You've got a couple options. First, you could go to the [Primary Units] tab within the DIMSTYLE command, and add a suffix to your dimensions. I don't know that I would use this method for something like a water closet, but maybe for text like "Rel" or "Approx", something along those lines.

To append text like "Water closet" to a dimension, I'd suggest using the DDEDIT command to type the test you need. When doing this, just be sure not to erase the number (otherwise it will loose it's dynamic properties). If you do accidentally loose the number, just re-add it by entering <>. In addition to the DDEDIT command, you can also select a dimension and alter it's value from the Properties Palette.

Autodesk has made moving your AutoCAD license from one computer to another relatively easy.  Run the License Transfer Utility (Start > Programs > AutoCAD 2010) before uninstalling AutoCAD on your current workstation. Running this utility will allow you to essentially deactivate AutoCAD on your current computer.  You can then install AutoCAD on your new computer and use the utility to import the license.

A nice extra benefit to this utility it that you don’t have to uninstall AutoCAD on your original workstation; just run the utility again, and you can transfer your license between computers as you please.

Not having experienced the exact issue you describe with AutoCAD 2010 myself, I’d start troubleshooting the issue by first establishing if the problem is drawing specific and/or plotter specific or not.  If you don’t have a second printer to test with, try installing something like CutePDF (which installs a virtual printer on your machine), and try printing with that.  If that works, perhaps there’s an updated driver available for your plotter?  Something else to look at when troubleshooting the plotter is your page setup, is it trying to use a page size that’s not available on your plotter?

To test if the problem is with the drawing, create a fresh drawing using the acad.dwt template that ships with AutoCAD. Try to print from it.  If that works, you can begin troubleshooting your initial drawing, as the problem probably exists in there.  I’d start by running a RECOVERALL on the drawing in question.  Pay attention to the report that’s generated afterwards, noting how many (if any) errors are found. When you get into your DWG, run an AUDIT to see if the errors are still there or not.

Once you know your DWG is clean (by running RECOVERALL and AUDIT), there’s a couple other AutoCAD settings I’d check in troubleshooting a ticket like this. Launch the OPTIONS command, and go to the Plot and Publish tab.  From there you can try disabling background plotting and see if that remedies the problem. If that doesn’t work, I’d move onto the 3DCONFIG command. From there click the [Check for Updates] button to see if Autodesk has released a new driver database.  After updating the driver database, go back to the 3DCONFIG command, and click on the [Manual Tune] button. Unless there’s something specific you absolutely need turned on, I generally let AutoCAD figure out the best performance settings for my computer for me. You can do that by clicking the [Reset to Recommended Values] button. 

In my experience plotting issues are some of the most difficult to troubleshoot.  There’s just so many variables within the plot command itself, coupled with all sorts of other things relating to the way AutoCAD ultimately processes your drawing.

Keep in mind that each time you change from one layout tab to another, or from a layout tab to model space, AutoCAD has to regenerate your model. I’ve seen issues in the past, especially in the context of large Civil 3D drawings, where switching from one tab to another took forever. Oftentimes the solution had to do with the way information was referenced into the DWG. Ask yourself a few questions. Do you have a lot of XREF’s in your DWG? How big are the XREF’s in your DWG? Do you have items in your DWG that aren’t needed to plot a particular sheet?

Something I used to run into a lot was users who had a high-resolution aerial image they didn’t need attached to a DWG they had XREF’ed into a DWG they were plotting. Since there’s no Overlay option for images, the high-resolution image came along for the ride, even though it wasn’t needed. My solution in those instances was to create a separate DWG for the image itself. Then when I needed the image, I could just XREF that DWG, keeping the rest of my plan set lean.

It hasn’t been a problem since AutoCAD 2008, but if you have an old DWG, it’s possible your drawing is plagued with far too many Annotation Scales (even if you don’t use Annotative Objects). I’ve got a post talking about clearing them up if that is indeed the issue here (http://www.thecadgeek.com/blog/2007/09/26/perpetual-annotation-scale-list/). Another potential performance killer is RegApps. Most people have never heard of them, much less how to get rid of them. I’ve got another post on my blog talking about RegApps that may be helpful for you (http://www.thecadgeek.com/blog/2008/10/03/ditch-excess-regapps-speed-up-your-drawings/).

