in this issue
Using Fields in Titleblocks
AutoCAD2005 now has a new feature called FIELDS.
Fields allow you to use drawing properties for text,
attributes, and mtext.
Fields are automatically displayed with a gray
background (to indicate a field). You can turn off the
gray background using the FIELDDISPLAY system
variable. Set to 0 - no background is displayed.
1, which is the default, sets the background to gray.
If you want to set your titleblock to use fields, you can
use the FREE tutorial below as a quick way to get
started.
If you change any of the properties, simply typing
REGEN will update your titleblock.
Download the tutorial
Quick Links...
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Greetings!
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Hatching in 2005
This may seem like a small change in 2005. But for those
folks who do a lot of hatching, hatching has greatly been
improved in the 2005 products.
It used to be that if you needed to trim a hatch, you
would explode it, and then trim it. Of course, then your
hatching was individual entities and it was really hard
to manage. You can now trim a hatch without
having to explode.
Another improvement is the ability to set a gap for your
boundary. This will eliminate that "boundary not found"
error which we all have encountered. Simply select the
Advanced tab, and locate the field in the lower left
corner of the dialog. You can set the gap as big as
you like...but use some common sense, or you could
hatch your entire drawing!
You can also set up your DrawOrder for your hatch to
set your hatch behind the boundary. This is helpful if
you are trying to snap to the boundary and you keep
picking up the hatch instead. This is also set on the
Advanced tab of the Bhatch dialog.
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New Osnap Introduced in AutoCAD 2005
Many users have problems with using object tracking or
the 'otrack option to locate the midpoint between two
points. 2005 introduces the Midpoint between Two
Points Object Snap.
You can access by typing M2P or MTP or simply from
the right click menu. I access my right click menu by
using Shift-Right click.
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New Zoom Option
You now have a new zoom option in 2005 - Zoom to
Object. You can start the zoom command, then right
click to select Object, pick the entity on the screen
you wish to zoom to, and your screen will automatically
focus on that area.
There is also a new tool on your Zoom flyout that
includes the Zoom Object tool.
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ASSISTSTATE New 2005 System Variable
You may recall in AutoCAD2000, Autodesk introduced
their version of the smarmy paperclip guy. This was a
small dialog box that would launch everytime you
initiated a command.
Users rushed to turn off the Help Assistant, but it
is back and more powerful in 2005. The default is set
to OFF, so if you need help or are learning
AutoCAD2005, now they have gone overboard in the other
direction making it a little harder to start up. You can start it
up from the HelpMenu->Info Palette (except in ADT2005,
you don't have that menu option). So, the easiest way
is to type ASSIST on the command line and you will
then have the Info Palette available.
ASSISTATE stores either 0 or 1. 0 indicates the Info
Palette is off, 1 indicates it is active. It is read-only.
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