to stay where they are. When using a broad sweep selection, the new mtext text entities are all put into one big string. There must be a way! I have tried all of the options given with that command. But nothing works. If not, do you know of a lisp program that corrects this problem?
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Mike Williams Reply:
February 26th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
George,
I can across the LSP code to do this HERE. Scroll down to the middle of the page and you will see the lisp code. Copy it into a black TXT file and save it as T2M.LSP. I tried it and it worked.
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I am interested in dynamic blocks, customizing menus, the sheet set manager with fields in title blocks and entry level 3-D.
Thanks
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Thanks for all the feedback. I will be working on tips based on all these comments.
Mike
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Hi
Yes I had trouble with the poll E-Mail never followed it up
hence the delay
I find your daily message or tip a very useful I have cut and pasted them to useas a daily reference booklet
I must be getting better as I now only use the booklet twice a day to get me out of problems and other colleagues are now aware of this booklet and they want a copy or they just take it and I have to go trace where it is
Keep up the good work
I am going to undertake a project of converting PDF’s to DWG’s and I am sure any comments that you care to pass on would be helpful
Many thanks Roland
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Mike Williams Reply:
March 3rd, 2009 at 8:42 pm
I’m sure there are some 3rd party programs out there, but if you have Adobe Illustrator, I’ve brought PDF files into there and saved them out to AutoCAD and retained the vector work (assuming it was created from vector data to begin with)
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All of them are interesting to learn. There’s is always new stuff in autocad but I’m more interested in making autoisp routines.
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I guess I would like to Know what I don’t know. As I have been learning new versions on the fly for years.
The AP command for appload was great thanks. I’ve lost my copy of delete layer filters lsp It would leave the basic autocad filters.
And the Tab to complete a command.
Am really enjoying the tips. Thanks.
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MIKE THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR ALL YOUR TIPS THEY ARE HELPING ME ALOTS WHILE I’M TEACHING BASICS AUTOCAD, THANKS A MILLION.
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I found a pdf converter on line for free for conveting PDF to Jpeg to bring into CAD as an image. That worked well. As I do not have photoshop or illustrator on my machine at work.
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Hi Mike
I have a problem with Two items
First is How do I reorient a drawing in 3-D space Some how while Using it X Y And Z get out of sink.
Second If I try to hatch a plane that is not in X and Y orientation it Piles up on the sid of the drawing
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I know that there is more of a demand for those that you CAD a lot but do you think a section of tips could be for the beginner?
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Mike Williams Reply:
March 18th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
I going to be release an entire training course covering all the basics in about a week. It will be a complete overview of all the basic (and even lots of not so basic) commands and techniques. I will be release more information very soon.
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Looking forward to seeing your course…but as I am still working in 2005, it would be nice to know which version of AutoCAD a function or command was added. Thanks.
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Mike Williams Reply:
March 20th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
I will try to figure out a way to incorporate that in the tips.
Thanks
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I was doing practice autocad and I have one question can you please help me I was trying the command “FILLET” for lines but got message “Lines are non coplanar”. When i draw new lines, it works. Is there any way to make lines co-planar to use fillet command. Also, If we have drawing, where lots of line are Non-co planar, it is hard to draw all new lines, please advise me how to fix this.i don’t know why the lines are Non-coplanar ?
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Mike Williams Reply:
March 21st, 2009 at 7:54 am
Sandeep,
Your lines are non-coplanar because they are drawn in 3D space. If you look at the properties, you will notices that the Z value is something other than “0″. If you have express tools, you can run the FLATTEN command and it will move them back to 2D space. The reason so many are non-coplanar is probably because if have one line or a few lines that are in 3D space, every time you OSNAP to them, the resulting lines are also in 3D space.
Let me know if this helps.
Mike
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