This is the type of issue that’s hard to say exactly what’s going on without actually seeing it. Nonetheless, a couple things that come to mind, and where I personally would start troubleshooting the issue is with SNAP and OSNAP. SNAP as you may know locks your cursor onto a grid (like a piece of graph paper). If this were turned on, it’s possible that you select one part of the screen, only for AutoCAD to “SNAP” you to the nearest grid, which could be substantially different than what you wanted.

Object Snaps (or OSNAP’s as they’re more commonly called) should go into an inactive state when the ZOOM command is executed. No less, it’s not out of the question to suspect AutoCAD may be snapping to the ENDpoint of an object outside the window you intended to zoom to.

If neither of those help you, the next thing I would do is troubleshoot to see if the problem is a machine (installation issue) or a drawing issue. Start a brand new drawing from the acad.dwt template that ships with AutoCAD, and see if you can recreate the problem in a clean drawing. If you have access to another machine, try opening the problematic drawing on it, and see if the same issues occur on that machine.

Since you’ve reinstalled AutoCAD, I doubt it’s an installation issue. Although if you didn’t perform a FULL uninstall (http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/item?siteID=123112&id=2887771&linkID=9240617) there’s still a possibility the problem is with the install. However, if you find the problem is with your DWG itself, run a RECOVERALL on the DWG to clear up any errors. I’d also suggest purging any unneeded items (including RegApps). RegApps have to e purged using the command-line version of the PURGE command. That can be done by entering –PURGE (notice the hyphen) at the command line.

If none of the above troubleshooting steps work for you, I’d suggest submitting a support ticket to Autodesk if you are a subscription customer, or contacting your reseller for help.

Since Windows 7 has yet to be released, Autodesk does not yet support Windows 7 installations of AutoCAD. Naturally, just because Autodesk doesn’t support it, doesn’t mean AutoCAD won’t work on Windows 7. I have since re-imaged the machine, but I did try AutoCAD Civil 3D 2010 on both the Public Beta of Windows 7, and the Release Candidate.

My personal experience was that AutoCAD ran better on Windows 7 than on a similar machine running Vista. Even still, you have to remember AutoCAD 2010 was released well before Windows 7 is scheduled to be released. Thus it’s hard to expect any software company to support a platform that didn’t exist when a product was launched. That said it’s a bit of a coin toss if Autodesk will support AutoCAD in a Windows 7 environment once Windows 7 is officially released.

I have to think back to AutoCAD 2007 and Vista. Those two never played all that well together. You could get it to run, but it wasn’t something your average user could get setup. However, when AutoCAD 2008 was released, it worked on Vista without the need to perform any voodoo. Personally, I would expect AutoCAD 2010 to run without any major issues on the final release of Windows 7, but for Autodesk to officially begin support for Windows 7 starting with the 2011 release.

A standalone license of AutoCAD can only be installed & activated on one machine. While I know a dual-boot system is only one physical machine, each operating system install is treated as a single machine. Once again, you will not be able to activate AutoCAD on both machines (nor would I expect Autodesk to ever allow dual-activations).

Something Autodesk does permit is the transfer of licenses from one machine to another. If you browse to Start > Programs > AutoCAD 2010 you will see a License Transfer Utility. This will essentially deactivate your license on Machine A, and allow you to activate Machine B. When you want to go back to using Machine A once again, just run the License Transfer Utility from Machine B.

While I have not personally experienced issues with the ribbon locking up (yet), it seems a fair number of users have experienced the issue. Although the “Startup Error and Text Editing Hotfix” is not listed on the Civil 3D Updates & Service Packs page, the one listed on the AutoCAD Updates and Service Packs page says it’s compatible with Civil 3D (although I have no personally tried installing it for Civil 3D yet). If you’re experiencing this issue, this is certainly a good starting point.

Something else I would try is the 3DCONFIG command. There’s a good chance a newer version of the graphics card and driver database is available for download. You can update it by clicking on the [Check for Updates] button within the 3DCONFIG command. After running the update, I’d click on the [Manual Tune] button (also in the 3DCONFIG command). You can get pretty granular in the configuration of various performance settings here. Oftentimes, I’ll let AutoCAD determine what’s right for me by clicking on the [Reset to Recommended Values] button.

