Autocad 2011

There is not much point me going into the user interface etc etc as you could go to, say,Robin Capper's excellent blog at http://rcd.typepad.com/rcd/ where he does a good job of giving a run down on R2011. You might have to reverse through to the post, as he seems to be churning them out!

So, I'll just outline my experiences with it and hope that someone gets around a few of the things that I found as I proceeded to waste my Easter weekend drawing a set of instructions for a do-it-yourself cabinet assembly.

On firing up for the first time I noticed: No toolbars. Well, it turns out that they are still there, just hidden-I guess that Autodesk want you to move towards the Ribbon system. Here is a snip of my screen setup, just of the ribbon, shown vertically as I have two screens:

(By the way, there is a snipping tool in Vista-look under Accessories)

How to get your toolbars? Just to the right of the Quick Access Toolbar there is a small triangle.

Press this and locate "Show Menu Bar". Then go Tools/Toolbars/Autocad and tick the ones you want.

Another fun annoyance, was the helpful popups that appeared in the top right hand corner.

On pressing "Don't show me this again" it appeared yet again, and again. A friend told me that they were all different ones and that after a while all sorts would be eliminated. Makes sense, really, because you want your new users to be looked after.

A lot of new changes are not immediately apparent- for instance the loft command has been overhauled to allow for surface creation. Previously, the dialog box came up automatically, now you have to use the Settings option to make it come up.

As usual with new releases, I tread carefully, making sure I do regular backups.

The neatest things I'm finding are:

*The materials system has been overhauled and is looking good.

*Hatching has had a lot of work done on it and seems much better.

*Polylines are a lot nicer to edit - but old habits die hard!

*There is a new display bar on the right of the screen which has the often used orbit button on it, and the "Steering Wheel" which I have not been using but have been driven to because of it's handy little button marked "Center" which is great if you want to reset the orbit center graphically.

Title block pain

Just plodding my way through (pardon the pun) a bunch of Hazardous Area drawings and it was pointed out the the company logo had gone all funny. This is on about 40 drawings.

If you had 2 or 3 drawings you would just reinsert the block, redefining the old one. So you would think a script would be the go. This where I found out my ignorance regarding the insert command.

After some digging on the net I came up with parts to make this one:

-insert
A3BORDER_LAND_MECH=
Y
(command)

An explanation:

-insert ......just issues the insert command without the dialog box.
A3BORDER_LAND_MECH....is the name of the title block, and the = means that you wish to redefine it.
Y is the answer to the prompt "Do you want to redefine the block?"
(command) ....is a means of cancelling the script-does not make much sense but it works!

Just one catch-you have to put the location of the directory of the block in file locations in autocad. Go Tools/Options etc.

Just use the cui to make yourself a button and you just click when you want the block redefined.

From igloos to elephants

More architectural monstrosities-yes I know the curves do not match, yes I know there does seem to be no means of support in some of these...but hey, it's Sunday and I have limited time!

I'm not quitting my day job just yet!

It is strange- this house design is supposed to be about olives (it is near an olive farm), hence the shape of the rooves, but things have ended up resembling upside down boats and elephants.

This is just a massing exercise. Sometimes you wonder what you need walls for out in the country-the only place I can think one might be needed is the toilet/bathroom and say a sound barrier if one had a baby...so the outer walls could be totally glass, but this means lots of dollars.Though if you were to have such a house, cost might not be an issue.

A draftsman's lot and architectural fantasies

Being a draftsman is a bit like doing a maths exam every day, one where you should not make mistakes at all. But ask yourself: who ever scores 100% day in day out? All we can hope for is that our mistakes are minor and easily fixed.

I remember the story of one draftsman who drew an entire truckload of ducting. On the day it was delivered, he was looking out the window. As soon as he saw it he realised they were all completely wrong.

Another, an architectural designer, was awoken at 2 am in the morning. Apparently the irate person on the phone accused him of bad design of a deck because there had been a party and a large number of people were on the deck and it collapsed resulting in some injuries. A real shock to him, but he was later vindicated as it was found the builder had just nailed the stringer support to the house instead of using coach bolts!

Anyway, I seem to be sliding back into drawing houses for fun-it is great, just as long as you do not intend to build them!

The "flying saucer" one came from a vision I had of standing inside a house and looking upwards and seeing the sky: ie a hole in the roof! Hardly original. Maybe the glob below the hole made of chrome is though (probably not!). The "pears laid on the ground" one is again probably not original, but has the "looking at the sky while inside" thing going as well.

Batch processing of Autocad drawings

Some years ago (about 12!) I played around with scripts and lisp routines to automate the plotting of drawings. So when a co-worker asked me if I knew of a downloadable routine that could search a series of drawings for a text string, I thought: I'll just rejig my old routines and there we are.

Not really. He was after a system that would search electrical drawings for numbers. The reason for this is that say you have wire number 39 on one drawing, then you want to know where this wire number is on other drawings (maybe the drawing system is at fault here!). Just to add to the fun, some things are attributes, not text. Probably if you looked, you would find some mtext in there as well.

This is all hanging on your finding a thing that will open several drawings in succession.

I have looked, but most of them you have to pay for. To cut a long story short I found the ideal thing-just for opening up drawings: and for free!

I have tested it out by reinserting and updating a title block.

The number finding thing will have to wait.

The routine can be found here:

http://thatcadguy.blogspot.com/2009/10/batch-processing-autocad-drawings.html

There is a trick to it's use-Navigate to the directory, and then select the first file.
Otherwise, it works brilliantly, (yes, I did leave a comment).

Maybe someone at Autodesk might read this and consider putting it in Express Tools?

Whats bin did and what's bin hid

If you are a little older, you will recognise the title as one from an LP made by Donavan in the 1960's. I thought I might be forgiven for pinching it.

I have been trying (empasise on trying!) to draw a Flying boat from the 1950's.

The pic shows progress so far.

If you are keen on looking at Flying Boat Pics, then here is a good place

http://www.msacomputer.com/FlyingBoats-old/short/Short.html

My approach to the fuselage was to draw the individual frame shapes and then loft them, hoping that if I drew the inside as well, I would end up with a hollow aeorplane. Sadly, this approach came unstuck and I had to regress to a solid all the way through one. At the tail I lost patience (never a good plan if you want things to go right!) and drew the tail section as a chunk and tried carving bits off it. Not a good way to go, but I have resigned myself to the idea that this is just a first pass.

The process of getting information, ie PLANS was a bit of a trial. I ended up with a Short Seaford (not Solent) as my pdf of choice.

16 Days of Revit Left

It might as well be 2 minutes, as I go back to work on Tuesday, and have a pile of things to between here and there. Things like going to Goat Island Bay and looking at the fish.

As you can see I did not get very far. If you look really hard you might see all the rafters, purlins and fascia boards. For flying rafters, I had to create a family of them - all slanting at 10 degrees.

My thinking was that I wanted to model as much as possible of the underlying roof structure.

I have experimented with various ways of creating purlins-sometimes modelling in place, sometimes creating a family for them.

My conclusion, and I admit here that it is not a very informed one, is that Revit is great if you are drawing multi-story buildings. I'm not so sure about ordinary domestic houses, except where you are happy to represent a roof structure as a slab. This is probably how it is used in real life?

No doubt as your library of families is built up, life would be a lot easier, and quicker. With Autocad the same rule must also apply, except they are called blocks not families.

I considered starting the roof over the garage, and just thinking about it was enough!

Who knows, maybe I'll try copying the lounge roof over and just modifying it?