Michael’s Corner #124
April 2013

Graphicisms

by Michael Beall

As is often the case, after writing the articles, I notice a ‘theme’, of sorts. It's never intended, since I keep notes during my training sessions, then pick a few and start in. This month, all four articles came from the training since the beginning of the year and they all have a graphic component. Well, except the Doughnut command, but I guess that does have a graphic element to it, too.

…Update a drawing with a material
…Select a color that will be immune from a Monochrome/Grayscale plot style assignment
…Make your Zoom features snap to the result instead of gently sliding to the view
…Create a dot with a donut

As for the recent release of AutoCAD 2014, I usually let all the other bloggers have their way with the announcement and slowly fold in my own observations as the months go by. I will say, however, that I think displaying tabs for the open drawings along the top of the drawing window was a nice touch.

Hope you all have a wonderful April!

If you would like to contact me directly, you can do that also.

Blessings to one and all,
Michael

Loading Materials

Back in November 2011, I covered how to map materials to a 3D object. But if you receive a drawing with a mapped material—in this case, a .JPG—that you don't have on your computer, you will see an error alert on the image and in the Material Editor.

Materials downloaded from another location (not part of the default AutoCAD library) are not saved within the .DWG and consequently, will not be seen on any system that doesn't have that same material .JPG.

Note: And for those of you who have made that mental leap, yes, that would make it an external file, and that material IS included in eTransmit. In fact, any raster image file that is used in a drawing, including any materials from the default AutoCAD Material Library, is included in eTransmit.

Once you have acquired the missing material and saved it, here's what you can do to resolve the error.

How to Update the Drawing with a Material

1. On the View tab, set the Visual Style to Realistic.

2. Open the Material Browser [View tabPalettesMaterial Browser].

3. Under Document Materials: All, double-click on the material displaying the error to open the Materials Editor for that material. The error will probably be seen in the Image preview.

4. Under Generic, click the Image preview to open the Material Editor Open File dialog box.

5. Navigate to the location you saved the image, then select it and click Open.

6. The Image preview will update to the selected image and the object in the drawing will now display the selected material.

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Power Tool

RGB Color with Monochrome Plot Style Table

Plot Style tables are great to have for any drawing, any time—albeit a wee bit tedious to create.

If, however, you want a monochrome plot for all layers except this one and that one, consider choosing a color from the True Color tab when assigning a color to a layer.

Colors from this tab have an RGB value and colors with an RGB value plot in color when a monochrome (or Grayscale) plot style is used.

Powerful feature!

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The Odd Spot

VTOPTIONS

The VTOPTIONS command has been around a really long time, but I totally forgot about it until I saw a customer do a ZoomExtents… and it snapped right to the extents rather than the gentle ‘swoosh’ to the extents.

The slider in the middle is just right of center, by default, but if you take it all the way to the right, all of your Zoom actions will snap right to the result.

And if you really want to mess with your co-worker's head, set theirs to Slow… then step away and watch.

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The Basics

The Doughnut/Donut

In addition to creating what looks like a doughnut, the Donut command can also create a dot. I call it a ‘Bingo dot’ because it looks like the dot you can dab on a Bingo card.

How to Create a Dot with the Donut Command

1. From the expanded Draw panel, click Donut.

2. Enter 0 for the inside diameter, then specify the desired outside diameter.

3. Now specify the location(s) for the donut. It's one of the rare commands that is in 'multiple' mode by default, so you can place as many as you want without repeating the command.

4. Press ESC when you're finished.

Note: You can also launch the command by typing either DONUT or DOUGHNUT. Seriously

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