At my previous firm we had a very similar issue with plotting. Sometimes you would plot, and everything would come out great, other times the plotter would waste a profound amount of paper. What we found was that AutoCAD and HP both give you (the user) far too many choices.

As you have probably seen, for something as simple as an Arch D size sheet (24 x 36), AutoCAD & HP give you at least a half-dozen choices. Further complicating matters, these different sheet sizes (each measuring 24 x 36), and each plot in a slightly different way. Faced with the same type of problems, our ultimate solution was time consuming, but ultimately worth it.

We ultimately decided to invest the time in figuring out which sheet size, combined with which PLOT command settings, plotted our title lock the way we needed it to plot. This essentially took us standing by the plotter trying different page sizes and PLOT command settings until we got something that worked in our environment.

Once we found the perfect plot configuration we did a number of things to help prevent users from plotting incorrectly in the future. First, we made sure our DWT (templates) used the new plot configurations. Inside we DWT we were sure to use Named Page Setups to make it easy for users to apply the correct settings should things get messed up. Additionally, we told AutoCAD to hide system printers (a checkbox in the OPTIONS command), and modified our PC3 files to only include the company standard sheet sizes.

As I said, it was a lot of work, but ultimately made our plotting related support tickets drop to near nothing.

I am an amateur programmer at best, but using VBA you should be able to use the CECOLOR system variable to achieve what you want. The CECOLOR variable sets the color of new objects. The code for setting the CECOLOR variable would look something like this:

ThisDrawing.SetVariable "CECOLOR",color

Naturally, replace the color with the color you want the variable set to.

In my experience, AutoCAD doesn’t do a great job letting you report on XREF’s from within the AutoCAD interface itself. Something I’ve done in the past to solve this problem is step away from AutoCAD for a moment, and use the Reference Manager (installed with AutoCAD). Now the true purpose of the Reference Manager is to do things like change the path for a large number of XREF’s all at once, and other batch type operations. However, a hidden gem in the Reference Manager is the ability to export reports in CSV format.

Thanks to the reporting ability of the Reference Manager, we can add each of our sheet files to the reference manager. Upon adding drawings to the reference manager, it will scan each drawing for things like fonts, plot styles, and YES Xrefs. Once it finishes processing each of the references in the drawings you selected, go to the File menu and select Export Report.

The Reference Manager will save a CSV file containing the same information displayed inside the Reference Manager itself. Using some Microsoft Excel voodoo, you can filter by reference type (in this case Xref). If you’re familiar with pivot tables in Excel you can tell excel to group all of the references by “Host Drawing” which will show you in a rather concise way which drawings are XREF’ed into each host drawing.

I admit the process is a little complicated. I will work on writing up a more detailed tutorial on my blog at www.TheCADGeek.com.

You’ve certainly started out on the right foot, as the AutoCAD Exchange has all sorts of excellent material aimed at individuals like yourself who are trying to get their start with AutoCAD. Seeing that you already understand the concepts of drafting, but just need a little help getting started with AutoCAD, I’d recommend having a look at your local community college. Many community colleges have some number of classes which use AutoCAD, and for a relatively low price you have direct access to someone who knows CAD for an entire semester (your teacher).

Another benefit to taking classes at the community college is you should get a school-issued e-mail address. That valid, school-issued e-mail address is free ticket to all sorts of resources in the Autodesk Student Community (http://students.autodesk.com). In addition to gaining access to a number of tutorials, you’ll also be able to download FREE software. In essence, you can get a fully-functioning copy of AutoCAD for free by taking a class at your local community college.

The only other way I know how to project 3D to 2D is with the SOLPROF command. Unfortunately it behaves almost exactly the same way as the FLATSHOT command.

As a workaround, something I'd propose trying. Since the FLATSHOT command gives you the option to project foreground lines in a different color than obscured lines you can employ the use of the Quick Select command (the funnel on the Properties Palette). Use the Quick Select to select all objects that are Red, and put them on your foreground layer, repeat for all of your blue objects, and put on your obscure layer. Not the most glamorous solution, but a potential workaround no less.

User Interface items, such as the Properties Palette Set (flyout box), is now controlled through the CUI or Custom User Interface. Contained within your CUI file are a series of Workspaces. In short, your Workspace tells AutoCAD what User Interface Items should be on, and which ones should be off.

