I’ve been using AutoCAD for more than a decade now,  starting from Rel. 13 up to now AutoCAD 2008, Since the time I’m using AutoCAD I haven’t encountered these animation “thing” whenever I am using zoom command on AutoCAD 2008.  At first I thought I should be impressed with it but I felt otherwise,  in short I always got annoyed with it. Other user might agreed with me with these as some of my colleagues do when they encountered it by themselves.

There are lots of commands in AutoCAD that starts with letter X, commands that AutoCAD users frequently use or never been used at all . Personally some of these “X” commands that I am talking about got a chance to be use by me, but then some I never got a chance to try at all.

These commands are:

• XREF - (EXTERNALREFERENCE) A command that you’ll use if you’re trying to insert a drawing reference within a drawing. My most frequently use “x” command.

Being quite new on using the latest version of AutoCAD, you always have this  excitement when you discover something new or new tools that you haven’t been used in the previous version of AutoCAD. Just like when I discovered about this Dashboard on AutoCAD Architecture 2008.

This new tool called Dashboard seems like a collection of usefull toolbars, control panels that fitted into one panel. Using these new tool, will reduce the display of different toolbars and surely makes you maximise the available area of workspace in your monitor.

Sometime ago I’ve posted about modifying command aliases by changing it in ACAD.PGP, and also where to look for it. As what I have post, ACAD.PGP can be found on the support folder of the AutoCAD program folder. But that is applicable if your still using the previous version of AutoCAD, say AutoCAD 2002, AutoCAD LT or 2004.

What about if you already using the latest version? can you still find the ACAD.PGP on the same location as the previous one?. 

I had recently installed the AutoCAD Architecture 2008 formerly known as Autodesk Architectural Desktop (ADT) on my PC.  At first I thought I haven’t encountered any problem while installing it, only to found out that there was some important tools missing. 

As I was familiarising myself to the newly installed AutoCAD and  discovered that the tools that was missing is the most used tools of an AutoCAD practitioner the Express Tools. 

Probably one of the most exciting sub-tools of the express tools is the change space under the layout tools. This tool, allows you to transfer any objects from model space to paper space or vice-versa.

For instance, there was one time that I want to put all drawing legends in my drawings in paper space. But the problem is in paper space I have to re-draw again all the necessary legends that I needed when in facts all legends are already drawn inside the model space. All I need is just to transfer it or copy it from model space to paper space.

As an AutoCAD user for some period of time now, I have encountered so many problems involving data losses, data corruption and damaged drawing files. Which trigger when the AutoCAD that I am using encountered a program error, system error or a windows manager failure. And to some point an, unnoticed power failure.

Usually when I encountered this, the first thing that comes to my mind is the questions, what will happen with the data that I am working on? will it be loss? or can I recover it without any damaged at all?. Especially when times I forgotten to save it.

It is safe to say that some advance users of AutoCAD, regardless of what releases of AutoCAD that they uses are using modified command aliases or command abbreviations. Some users also have their own personalized set of command aliases that they prefer to use it over the default command aliases available on AutoCAD. These aliases are usually the frequently used AutoCAD commands (eg. Line, Dimension, fillet, Trim, etc. etc.).

On some of the features of AutoCAD LT version 2006, the capability to trim the hatch pattern I think is the most useful and probably some users may think the same way as I do. Though all the features of the said version are useful in terms of completing a drawing task.

Grips are small boxes that appear on a certain points of an objects selected by a selecting with a pointing device. Just by dragging these grips you can perform any operations, such as stretch, move, rotate, scale, mirror and as well as copy. With grips you can combine command and object selection and therefore you can modify your drawings more quickly.