Rick Ellis

The BHATCH (Boundary Hatch) command has undergone several improvements in AutoCAD 2005 that you may not be aware of.  These changes don’t get the press and the space in most reviews that some of the higher profile features like Sheet Sets, Tables, and Fields, but they can still save you significant amounts of time.  Most […]

A great new feature of AutoCAD 2004 is the Tool Palette.  One of the things that it lets you do is easily create a symbol library where you can select the desired block, with predefined properties such as Layer and Color, from the Tool Palette and insert it by dragging and dropping it into the

New to AutoCAD 2005 is the TBCUSTOMIZE system variable.  When set to 0 (or OFF) the commands to customize toolbars and keyboard shortcut will be disabled.  So you will not be able to edit your toolbars.  This does not include the toolbar location, which many users have asked for since toolbars were first introduced.  It

Have you ever had a layout set up perfectly, only to have the scale and orientation of the viewport destroyed by someone (maybe even you) using a pan or zoom command while the viewport is active?  I know, it’s not the end of the world, but it is very annoying, and it can be prevented. 

Most people don’t think about their Automatic Save files until they need them.  Then the first question is “Where are my Automatic Save files anyway?”  By default they are stored in the Windows temp directory.  This is usually: C:\Documents and Settings\”User Name”\Local Settings\Temp Since this is the temporary directory that Windows uses you will need

Incremental Save Percentage or ISAVEPERCENT is a system variable that Autodesk introduced to improve the speed of the save command.  It does this by not performing a full save every time you save the drawing.  Changes and new objects are saved but if objects are deleted they are only marked as deleted in the drawing

We all know that Plotting underwent a huge change in the transition from AutoCAD 14 to AutoCAD 2000 and many people still feel that it became much more complicated. Well, if you still feel that you are struggling with plotting or that it should be easier, there are some things that you can do. The

In last month’s tutorial “Easier Plotting Part 1 – Layouts And Templates” we looked at how saving standard Layouts in Drawing Templates can reduce the need to set up your standard plotting settings each time you create a new Drawing or Layout. In this lesson we will look at how you can use Page Setups

If you have objects in your drawing that overlap each other, or even if they are very close, there is an easy way to cycle through those objects and select the desired one.  When you are at the select objects prompt in any AutoCAD command just hold down the Ctrl key while picking the objects. 

Have you ever created viewports that overlapped one another and then found it very difficult to select one of them?  The trick here is once one of the Viewports is activated, usually by double-clicking inside of it, hold down the Ctrl key and press R.  Ctrl+R will allow you to cycle through your viewports activating