CADzette - Volume III Issue 28
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November 23, 2005 CADzette
CAD News... Large and Small
To all my fellow North Americans, Happy Thanksgiving! I will be preparing the traditional feast at my parents' home in Palo Alto. In attendance, my two brothers and their families, one sister and her family, my two sons and their partners, and a very good friend and his lovely little girl.

My sister, Marissa, and her sons will be spending the holiday in Rome as they have every year since the death of Marissa's husband from ALS a few years ago. Thanksgiving was a special holiday for them when Harvey was alive, so Marissa escapes to Italy. There, her husband's ghost wanders the cobblestone alleys, urging her to explore the beautiful art and architecture.

So, give a special blessing at your table and beckon the ghosts of your beloved ones to join you at your table. Tell your favorite memories of those gone. I promise they will be sitting next to you by the time the pie is being passed.

Broken Links and the Broken CUI
 
Thanks to Stephen Andrews, of Adelaide, Autstralia, for letting me know about the broken links on my downloads page. I haven't fixed them ALL, but I think I have gotten most of them.

Stephen also writes -

On another note I have used the replace function in the CUI in LT2006 and consider it dangerous as unlike a text file it doesn't show each change with a confirmation and at the end its hard to see what has actually changed. A couple of times I've lost all the menus, Luckily I make backups, even with the update the CUI is unstable at times.

I tried running the Find and Replace function using the tip provided by Robert Bell and it crashed AutoCAD. Back to Wordpad... where it worked just fine. I am so looking forward to AutoCAD 2007 if only in the hopes it will bring some relief of the customization hell that 2006 has been. Was the 2006 release as bad/buggy as R13? Not as many crashes, but just as many corruptions.

A Reader Gripes About Grips
 
Diego Batho, from Boston, Mass., writes in about my column on grips....

In regards to grips in AutoCAD 2006, IMHO, it's gotten worse and worse; there's been a gradual loss of features from 2006 to 2005, and from 2005 to 2004.

In 2004 we had reference (so called 'passive') grips that worked exactly like OSnaps (without having to set them up, of course). You selected and object, Shift-click or shift-frame on the object (not on the actual grips but on the line/edge itself of the object, which would turn the object 'active'. We could use passive-grips as reference points, either for determining position, dimension or direction, depending on the transformation command we wanted. In AutoCAD 2005, Autodesk dropped passive grips.

Now, in AutoCAD 2006, Autodesk dropped the Copy feature from the Shift-Key. What we could still do since ancient times, until 2006, was use the Shift- Key within the Grip-editing mode, which had the same effect as Copy. In 2006 to make a Copy from whatever the transformation, after having the object active and ready, we now have to Right-click and choose Copy from the Shortcut Menu or key-in C- Enter from the keyboard a second time.

These two losses mean to me more keying-in, more time ill-spent doing what was easier to do previously, and therefore less fun using AutoCAD ;)

Thanks for a great Newsletter, I enjoy and look forward to it every Friday!!!

I have noticed I have to use the right-hand shortcut menu more to get to the grips I want, even when I have OSNAP active. Gosh, I thought it was just me. It seems particularly bad in ADT 2006.

SFAUG Hosts Holiday Party December 12
 
San Francisco AutoCAD Users Group will be meeting on December 12th, 6 pm at the at Gordon Biersch restaurant on 2 Harrison (@ Embarcadero). Party time!!!

I'll be in Memphis celebrating my wedding anniversary, but I will be sure to host a beer where ever I am to the folks at SFAUG and all the wonderful work they do to promote great CAD.

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