Selection Windows

Good morning,
I was reading some material concerning ACAD 2007 and wondered if it worked in ABS 2007. The answer is "yes it does!" I thought these little tricks were fun so I wanted to pass them off to you all.

Selection Windows
Implied window: Go from left to right (up or down, doesn’t matter). Shows a solid line, enclosed items are selected.
At the "select objects" prompt type "W" and left to right doesn’t matter either.

Implied crossing window: Go from right to left (up or down, doesn’t matter). Shows dashed line, all items touched by the window are selected.
At the "select objects" prompt type "C" and right to left doesn’t matter either.

For either type of window:
At the "select objects" prompt type "WP" for window polygon.
At the "select objects" prompt type "CP" for crossing polygon.
At the "select objects" prompt type "F" for fence selection. (anything it crosses is selected)

Good Luck!

Greetings Blog Readers,

Today is one of my co-workers last day here at work. He has been a tremendous help in setting up the ADT side of things. He will definitely be missed. He's probably one of the main reasons I've stayed partially sane ;)

I wish him the best of luck at his new job! I know he will do well.

(Hopefully he'll hang in and still play on the coed softball team with us this summer!)

Good luck!!

.CTB's: Create, Edit, Map, & Convert

Good morning Bloggers!
I thought I would drop some information in concerning .ctb files. At my company we print based off of the .ctb as opposed to the .stb. Just as an explination: a ctb file is a color table. When a .ctb is utilized to print the lineweights are based off of the color. A .stb is a style based pen table. When you are using a .stb the lineweights are based off of the lineweight of the actual line, the color is irrelevant.

To create a new .ctb:
Go to C:\Documents & Settings\all users\Autodesk\ABS\enu\Plot styles
Copy the one you want to use as a template that has most of your layer keys loaded
Rename the copy you made
Double click and open it
This can be edited in either the form view or the table view
Screening = shading percent value (set all colors to 100%, set the shades to the % required)
Make sure if you are making a .ctb file that the "color" row is set to black instead of "use object color"
Also you can get to this via the control panel/autodesk plot style manager.

To edit a .ctb file:
Go to Windows Explorer.
Open this file: F:\HBEDT2k6\Plot Styles\HBE ADT-ABS.ctb
Click on the View tab.
Edit as required.
Click on the Save and Close button.

To map new a .ctb to ABS:
The new .ctb is here: F:\HBEDT2k6\Plot Styles\HBE ABS.ctb
You have to load this into your profile in order for it to apply to everyone.

To convert a .stb drawing to a .ctb drawing:
Once your drawing is started as a .stb you will not be able to print it properly using our .ctb file.
To convert it: type "convertpstyles" in the command line.
Set pstylemode = 0 ( for color dependent/.ctb mode)
It will give you a warning, say OK.

Follow-up: Obj Inspect/Autosnap

Good afternoon all,
I thought I would post some follow-up information concerning the object inspect tool and the autosnap setting.

To check and/or change your autosnap value setting type "autosnap" at the command prompt.
"Enter new value for AUTOSNAP <#>:" will appear at the command line, where the "#" is an actual number dependent upon your settings. To change the value simply type in the new numeric value and hit enter.

R. Robert Bell passed me this information on the Autodesk Discussion Group concerning how the autosnap value gets changed (http://discussion.autodesk.com/thread.jspa?threadID=551907):
"That value changes depending on what settings they've applied in the Options dialog, or on the Status bar. The value of that system variable is a total of the bit codes being set. If you don't know what bit codes are, you aren't a programmer. ;^) Only values from 0-63 will be valid in current releases. Attempts to set it to other values will either be ignored or refused."

He also posted this: "Bit 1 (value 2) is what you need on to see the tooltip. So add this to AcadDoc.lsp or your CUI's .mnl file: (setvar "AutoSnap" (boole 7 (getvar "AutoSnap") 2)) "

On AUGI I had this thread going to discuss autosnap values as well: http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=57359
David Koch posted this explanation for me: "The variable is binary bit-coded so that a number of different "on-off" settings can be stored in one variable. Base 2 [binary] has two possibilities for each digit - 0 [off] or 1 [on]. With a computer, it is easy to test if a given bit is set, even if it not not terribly obvious when the number is converted to a Base 10 [decimal] number, like we are used to seeing.
0 turns off everything, as that means all bits are off.The zero bit [two raised to the zero power] is 1 when on, and turns on the AutoSnap marker.
The two's bit [two raised to the first power] is 2 when on [10 in binary], and turns on the AutoSnap tooltips.
So, 3 [11 in binary] means that both the AutoSnap marker and the AutoSnap tooltips are turned on.
The four's bit [two raised to the second power] is 4 when on [100 in binary], and turns on the AutoSnap magnet.
So, 5 [101 in binary] means that the AutoSnap marker and the AutoSnap magnet are on, and everything else is off. 6 [110] means that the AutoSnap tooltips and the AutoSnap magnet are on; 7 [111] means all of the above are on.
That carries on for each of the remaining bits:
Eight's bit [two to the third power] turns on polar tracking when set.
16's bit [two to the fourth power] turns on object snap tracking when set.
32's bit [two to the fifth power] turns on tooltips for polar tracking, object snap tracking, and Ortho mode.
From what you have posted, and as Scott mentioned, the 32 bit appears to be the magic one. Any number between 32 and 63 has the 32 bit set, so any value greater than that would support the object inspect tool tip. Besides setting the value directly in the system variable, turning polar tracking or object snap tracking on or off on the Application Status Bar, or changing any of the AutoSnap settings in the Options dialog, etc, would result in a change to the value.
If you really wanted to force this to be on, someone wiser than I with regard to the proper construction of reactor programs could help you devise one that would automatically check the value of AUTOSNAP and, if the 32 bit was not set, set it. That would still allow your users to set the other bit values as needed, and only force the display of the tooltips controlled by the 32 bit."

So there ya go folks...all the info I could round up for the time being. Hopefully this will help some of you out.

Remapping a Layer for an Individual Object

Good afternoon all!
I was going through my notes and discovered that I had not posted this little diddy.
Enjoy!

Remapping a Layer for an Individual Object:
(This will load in a standard layer with all of its proper settings, even if the layer is not already in the drawing)
Go to the Format drop down menu.
Select "Layer Manager".
Select "Remap Object Layers".
Select the object or objects you want to change to one different layer.
Hit enter.
At the command line prompt it will ask for the Layer Key.
Either type in the layer key if you know it and hit enter,
OR type in a "?" and hit enter.
If you pull the command line window up you will be able to see all the layer keys that are possible and you can scroll through them.
You can either write down the layer key you need and type it back in
OR you can hold down the left click button to highlight the layer key you want, then hit the right click button and select copy.
Then left click once at the command line (to get the cursor back down there).
Now right click and select paste to drop in the layer key name you copied from the list above.
Hit enter.