AUGIWorld Magazine - March/April 2008 - (Page 19) Blocks are a staple of AutoCAD drawings. This is no different for Impression. Now blocks can be edited in Impression. In Impression’s first release, a block had to be changed in AutoCAD and reloaded. Not anymore. When a block is doubleclicked in Impression, the block geometry is displayed in the Block Editor Workspace. There, users have access to most of the drawing and stylization tools that are available in the standard workspace. This makes “tweaking” of blocks easier. Blocks containing objects that were created by an older version of Impression will be placed on a “legacy” layer in the Block Layers Palette. If blocks use non-Impression images, such as JPG or BMG, the image components cannot be stylized in the block library. New libraries of styles have been added. Some of these libraries include more realistic watercolors, overlap strokes, mixed media types, textures, and color variations. New preset styles for noise, drop shadows, and roughen effects have also been added. New fill options such as Advanced Noise and Watercolor have been added to the style editor in the effect box. The standard stroke style now also has a fade properties option available. This option is available through the style editor by setting the media to standard and adjusting the settings under the Standard Stroke Fade Properties settings. Text importation and styling were often an issue in Impression’s first release. Now the text properties palette can assign a line weight to imported text that uses an SHX font. There is now the option to change the alignment of text from horizontal to vertical, if desired. The Match Properties command is another addition to the content features in the new release. This command copies the style and layer properties from one object to another. On the toolbar, click the Match Properties tool. Click on the style that you want to copy and then click all objects that need those settings applied. It works similarly to the Match Properties command in AutoCAD. Content Each layer can be packed or unpacked in the drawing. This feature speeds up functions such as move, scale, rotate, zoom, pan, and style editing. Other functions that have been added to Impression that improve performance are the Performance Tuning and the Fast Display functions. The Performance Tuning provides visual prompts about activities that affect program performance. The Fast Display function will hide style elements that might slow performance such as transparency, shadow effects, roughen effects, dashes, stroked fills, and hatch fills. Changing this setting does not affect the printed output. The addition of the Import Wizard guides users through the import process. It assists in preparing the drawings for the best results. This new wizard includes a file clean-up pane where one can discard images, hatches, and other objects that might not be needed in the Impression illustration. The new Print DPI option makes the DPI output more consistent for different formats. Block and style preview displays add a new viewing option for the preview images displayed in the styles pallet, blocks palette, and style creation dialog palettes. In the Quick Start guide, many of the new features have been added for a quick tour of Impression. The Jump Start Tour is now displayed beneath the canvas the first time Impression is opened. This provides quick, hands-on lessons to help a user get started more quickly. It can be accessed again if the need arises. Get ready to ROCK Interface and usability 6.0 Bluebeam PDF Revu Redesigned interface Exclusive new WebTab™ Digital signatures Batch drawing comparison File attachments and more ® The PDF Solution for AEC Roadies. Conclusion Autodesk heard the concerns of early adopters and has done much to address these issues in the second release of Impression, improving an already capable program. Better text handling, performance enhancers, and new and expanded libraries for blocks and styles will make the Impression experience even better. Brian C. Benton is senior engineering CAD technician/designer for Heidt & Associates, Inc, Fort Myers, Florida. Brian has been working with AutoCAD since release 10 in the mechanical, structural, and civil engineering fields. He has been a detailer, drafter, designer, IT assistant, CAD software manager, protector of standards, and proverbial “Help Desk.” He can be reached at benton. brian@gmail.com. Performance Impression is a great program, but there have been some performance issues when using larger files. Happily, this issue has been addressed. There is a new feature called Pack/Unpack. The packing feature improves program performance by treating objects on a layer as a single object if they meet a certain criteria. These objects must have the same style, they must be sequential in draw order, and must have the same object grouping if it is applicable. M a r/A p r 2 0 0 8 Make some noise at www.bluebeamrocks.com or call us at 866.496.2140 © 2008 Bluebeam Software, Inc. 19 http://www.bluebeamrocks.com
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