Well we can always have this options whether we want to use it or not. By key-ing in the command vtoptions or View Transition options in your command prompt. Then uncheck the box that says Enable animation for pan & zoom or uncheck all boxes. But if happen that you’re impressed with these animation well you can just check all boxes then adjust the transition speed at the pace you prefer.

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.
• XCLIP - A command that defines an xref or block clipping boundary, in other words if you want to insert only a certain portion of an xref drawing you can use the Xclip command.
• XBIND - A command that binds one or more definition of named objects in an xref to the current drawing.
• XATTACH - A command that attaches an external reference in the drawing. I think this command is part of XREF command.
• XEDGES - A command that creates wireframe geometry by extracting edges from a 3D solid or surface.
• XLINE - A command that creates line that extend to infinity in one or both directions, it is also known as construction line and can be used as a reference for creating objects.
• XOPEN - A command that opens a  selected drawing reference (xref files) in quickest way and its open in a new window.
• XPLODE - A command that breaks a compound object into its component object. typically you’ll use this command  when you want to separate one object within a block.

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.

To Access the Dashboard manually; at the command prompt, type Dashboard and enter. Or click Window pulldown menu then  >>Dashboard<<.

You can either choose to use the default control panels displayed in the dashboard or specify which do you like to appear by right-clicking on the dashboard and >>control panels<< and checking the names of the available tools.

And this new feature of AutoCAD became my favorite.

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

Perhaps you’ll be the one asking these question? “where is this ACAD.PGP?”. Well worry not, co’z you can access this acad.pgp within autocad itself, under the customize on the CAD Manager pulldown menu.

If you notice, previous version of AutoCAD don’t have these CAD Manager menu. These menu only appears in AutoCAD architecture 2008 version.

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. 

Eventually, I found out that the express tools folder was on the installation CD and have to copy it manually and put it on the AutoCAD Architecture 2008 folder on program files, which what I did and solves the problem.

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.

Under the express menu, click the layout tools, under it click the change space ms/ps. Then select the object that you want to transfer and just follow all instructions.

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.

So to lessen the data losses and damaged drawing due to the above said, I always see to it that I didn’t left uncheck the Automatic save preference box, and set at least 10 minutes to 20 minutes save interval. This option always make a back up copy of the file at your own specific interval. And this also saves me from worrying that I might don’t have any back up data at all.

You’l find this under the tool menu, or just type options at the command prompt.

I also remember when I encountered such problem, when I was still barely new on using the AutoCAD. The sudden power failure we had then, loss all my updated drawing files that I had worked for an hour. That incident, serves as a reminder for me to always save my drawing from time to time, and the important of Automatic save (autosave) option and always make a back up copy if necessary.

In AutoCAD, you can abbreviate any command that you use regularly in two different ways. One is by defining aliases for them in command alias section of acad.pgp. And the other is by defining aliases in autolisp routine, however this post is only about defining it in acad.pgp.

You can access the acad.pgp on windows explorer. Usually this file is located under the support folder of AutoCAD folder and under the program files folder on windows explorer.

You can open and edit this file either in notepad or in wordpad, just choose any of of the two programs that suiting your taste.

The sample below is portion of command alias section contains items similar to those in the standard acad.pgp file. The letter/letters on the left side is the abbreviation of the command that you enter at the command prompt. And the words on the right side are the command being abbreviated.

A,      *ARC
AR,   *ARRAY
BL,    *BLOCK
CO,   *COPY
DAL, *DIMALIGNED

You can change the letter on the left side with any letter suits you or any letter that easy for you to memorize.

On the previous version of AutoCAD trimming a hatch is far from possible. In order to modified our drawing that has a hatch in it, some usually just erased it and make another hatch, on the other hand some drafter that are too lazy to draw again the hatch that they made, resort to cheatings by using the explode command to make the hatch be a regular line and therefore they can already trim it just like any regular line on the drawing.

Yes, some may think there’s nothing wrong if ever they resort to that kind of tricks, but problem may arise in the future when such drawing has a revision, and that simple tricks that you made will become the causes of your headache.

So, it is really much better to create another hatch, than doing any lazy tricks if you are not using a hatch trimming supported version of AutoCAD.

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.

Just select the objects you want before entering a command, and from then on you can manipulate the objects with the cursor. By default grips are always turn on, but you can always turn it off if you prefer not to use grips, just by typing command grips at the command prompt, and enter 0 for the new value.

To use grips, select a grip to act as basepoint for the action. Then select one of the grip modes and hit the enter key or right-click to see all the available options. From then just select what action you want to perform.