[Solved]

Sometimes software has a critical failure and you are better off (or forced to) reinstalling. It could be AutoCad, Office or even Windows. Just in case, it pays off to have the product information and serial keys saved or written down somewhere. Autocad You can access Autocad product and serial info via the about command: Hit the downward arrow next to the help button then click "About..." to bring up the serial info. Either write down the info or screen capture it is a image file and put it in a safe place. Windows & Office For Windows and Office product keys, you can hunt them down through the registry key. A better solution though, is to use a free utility to do it for you. A good key finder currently is Magical Jelly Bean . It installs clean, works quickly and is free. System Restore Points  If you have not checked recently, be sure to check you operating system and make sure you have a recent system restore point. Having a good restore point can save you...

The question came up at my workplace: Will we benefit from having a workstation computer setup? The computers we tested had the following specs: Machine 1 CPU: Xeon E5 1650 V2 (3.5ghz) Video Card: Quadro K2000 (later upgraded to K4000) Hard Drive: SSD  Ram: ECC ram Machine 2 CPU:  i7-3820 (3.6ghz)  Video Card:  Geforce GTX 650 Ti Boost Hard Drive:  WD2500HHTZ HD (single; not raided) Ram: Non-ECC ram The test we ran was the CADalyst benchmarks (http://www.cadalyst.com/benchmark-test). The results were surprising. The following were the findings (please excuse the loss of the graphs; images were lost from this blog): There was no 2d graphics index difference between any of the video cards. There was no CPU score difference between the CPUs as well. There was a slight difference in the single loop test for file loading speeds. However, over several loops, difference evaporated. ECC Ram did not seem to have any impact in any of the indices....

On July 13, 2013, Ishka Voiculescu posted a nice video on YouTube on how to bring in geo-referenced images of Google/Bing map (among other map sources) into AutoCad. What follows is step by step guide that you can follow at your own pace. The steps do not mirror what Ishka does in the video exactly but it's the same thing in the end. Step 1: Create a Geo-Referenced Image. Download Terra Incognita here. The nice thing is that it is portable; you can stick it in a usb key or in a network drive and run it from any computer without having to install it. Run Terra Incognita (simply referred to as "Terra" from now on). Choose a map source. Locate the area that you want and select the desired area. Choose the zoom level. This will determine the resolution of the image. Save the image by saving as an ArcView map. Step 2: Bring in the Image into AutoCad In AutoCad, set the coordinate system that you want the image to be brought into (e.g. using t...

Autocad 2014 has an annoying tendency to print the navbar on every viewport. I thought they solved this problem with Service Pack 2 but it showed up again the other day. The problem is intermittent so I know I will forget about it until it happens again. I always plot by exporting to PDF first so I just created a custom command called "Export to PDF (Navbar Off)" and stuck "navbar;off;" in it. Hopefully it will keep me from forgetting about it, missing it and having a client staring at it wondering what the heck it is. But the Problem Isn't Over The major problem with the Navbar  plot issue is that when it's turned off, it can interfere with correct plotting of line weights. So you end up having to choose between line weights plotting right but navbar showing in the plot as well, or preventing navbar plotting but line weights also being messed up. Problem Doesn't Affect All Machines I don't know if it's a problem with .net files or w...

Usually, a block can be distorted (scale changed on one axis more/less than another axis) by just changing the scale value on the property window. But a lot of blocks are created with "uniform scale" option on. The method that is traditionally used most often is to explode the block and recreate it with uniform scale off. Autocad, however, a pretty simple way to do this: the BSCALE command. You can change the scale absolutely or relatively. "Absolute" option scales the block relative to its block definition size. "Relative" option scales the block relative to its current size. So if you do a BSCALE/Absolute/1/0.5 twice on a 1m x 1m block, the final size will be 1m x 0.5 m. If you do a BSCALE/Relative/1/0.5 twice on the same block, the final size will be 1m x 0.25. To reset the block to its original size, just type in "1" in the "Scale X" box in the Properties window.

If we don't use a solid shortcut strategy, a lot of time is wasted looking around for things we need. To cut down on time wasted, a good practice is to coordinate the "Places" in Autocad file dialogue and the "Favorites" in Windows Explorer. The strategy is simple: Pick a place where you keep all your shortcuts (e.g. "c:\CAD Shortcuts"). This is your master shortcut folder. Add this folder to your Windows Explorer "Favorites" by right clicking of Favorites and selecting "Add current location to Favorites". Whenever you come across a folder you need to access often (such as a folder for one of your current projects), make a shortcut of the folder in Windows Explorer and move the shortcut to your master shortcut folder. Now you will have quick access to frequently accessed folders via your master shortcut folder. Next, in Autocad, use the Open command to pop up the file dialogue box. Navigate to your master shortcut folder. T...

