Cadalyst - March 2008 - (Page 46)

hottipharry CAD from the Streets This month’s winner simplifies pipe and column drawings by automating AutoCAD’s Extrusion command. By Bill Kramer H e’s constantly on the prowl, and Hot Tip Harry seeks your input on how to make your AutoCAD experience better. These tips come from the street, folks just like you using CAD every day to make the world a better place. If you have a tip or trick to share, send it to Harry via e-mail — harry@cadalyst.com — and check out the Get the Code! library of past tips at www.cadalyst.com/code. And now for this month’s new tips. steel plates as closed polylines, load the LISP code and type 3DFLG at the Command line. You will be asked to supply the plate size and to select the plates for conversion. The rest is automatic, making this a handy utility for drawing 3D extrusions quickly. Tip 2275: Align Text Align Text from Ramesh Gopal lets you align text vertically or horizontally. Load the LISP code and type TAlign. Select the text objects you want to align. Next, the utility will ask you to select a control text object. The other objects selected will be aligned using the base point of the selected control object. Next, type V or H for vertical or horizontal alignment. The rest is automatic with this power-editing tool. Tip 2272: Layer Color Change Ryan Wunderlich sent in Layer Color Change, a marvelously simple but useful tool for changing layer colors. To use this tip, load the LISP code into AutoCAD and type XCC. You will be prompted to select an entity. After you have selected an entity object in the drawing, the Color dialog box will display with the current color assignment of the entity object layer. Picking a new color will cause the layer color assignment to be modified. This utility is much quicker than navigating the Layer command to change the colors. Tip 2276: Brick Hatch Generator Brick Hatch Generator is a great tip from Raymond Rizkallah. Rizkallah put his imagination and programming skills to work in creating this program that makes brick hatch patterns. Load the LISP program, type BRK at the Command line, answer a few simple questions about the brick size, and the program launches into the BHatch command with your freshly created brick pattern as the default pattern. The input you supply to define the pattern includes the file name, brick length, heights, joint size, and whether or not to overlap the bricks. Tip 2273: Change Circle Diameters Change Circle Diameters from Antonia Acosta is a handy tool for structural detailers who need to change large bolt-hole diameters. Load the LISP code and type CH_CC at the AutoCAD Command line to activate this tip. You will be asked to select circles in your drawing. The utility activates a filter so you can select only circle objects when using Windows, streamlining the pick process. After you have selected several circles, you will be asked to type in a new diameter value. All the circles selected will be changed to the input diameter. This tool is great for power edit when you have to make a lot of edits. Tip 2277: Pipe and Column Extrusion Raymond Rizkallah also supplied this month’s top tip, Pipe and Column Extrusion, a set of utilities for 3D drawing work. The functions — CV3, CV4, and CV5 — simplify the creation of pipes and columns by automating AutoCAD’s Extrusion command based on an entity object selection. All three, contained in the same source code file, accept a 3D line as input and then create a 3D solid shape. Use CV3 to generate a cylindrical column, use CV4 to create a square column, and use CV5 to create a column out of a closed x,yplane polyline defined inside a block. These functions compute the required planes, then run the AutoCAD commands, allowing you to quickly transform lines into extruded cylinders, rectangles, and other shapes. Great work, Raymond, and a tip of the hat from Harry as he slides out the door to seek more tips from the power users on the CAD streets. c Cadalyst contributing editor Bill Kramer has been programming AutoCAD solutions, writing magazine articles and books, and teaching CAD/CAM/CAE customization for more than 20 years. Bill wrote the first article about AutoLISP in Cadalyst back in 1986. Tip 2274: Steel Plate Extrusion Also from Antonia Acosta, the Steel Plate Extrusion utility is a handy LISP program that allows you to sketch steel plates in 2D and then quickly extrude them into 3D. After drawing Get the Code! Download Harry’s March 2008 code at www.cadalyst.com/code. Downloads are free, provided as is without warranty or support. Tips included in “Hot Tip Harry” are tested with AutoCAD 2008, unless otherwise noted. Review tip submission guidelines at www.cadalyst.com/ tips and then submit your AutoCAD tip to harry@cadalyst.com. Authors of all published tips will receive a Cadalyst T-shirt. The author of Harry’s Top Tip each month will win a $100 cash prize, and all published authors will be entered in the Hot Tip Harry 2008 Hot Code Contest random drawing for a chance to win a trip to Autodesk University 2008. 46 March 2008 | cadalyst | www.cadalyst.com http://www.cadalyst.com/code http://www.cadalyst.com/code http://www.cadalyst.com/tips http://www.cadalyst.com/tips http://www.cadalyst.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Cadalyst - March 2008

Cadalyst - March 2008 Contents Editor's Window CAD Central Thicker than Water Safe Keeping — Backup Software Secures Your Designs AMD’s ATI FireGL Graphics Cards AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008 — Surveying, Civil Engineering, and Land Development Software Cool Software Utilities for Your Job History, Nonhistory, or Both? In the Eye of the Storm Builders’ Information Modeling CAD Cartoon Issue Indexes CAD from the Streets

Cadalyst - March 2008

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