As you may imagine the CUI is a pretty intensive topic. In fact there are entire classes at Autodesk University dedicated to this topic alone. While there are a number of ways to customize the interface with the CUI, the easiest way is probably to get AutoCAD looking the way you like it. Once you’ve done that, find the little gear icon in the status bar, click on it, and select “Save current as”. While there’s nothing that says you cannot save over the default workspaces, my personal preference is to save my workspace something like “Donnie’s AutoCAD”.

If you’re curious about learning more about the CUI, have a look at AU Online (http://au.autodesk.com). There you can find all sorts of classes recorded from previous years.

I do not work for Autodesk, but one thing I know Autodesk does is host an Authorized Training Center program. Companies who display this logo have met a stringent series of requirements including the expertise and quality of their training materials. It’s not to say all companies without this distinction have bad training materials, but when you purchase training from companies with this distinction you can rest assured you are getting a product endorsed by Autodesk.

Most resellers will offer such training to you. Additionally, Autodesk has training materials available for purchase (http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?id=8298082&siteID=123112). Another option available to you are the many books available for nearly every Autodesk title I can think of. One book I have personally had the chance to review is AutoCAD No Experience Required. It’s published by Wiley/Sybex, and offers a good start-to-finish look at AutoCAD.

Personally my expertise lies in AutoCAD, Civil 3D, Map 3D, etc, and I have an incredibly limited knowledge of AutoCAD Architecture. Nonetheless, wanting to get you some sort of meaningful answer, I asked one of my friends who has a better knowledge of AutoCAD Architecture than me.

My friend recalled once when he used the MVBlock that came with the software, and added the area attribute to it. Doing this, he was able to derive the area directly from the “space” object. This made it so whenever the space object changed, so did the area. One thing he mentioned is that your property set definitions, and room schedule table style will each need to be modified as well. As he could recall, there’s a setting in the table style editor that will total the columns for you (a checkbox perhaps?).

Based on your question, he said it sounded like you may have set up a field to get the value of the area of a polyline, linked that into the tag, and then into the schedule somehow. That method will work, however it required a bit more user intervention than do space objects which can be linked to walls, doors, windows, etc that serve as space boundaries.

I really wish I knew AutoCAD Architecture well enough to answer your question myself, but hopefully my friends response will help you out some.

I assume this is for AutoCAD 2010? Among the new features in AutoCAD 2010 is the contextual ribbon. Among these is a contextual editing ribbon for text (the old editor has been integrated into the ribbon). Since you say it’s just one user, I’d start troubleshooting things by first trying to establish if the issue is will all drawings he/she opens, or just a handful of drawings. Also, does AutoCAD perform the same way on another user’s machine with the same DWG?

If the issue is with a specific drawing (or series of drawings), try the RECOVERALL command. It scans not only the drawing you select, but any DWG XREF’ed into it.

If you determine the issue is system specific, something worth checking out is the “Startup Error and Text Editing Hotfix” for AutoCAD 2010. As its name implies, it patches some known issues with crashing at startup and editing text. You can find and download it from the AutoCAD Updates & Service Packs page (http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/index?siteID=123112&id=2334435&linkID=9240618).

Prior to the launch of this site (AutoCAD Exchange) there was an Impression Community (http://impression.autodesk.com). Autodesk merged the Impression Community with this site at it's launch. Nonetheless, I see where the tutorials have been merged with this site, but can't seem to find the styles you could once download from the Impression Community.

Anyway, right now I don't have a good answer for you, but I have contacted some of my friends at Autodesk to see what I can find out for you. :)

Think of the “Sheet List” tab as being the sheets you’re already created. These are numbered, and included in a Sheet Set that you can print, and perform all the magic Sheet Set Manager allows you to do. On the other hand, the “Sheet Views” tab are not sheets at all, instead they represent views (configured by you) that can be inserted on a new sheet. Actually, it’s a pretty powerful part of SSM, an area that in my experience is oftentimes overlooked.

Harnessing the full potential of “Sheet Views” can get quite involved. I’ll work on putting together a more in-depth look at sheet views on my blog (thecadgeek.com). In the meantime, let me try to explain the basic concept of using Sheet Views. Sheet Views combine the power of SSM with the power of the Named Views feature found inside AutoCAD for some time now.

