I was intrigued to see Autodesk personality and fellow blogger Shaan Hurley posting a photo with his long-standing facial fuzz removed. Shaan may be moving in the opposite direction to myself (I’m getting hairier with age), but personally I don’t think he has gone far enough. I would like to see Shaan sporting a [...]
 28 March 2008, 9:13 pm |  3 comments | Tags: Fun, Image manipulation, Pictures, Shaan Hurley | Category: Fun, Image manipulation, Other Blogs, Pictures Note: there are updated versions of this post for AutoCAD 2010, 2011 and 2012. One thing that’s regularly asked whenever a new AutoCAD release hits the streets is how to make it work like the last release. I think you should give any new features a fighting chance before turning them off or ignoring [...] 27 March 2008, 12:58 pm | 118 comments | Tags: AutoCAD 2009, Tip, User Interface | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2009, Tip Some people have now received AutoCAD 2009, or at least downloaded it, which you can do (legally!) here, as long as you’re in the United States or Canada. I’m closing the AutoCAD 2009 speculation poll. Other than a small blip on “Very bad”, the poll follows a typical bell curve nicely, with the peak [...] 27 March 2008, 9:35 am |  One comment | Tags: AutoCAD 2009, Polls, User Reaction | Category: Announcement, AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2009, Polls It would appear that AutoCAD 2009 is now shipping. I intend to hold off on any further comments until I get my hands on the shipping product, which I expect to be fairly soon. In the meantime, maybe have a look over the 24 AutoCAD 2009 Prequel posts and see if there’s anything you [...] 26 March 2008, 8:52 pm | Leave a comment | Tags: Announcement, AutoCAD 2009, Shipping | Category: Announcement, AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2009 In a recent blog post, Roopinder Tara included this throw-away comment: Pure bloggers don’t do advertising, so no worry about advertising pressure — the secret and unstated fear of us all in the trade press. I respect Roopinder, but this kind of “pure blogger” label irritates me. I have an ad on my blog [...] 25 March 2008, 9:12 pm | 19 comments | Tags: Advertising, Blogs, Ethics, Journalism, Matt Lombard, Rant, Roopinder Tara | Category: Advertising, Navel Gazing, Other Blogs, Rant You may be used to accessing pull-down menus with Alt-key combinations, e.g. Alt+F to get at the File menu. You can still use those keystrokes to get at menus in AutoCAD 2009, whether or not the pull-down menus are in place. If the pull-downs are visible (MENUBAR=1), they are given priority over the Menu [...] 22 March 2008, 8:41 pm | Leave a comment | Tags: AutoCAD 2009, Tip, User Interface | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2009, Tip Like Recent Documents, the Menu Browser pane also stores a Recent Actions list. Like Recent Documents, the length of this list defaults to 9 and can be set to up to 50 in Options. Similarly, you can pin actions in place to prevent them slipping off the end. Unlike the command line recall [...] 21 March 2008, 2:09 pm | Leave a comment | Tags: AutoCAD 2009, User Interface | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2009 One more feature that’s crammed into the Menu Browser pane’s limited space is the Open Documents list. This allows you to switch between the drawings you currently have open. It has a similar interface to the Recent Documents list, including the persistently pale preview: Unlike Recent Documents, the filenames are displayed in the [...] 21 March 2008, 1:32 pm | 2 comments | Tags: AutoCAD 2009, Tip, User Interface | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2009, Tip Another thing you will find lurking under the big red A is the Recent Document list. This is a mixed bag too, but most of it is good. It differs from the traditional list that still lives under the File menu in several ways: Although the default maximum list length is 9 items, you [...] 19 March 2008, 9:08 pm | One comment | Tags: AutoCAD 2009, User Interface | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2009 So if the Menu Browser isn’t much use for browsing menus, what is it good for? Searching menus, for one thing. Let’s say you’re a very occasional 3D user trying to make a 3D model look pretty. You want to access commands for placing lights, putting the sun in the right place, and changing [...] 18 March 2008, 9:34 pm | Leave a comment | Tags: AutoCAD 2009, User Interface | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2009 You have undoubtedly noticed the large red A in the top right corner of the AutoCAD window. Personally, I don’t like the look of it. The concept is rather Fisher-Price and the execution is poor. No competent graphic designer would align the top of the red A exactly with the top of its surrounding [...] 18 March 2008, 3:00 pm | 7 comments | Tags: AutoCAD 2009, Performance, User Interface | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2009 There’s one screen-based user interface mechanism in AutoCAD 2009 that you probably won’t see bragged about in Autodesk marketing materials. That’s a shame, because it has some strong points: It can be docked on the side of the screen or allowed to float free. While floating, it can be resized to the desired width [...] 17 March 2008, 9:41 pm | 5 comments | Tags: AutoCAD 2009, Compatibility, User Interface | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2009 Testing performance under Vista can be an interesting experience. The trouble is, Vista tries to improve its performance by observing what you do and caching it for later use in case you do it again. This leads to something akin to the observer effect in science, where the very act of observing something has [...] 15 March 2008, 10:32 pm | Leave a comment | Tags: AutoCAD 2009, Performance, User Interface, Vista | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2009, Performance One of the things I like least about AutoCAD 2009 (at least in Release Candidate form) is that I find it very “sticky”. That is, I find myself having to wait for an instant here, then again there, yet again over there. Most of my testing has been on a middle-aged Pentium 4 (3.0 [...] 15 March 2008, 2:30 pm | Leave a comment | Tags: AutoCAD 2009, CUI, Performance, User Interface | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2009, Performance I have a lot of posts about AutoCAD and a few about grammar, but I expect this will be the only post I ever make that combines the subjects. Autodesk founder John Walker, a very prominent figure in AutoCAD’s history, has written an article about the correct use of the apostrophe. While I enjoyed [...] 15 March 2008, 9:13 am | Leave a comment | Tags: AutoCAD, Fun, Grammar, John Walker | Category: AutoCAD, Grammar In a comment on my Five More Simple Tips for AutoCAD post, Jeremy had some questions about the Oops command. I thought I would explain the command in more detail in another post so more people will see it. The first thing to understand is that Oops varies from Undo/U in that it only [...] You may have noticed that the default AutoCAD background is an off-white shade. In a comment, Tim asked if this is the same as the Block Editor background. No, not quite. This image shows the different backgrounds and some linework, with black as a comparison: Paper space is pure white (Red, Green, Blue [...] 13 March 2008, 2:58 pm | 2 comments | Tags: AutoCAD 2009, User Interface | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2009, Polls I’m interested in people’s perceptions of the forthcoming AutoCAD release. Based on what you’ve seen so far, how good a release do you think it will be? Please speculate using the poll on the right. If you feel the poll doesn’t give you the opportunity to adequately express yourself, feel free to add a [...] 13 March 2008, 12:42 pm | 4 comments | Tags: AutoCAD 2009, Opinion, Polls, Speculation | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2000, Polls Offered without comment: Heres more pedantism of a grammatarian nature for you’re pleasure: Apostrophe Abuse The Grammar Vandal Apostrophism Enjoy! |
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