Autodesk University 2014

After several years away from Autodesk University, I'm looking forward to attending this remarkable event. I'm currently at Austin-Bergstrom Internation Airport awaiting the arrival of the plane that is scheduled to take me to Dallas where I will catch a flight to Las Vegas.

I was pleasantly surprised to see how many USB and AC outlets were available for use at the airport this morning. I even found an opening at a table with said outlets so it's even easier to use my heavy, but hopefully powerful enough, new workstation laptop. Arriving for an early morning flight meant I missed all of the US 183 morning traffic. However, the two hours of sleep I got will probably mean nap time during the flight from DAL to LAS.

Another bit of good news is that I'm still a Time Warner Cable subscriber. Though I have my complaints, especially price, I am currently enjoying the free use of the Boingo WiFi HotSpot at the airport. I'm glad I at least scan the many emails I receive from TWC throughout the year that notified me of this customer benefit.

I'm awaiting the arrival of Ishka (@C3Dish). His flight is a later one that mine so he got to sleep later than I did this morning. I'm jealous of that extra sleep right now. He and I were hoping to be on the same flight today. Unfortunately the price difference was too much compared with what his employer was offering to pay. Hopefully next year we can both get approval for the trip sooner so we can schedule our flights together. We both would enjoy discussions of Civil 3D, InfraWorks 360, and 3DS Max during the flight.

I spent some time yesterday reviewing my schedule and checking for available classes one last time. I've heard many times that an opening in a lab can be found if you keep checking. Yesterday that actually happened to me. I saw an opening in the CM8257-L - AutoCAD Customization Boot Camp: Beyond the Basics Repeat lab. Though I hadn't initially planned on taking this lab, I changed my mind once I read about it. I was looking forward to finally attending a lab this year until I got a scheduling conflict. I decided to pay it forward by selecting this lab and dropping my two lab selections that were in conflict with another event that I wanted to attend. I hope the recipients of my seats enjoy the labs.

I look forward to attending Curt Moreno's CM6160 - Standards for Developing Standards: A How-to for Busy CAD Managers instead. It's probably a better choice for me anyway. I only wish there had been some documentation to review before the class.

I can't wait to arrive in Las Vegas and get registered. There are a few presentations on my schedule for today that should be interesting including:

• CV6443-P - INFSYM: BIM Best Practices for Designing Better Water Systems
• CV6627-P - INFSYM: Regional Land Development and Land Planning Projects Best Practice Workflows
• UT6664 - INFSYM: Did We Build It Right? Utility Project Construction and Collaboration 

They are calling boarding for my flight so I'll see you in Las Vegas!

I Got Shifted!

For those of you venturing into the Infrastructure Design Suites that include Raster Design, you might experience an unexpected "feature":

What happened to my shift key?

When working in Civil 3D, I use my shift key quite often. When I began using Civil 3D (with Raster Design installed), I noticed that my shift key seemed to no longer be working in two specific situations, though there may be others as well.

• Hold shift and select an object to remove it from the current select set
• Hold shift and select an object to switch between extend and trim commands

The shift key still worked in other cases such as shift+right click to access the osnap right click menu so I was a bit perplexed. Thankfully Mark Martinez with Enceptia knew right away how to fix the problem.

If you have Raster Design installed, there is a special setting that allows you to select an image by holding the shift key and selecting anywhere in the image. This setting can be very useful unless you need to use the shift key for other purposes such as those I listed. Mark instructed me where to disable the Shift+Left click feature that Raster Design has enabled by default. Here's the solution:

1. At the command line, type ioptions and press enter.
2. On the User Preferences tab, left click on the check mark by "Shift+Left click image select" to disable this setting.
3. Left click on OK to apply the setting change.


4. At the command line, type mapioptions and press enter.
5. On the General tab, left click on the check mark by "Shift+Left Click Image Select" to disable this setting.
6. Left click on OK to apply the setting change.

Hopefully this will keep you from pulling out your hair as I was tempted to do.

How Do I "EXPLODE" a Group?

I was asked this question twice this week already so I thought it would be good to post the answer for others.

To "explode" a group, use the  AutoCAD command: UNGROUP

Of course "exploding" a group may not be the best choice for every situation. In groups, if you just want to grip edit something within the group, set the system variable GROUPDISPLAYMODE to 0. This setting will display grips on all objects in the selected group. It will preserve the group while allowing you access to grips to make changes to individual objects within the group.

Here are a few images to show the difference between the three settings available in the GROUPDISPLAYMODE system variable. Each image shows a group consisting of an mtext object and a rectangular wipeout that has been selected within a drawing.

GROUPDISPLAYMODE set to 0

With GROUPDISPLAYMODE set to 0, the grips on all objects in the selected group will be displayed. Notice that I can adjust the limits of the wipeout or the width of the mtext object.

GROUPDISPLAYMODE set to 1

With GROUPDISPLAYMODE set to 1, a single grip at the center of the grouped object will be displayed. Notice the single grip at the center? With this setting I can't adjust the limits of the wipeout or the width of the mtext object.

GROUPDISPLAYMODE set to 2

With GROUPDISPLAYMODE set to 2, a group bounding box and a single grip at the center of the grouped object will be displayed. The only difference between this setting and the previous setting is that with the bounding box visible I can see the limits of the objects in the group.

Autodesk University 2012 Classes Posted

The materials and recordings for the 2012 Autodesk University classes have been posted. You can access the class list here:

You must have an AU account to access the classes. If you don't have an AU account, you can sign up for one here.

Since the announcement about this just went public, you may notice the website being a bit slow to respond. Just be patient because there are so many good classes available. In case you feel overwhelmed when you see the class listing, just refine your search such as Software: Civil 3D. There's even a filter for Language: Portuguese.

Enjoy!

OSNAPZ to the Rescue

Do you remember the Almond Joy/Mounds commercials?

(Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't.)

The OSNAPZ command in AutoCAD reminds me of those commercials.

(Sometimes I want elevation, sometimes I don't.)

The OSNAPZ command is an easy way to switch between snapping to an elevation and forcing an elevation when creating or editing AutoCAD objects. When drafting in both the Civil Engineering and Land Surveying fields, both options are useful.

From the AutoCAD help documentation:

With OSNAPZ set to 0, OSNAP uses the Z-value of the specified point. For a polyline, the elevation selected for the first vertex will be assigned as the elevation of the polyline.

With OSNAPZ set to 1, OSNAP substitutes the Z-value of the specified point with the elevation (ELEV) set for the current UCS. With the system variable ELEV set to 0, the elevation will default to 0 for all selected points.

Now hopefully I can finally get that song out of my head.