That said, to start using Sheet Views, we’ll start with the VIEW command (totally separate from SSM). The really cool thing about Named Views in AutoCAD is they can actually save the on/off state of layers. To utilize this part of the VIEW command, configure your layer states (which layers are on/off) before launching the VIEW command. With your layers displaying the way you want them to, launch the VIEW command. From there you can create a new named view, drawing a box around the area you ultimately want to represent the viewable area of a sheet. TIP: Create a scaled rectangle that represents the viewable area of your title block, and snap to that when creating your view.

Now you can return to Sheet Set Manager. First, you’ll create a new sheet like you always have from SSM. With your sheet created, you can then switch to the Sheet Views tab. From the Sheet Views Tab navigate to the drawing you saved your Named View in. Under the drawing name you should see the view you created listed. After locating the view you created, just drag-and-drop it from the Sheet Views tab to the layout tab of your sheet. This will XREF the drawing you pulled the view from, create your viewport, and configure the layer state to match the configuration of your view.

To answer your question about turning on the ribbon.  There is a command aptly named RIBBON that you ca use to turn on the ribbon.

I’m not sure if you’re using a vertical product (eg Architecture, Civil 3D, etc), but they generally use a different primary CUI file than the AutoCAD defaule ACAD.CUIX.  For example, in Civil 3D it’s C3D.CUIX.  The primary CUI file is set through the OPTIONS command, whereas the Partial CUI files are loaded through the CUI command itself (confusing I know).  The point here, if you’re using a vertical product, make sure your primary CUI is set to the correct vertical-specific CUI file (you’ll find that in the OPTIONS command).

Additionally, if everything has gone south, and you need a fresh begining, you can reset or restore the default CUI file.  That can be done from the CUI command, right-click on the top node in the customize tab, and select reset/restore.  That will loose any edits you’ve made, but get you back to the way things were when you first installed AutoCAD.

Have you tried publishing to Google Earth with the “Publish Materials” option unchecked? My experience in omitting materials is the AutoCAD layer color pushes through to Google Earth. Additionally, when I publish using that method, I am able to modify the color of the object within Google Earth as well.

When you open the KMZ file AutoCAD creates for you in Google Earth, it is listed in the panel on the left. From there you can actually navigate the contents of your KMZ. After locating an object you can right-click and select properties to change the color of the object as well.

Hi David,

No squashed toes here! Thanks for your input.

In the default AutoCAD 2010 interface (the ribbon), you should see an Express ribbon tab at the top. Keep in mind, some of our favorite express tools have "grown up" and become REAL AutoCAD commands in recent years (layer control is one that comes to mind). Naturally, those tools are no longer found on the Express ribbon tab, but rather other tabs.

If you don't see the Express ribbon tab, there's a chance something has happened to your CUI. If you need to reset your CUI to out-of-the-box AutoCAD, go to the CUI command, and right-click on the top tree-node (should be ACAD). From there you'll have the option to restore/reset your acad.cuix.

There’s no doubt about it, in nearly every industry I can think of, some major changes are underway. Be it adopting the ribbon, migrating to a from an older vertical product (Architectural Desktop / Land Desktop) to a newer product such as Revit or Civil 3D, or even the more encompassing paradigm of developing a BIM workflow so you can remain competitive and produce BIM deliverables, there’s no shortage of ways to trip up even the most savvy of user. But how does one overcome all of this?

Well I’m afraid my answer mimics the answer you’ve received from so many already – training. But for me training isn’t JUST about providing an exceptional classroom learning experience, but providing a training experience with reinforcement. Quite simply, if all you do is provide users a couple days of training, and expect them to be able to use a program like Revit or Civil 3D overnight; well you’re missing the boat. Some training is certainly better than no training, but some training doesn’t solve the problem. So what does?

After providing formal training to a group of users, you must follow it up with some sort of evaluation to see what areas your users are still weak in. This may be as informal as looking over old e-mails/support tickets from users, or as formal as administering some sort of evaluation some time after the training session. Once you’ve identified the weaknesses of your staff, there are a number of things you can do. If the weakness is just with a couple users, providing an over-the-shoulder experience may be more productive. On the other hand, if you have a large number of users having trouble with a given concept or procedure; hosting a lunch-and-learn session on that one topic may be the better choice. The key here is for the CAD Manager to keep an accurate pulse on the strengths and weaknesses of their users, and then developing programs that make a staffs weaknesses into strengths.