When Autocad crashes, the most common annoyance is that the file dialogue gets turned off. The second most common annoyance post-crash is that the noun-verb option gets turned off, forcing you to choose the command before selecting the target object. It's fairly easy to fix these annoyances but I find it handy to have a macro to do both that I stick on the custom toolbar, which executes FILEDIA = 1 and PICKFIRST = 1. If you want to automate it even further, you can stick it in a script and have Autocad run it every time it starts. To do so, do the following: Right click on the Autocad shortcut icon and choose "Properties".  Add " /b startup " to the end of the text in the "Target" box as shown in the image below. You will also want to change the "Start in" path to the folder that contains the script file (or place your script file in the existing "Start in" location).  Create a script file startup.scr somewhere. Put i...

Sometimes you will get a file or block from a client or a collaborator that will put big "educational version" watermarks around all four sides when you print a layout.(note: This issue was resolved partially in 2014 sp1 and completely in later versions, but is back with 2019). First, a disclaimer: This is not a guide on how to disable the watermark feature, to use an Autocad product bypassing licensing requirements, or any such thing. I assume that you have a valid licence, and that someone that you are working with does not, and you are trying to get rid of the watermarks to control the damage before you risk your other project files. The solution's pretty straight forward. First, export the drawing as a DXF. Then open up the DXF with the normal open (except choose DXF for your file type). Finally, overwrite the original DWG by doing a "Save As". If the original drawing came with XREFs you will want to do this for the XREF'd drawings as well. ...

Changing the order of the ToolPalette tabs is more hassle than it needs to be. This is because the tab order is set by when they were created; you can drag them around and reorder them but they will just reset themselves. There are two ways to go about reordering the tabs. One way is to recreate the palette with the tabs in the desired order. It works, but there is another way to reorder tabs and that's what I'll cover here. The following example covers reordering two tabs in a custom palette. Let's say I want to swap "New Features" and "New Services". The following are the steps: Go to the location of the tool palette files. Find the file AcTpCatalog.atc , turn off "read-only" attribute, and open it with a text editor (Notepad++ used for this example) Note that the whole file is on one line. This is how Autocad re-generates the file every time. Next step is to make this thing readable by adding a new line after every closing ...

Sometimes we will want to turn off the alignment lines but keep the stationing on like below: Doing this with layer-control doesn't work; Freezing an alignment will freeze the alignment label. Same with turning it off. What this means is that to hide the alignment lines but keep the alignment labels on, you have to do it through visibility settings in the alignment style. That is, you have to go into the alignment style dialogue, go to the "Display" tab, and turn off the light bulb for the things you want to hide. Additional notes on the subject: Usually I have an alignment style called "None" that already has everything set to not-visible so that I can hide an alignment quickly without messing up my standard alignment style. Visibility setting has the same icon as the layer on/off icon which I find misleading because they're not the same thing at all.

The default width of the XLIST information window is quite narrow. If either the layer name or the drawing name is long, you may not be able to see all the layer information from an xlist. It's a lot easier to see the layer name if the dialogue box is set wider.  Here is how to change the width of the xlist dialogue box: Go to the following folder: C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Autodesk AutoCAD Civil 3D 2014\Express Open the file XLIST.DCL with a text editor. Look for instances of the following setting : text {         key = "sLayer";         width = 30;       } In each instance of the seeting, change the width value to something bigger. I use 150 myself. e.g.: : text {         key = "sLayer";         width = 150;       } Note that there are three instances of this setting in the fil...

Sometimes we want to control the layer of an object in an xref'd drawing. In order to do so, you need to know what layer it is in. Clicking on it and looking up the property window only tells you what layer the entire xref is on instead of telling you what layer the object is on. Although you could open up the xref, that is a time consuming solution if you only wanted to look up just one object. That's where the XLIST command comes in handy. It tells you what layer the object is in as well as its colour and linetype. Additional Notes: If the object colour or linetype is not set to "by layer", you might still need to open up the xref'd drawing and set it to "by layer" so that you can control its appearance from the host drawing. But as long as object properties are diligently left at "by layer" (as they should be), it should simply be a matter of opening up the layer manager and changing the layer settings. The default xlist dial...

Sometimes we need a polyline copy of an alignment whether it's for presentation, making target lines, drawing right-of-way lines, etc.   *update (JHK 2018-07-29)* The easiest way to create a polyline copy of an alignment is to just select the alignment and use the offset command. I will test if it can be offset by 0 (I doubt it). If not, just offset it back. I will also test if the offset command works on profile and re-update this article.  Here is how to make a polyline copy of an alignment: Adjust the alignment or profile style to prepare. Usually this involves making sure that the line layer is turned on and the extension lines and markers are turned off. Copy the alignment/profile. Select the copy of the alignment/profile and explode it. It should have turned into a block. (Optional) Select the block and isolate it. It helps to do this when there is a lot of clutter around the alignment in question. This can be done either via the light bulb icon in th...

Problem: The middle grips are missing making it difficult to adjust the size of objects while keeping it orthogonal.  Solution: Open up the system variables: (Ribbon) Express Tools -> Tools: System Variables (Command) SYSVDLG Select "GRIPS" on the left. Change the value under "New Value" to 2.  Click "OK".