Tips & Tricks... Snippets to make life easier...

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		AutoCAD 2007 Visual Styles... Use Visual Styles to quickly change the display of edges and shading in a viewport. Create your own Visual Styles in the Visual Style Manager. • 2D Wireframe: Displays objects using lines and curves to represent boundaries with model space colors. • 3D Wireframe: Displays objects using lines and curves with a 3D look and feel. 2D objects such as raster images, OLE objects, linetypes, and lineweights are not visible. • 3D Hidden: Wireframe representation, hidden lines removed. • Realistic: Shades the objects and smoothes the edges. Materials are displayed. • Conceptual: Shades the objects and smoothes the edges using the Gooch face style. Objects are outlined. Less realistic but easier to see.

		Loading AutoLISP Programs Quickly... A quick way to load an AutoLISP program is to drag it from Windows Explorer onto AutoCAD's drawing area. (Position the Windows Explorer window so you can see the AutoCAD drawing area or drag onto the AutoCAD taskbar button, wait until AutoCAD displays and then drag onto the drawing area.) You can even drag an AutoLISP file from the window of a search operation.

		AutoCAD 2006 and AutoComplete... AutoCAD 2006 has a new feature named AutoComplete. You can begin typing at the AutoCAD command line a few letters of a command, system variable, or command alias and then hit the TAB key to cycle through the returned results.

		What Layer To Insert Blocks Into... When creating symbols for inserting into a drawing when the same symbol may be inserted on more than one layer (such as a valve), create the symbol on the zero (0) layer and have color, linetype and linewidth set to ByLayer. This will allow the symbol to take on the characteristics of the layer on which it will be inserted.

		Autodesk service packs for all versions you are likely to run... Includes patches going all the way back to R12 for DOS! 1) Click on this link http://www.autodesk.com/support 2) Pull down the list and choose the Autodesk product you use. 3) In the menu at left, click on "Data & Downloads" 4) Under that section, click on "Updates & Services Packs" 5) Find the version you are running and the patches available.

		Move Quickly Between Layout Tabs... You can press CTRL + PAGE UP and CTRL + PAGE DOWN to cycle through your layout tabs.

		Hidden Lines... From the Options dialog box, under the User Preferences tab, you can now change the hidden line settings. These settings affect how hidden lines are displayed when you use the HIDE command or shade your 3D model as hidden. For example, you can use the hidden line settings to set a dashed linetype for all the hidden lines in your model.

		Paper Space Object Text... To get the Object Text to write onto a Paper Space layout when working with an Xref, Hold down the ALT key when you select the Text Commands.

		Quickly Open Xrefs For Editing... The XOPEN command is a simple tool to open xrefs for editing. Type XOPEN at the command line and select the external reference you wish to edit.

		UCS Command's 'E' Option... When using the UCS command, you can specifiy 'e' (for entity) at the first command line prompt and this will allow you select an object to align the current UCS to.

		Using File Dialog at prompts... Sometimes settings (such as FILEDIA) can cause certain routines to ask for a file name at the command prompt. In these cases you can enter the tilde ~ character followed by enter to bring up the file selection dialog.

		AutoCAD 2004's new External Reference dialog box with its Path type drop-down list shows the three types you can choose from: Full path, Relative path and No path. The most exciting path type is the Relative path because it allows you to remove the drive letter from the path statement. The way this path type works is that it reads the location of the Xref file relative to the current host file; e.g., two folders back up and over to another one. In the past, most users have been using the Full Path by default and only wondered about it when they ran into path problems due to server, folder or file relocations.

		In AutoCAD 2004... you can control the visibility of status buttons. On the status bar click the right-most down arrow. A menu appears as shown on the left. You can then choose to select or deselect the options to change the visibility of the status buttons.

		To change the number of displayed decimal digits right-click on a selected dimension and choose Tolerance - Precision.

		Lost the Command Line? Lower the screen resolution and the command line should appear. Then increase the resolution again.

		AutoCAD allows you to UNDEFINE commands. The most popular command to undefine is the END command. By typing UNDEFINE at the command prompt and then the command name the average user can not access the command. To get the command you simply type a period before the command name " . end ". Now, if you type "end" by mistake at a command prompt it won't dump you out of AutoCAD. To return the command for good use the REDEFINE command.

		Increase traffic and rankings for your site... It's a well known fact that by having a link to your site on another active site you will both increase traffic and improve the rankings of your own site on the major search engines. You can achieve this simply by logging in and going to your profile page on the Forum. Just enter the URL of your site in the space where it says website.. it's as easy as that.