For instance, at my last firm, I had identified a number of smaller issues that really didn’t justify an entire lunch-and-learn session, but were with more than a couple of users. My solution was to launch an internal knowledge base (using the free Wordpress platform) with a mix of step-by-step tutorials, and 5-minute videos to address those specific needs. The point here isn’t to propose every firm who uses an Autodesk product launch an internal knowledge base tomorrow. Instead, my point here is that you know your users the best, and you should take that knowledge to custom tailor a solution that works for your users, and the way your firm does business.

To me the key to helping users learn new things is to provide them the information to solve the problems they encounter the right way, before they decide to find a way to solve them. Do your best to avoid having to figure out a way to clean up after a user chooses to explode a certain block rather than asking for help on how to use it correctly. The approach that has worked best for me is to provide users a core set of skills in a formal training session, and to then reinforce that with informal training like lunch-and-learning sessions, over-the-shoulder training, and on-demand training (knowledge base). Heck, I even consider solving tech-support tickets as being a form of training. Just remember rarely will users voluntarily share information with you (the CAD Manager). A good CAD Manager will engage their users, and never underestimate the value of what I like to call water cooler chats.

I wish the answer was as simple as saying “AutoCAD changed the way it runs LISP, and if you do ___ everything will work”. Unfortunately, that’s just not the case. The fundamental way AutoCAD processes LISP has remained unchanged for some time now. What Autodesk has changed since 2006 are a number of system variables.

Judging from the fact AutoCAD is telling you “value must be non zero”, my first guess is that your LISP relies on some variable that has changed since 2006. Naturally, without actually seeing the code it’s hard to definitively say your code is breaking because of a system variable. Nonetheless, assuming it is related to a system variable, Lee over at HyperPics has documented the many system variable changes since AutoCAD 2000 on his site (http://www.hyperpics.com/system_variables/)

Depending on how the routine is written, changes in commands may also be the culprit. Again, Lee at HyperPics has documented the many command changes since 2000 (http://www.hyperpics.com/commands/). Again, it’s hard to say without looking at your code, but the DDINSERT command changed in 2006, 2007, and 2008. If your LISP relied on the way the command operated in 2006, there is a change the changes in 2007/2008 may have broken your LISP.

Just in case you’re not familiar with troubleshooting LISP code, one resource available to you are the Autodesk Discussion Groups. They actually have one group specifically for LISP (http://discussion.autodesk.com/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=130).

Mark,

As I mentioned in my original answer, my expertise lies in AutoCAD, Civil 3D, Map 3D, etc, not MEP.  No less, I was able to catch up with a good friend of mine (AUGI BoD John Morgan) who gave me the following answer to pass on to you:

1. Right clicking on a part and then click Edit MvPart Style…
2. On the General tab, click the Property Sets button.
3. You will see the SupplierName property set and will have to click the delete button.
4. If you want the property set back, they will have to then add it back in and it will be blank.

Hope that works for you!

The short answer is that you cannot convert DWF's to DWG's with the tools Autodesk provides. However, that doesn’t mean all hope is lost, because starting with AutoCAD 2008 we can underlay (XREF) DWF’s into AutoCAD DWG’s. In AutoCAD 2010 go to the “Insert” ribbon tab, and then click the “Attach” button on the Reference ribbon panel. From there you’ll be able to underlay your DWF file.

Doing this won’t truly convert the DWF to DWG, but it will allow you to work with the data contained within the DWF inside your AutoCAD environment. For instance, if the DWF was created with layers enabled, you’ll be able to do things like turn layers on/off. Likewise, as long as the DWF was created from AutoCAD linework (lines, arcs, polylines, etc), you’ll also be able to use your OSNAP’s to snap to the objects within your DWF. Again, not quite a “conversion”, but being able to turn layers on/off, and snap to the objects within the DWF like you would a DWG XREF, has generally accomplished all of my needs.

Seeing the above method has accomplished my needs, I have never turned to a third-party conversion application. I have however seen a few advertised in the past. If a true conversion is what you need, I’d recommend doing a Google for “DWF to DWG”.