autocad 2009 in 2 minutes

8/2/2019 AutoCAD 2009 in 2 Minutes

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AutoCAD 2009 in 2 minutes

Well, it's that time again. Another 12 months, another version of AutoCAD, whether

you are ready or not. You will find all sorts of detailed reviews at various websites.This is not meant to be a detailed review. This is simply a quick look at some of the

highlights in AutoCAD 2009.

AutoCAD 2009 is going to blow you away at first, not because of any spectacular

new features, but because the UI has changed in such a dramatic way. So where to

start...?

First off, there is the Ribbon, copied from the latest Office versions. You mightthink of it as a sort of meshing of toolbars and the Dashboard (in fact the Dashboard is

gone). So you are probably looking at the image below thinking "where are the pull-down menus???"... Well, hang on a minute. While you are looking at that image,

notice that the Communication Center is buried in the Title Bar now, which saves a

bit of space.

Ok, where are the pull-down menus? Do you see that Big Red "A" in the upper left

corner? Click on that to expose the Menu Browser. This is sort of like theWindows Start Menu, except it's in the upper left hand corner. Judge for yourself, if
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you want the old style pull-down menus, set MENUBAR to 1.

Quick Properties is a mini version of the properties palette that automaticallyappears when you select one of more objects. It is customizable.

Quick View Drawings is basically a version "Drawing Tabs" on steroids...Rather than just a set of tabs with drawing names, you get a preview of the drawingand a preview of the layouts in the drawing. Click on a drawing or a layout and you
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are taken directly there.

Quick View Layouts is similar to Quick View Drawings, except that thisshows you are preview of the layouts in the current drawing. Click on one to switch to

it.

The Layer Properties Manager is now a floating palette. You can leave itopen while working. Changes are applied immediately which sounds like a good thing,

but if you are manipulating many layers at once it could slow things down - as

opposed to making all your layer changes and then pressing Apply. CLASSICLAYERwill open the 2008 and earlier version of the Layer Manager.
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Regular and super-sized ToolTips are everywhere. Hover over a button in theRibbon and a regular tooltip appears, wait a second and the larger one appears. This
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may be helpful for new users, but thankfully you can disable this feature.

Action Recorder is a tool that you can use to record drawing and editingactivities, and play these back later. It does not write VBA code like the Macro
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Recorder in MS Office. Editing capabilities are limited.

There are some new 3D visualization tools such as the Steering Wheel and

ViewCube.
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By default the buttons in the status bar for things like ORTHO, SNAP, and OTRACK

are now icons. You can revert back to "text" buttons if you want to.

XCLIPFRAMEs now include grips for on the fly editing and a "flip" grip to switch

from a regular clip to an inverted clip.

What should have been a bug fix in 2008 is now available, and that it the ability to

suppress XREF scales from the Scale List. Set HIDEXREFSCALES to 1.

That is it for now. The big change is the UI for this release. The DWG format is

unchanged (still 2007). On the programming side, nothing major has changed from

2008. VBA is still available. The VLIDE is unchanged.

Below are the new and changed commands and system variables.

***NEW COMMANDS***

ACTRECORD

ACTSTOP

-ACTSTOP

ACTUSERINPUT

ACTUSERMESSAGE

-ACTUSERMESSAGE

ALLPLAY

BACKGROUNDCLASSICLAYER

-DGNEXPORT

-DGNIMPORT

DGNLAYERS

DGNMAPPING

DWFFORMAT

EDITSHOT

EXPORTLAYOUT

HIDEPALETTES

IMPRESSION

LAYERCLOSE

NAVSMOTION

NAVSMOTIONCLOSENAVSWHEEL

NAVVCUBE

NEWSHOT

QVDRAWING

QVDRAWINGCLOSE

QVLAYOUT

QVLAYOUTCLOSE

RIBBON

RIBBONCLOSE

SEQUENCEPLAY

SHOWPALETTES

VIEWGO

VIEWPLAY***CHANGED COMMANDS***

DASHBOARD
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DASHBOARDCLOSE

DGNATTACH

-DGNATTACH

DGNEXPORT

DGNIMPORT

GEOPGRAPHICLOCATION

LAYERNEWVIEW

QUICKCUI

VPLAYER

***NEW SYSTEM VARIABLES***

ACTPATH

ACTRECORDSTATE

ACTRECPATH

ACTUI

CAPTURETHUMBNAILS

DGNIMPORTMAX

DGNMAPPINGPATH

GEOLATLONGFORMAT

GEOMARKERVISIBILITY

HIDEXREFSCALES

LAYERDLGMODE

MENUBAR

MTEXTTOOLBAR

NAVSWHEELMODE

NAVSWHEELOPACITYBIG

NAVSWHEELOPACITYMINI

NAVSWHEELSIZEBIG

NAVSWHEELSIZEMINI

NAVSWHEELWALKSPEED

NAVVCUBEDISPLAY

NAVVCUBELOCATION

NAVVCUBEORIENT

NAVVCUBESIZE

NAVVCUBOPACITY

OPENPARTIAL

PREVIEWTYPE

PUBLISHHATCH

QPLOCATION

QPMODE

QVDRAWINGPIN

QVLAYOUTPIN

RIBBONSTATE

ROLLOVERTIPS

SHOWMOTIONPIN

SHOWPALETTE

STATUSBAR

THUMBSIZE

*** CHANGED SYSTEM VARIABLES***

CROSSINGAREACOLOR

GRIPCOLOR

GRIPHOT

GRIPHOVER

OSMODE

TABLETOOLBAR

WINDOWAREACOLOR


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AutoCAD 2009 - What's New...

So after month's of having to "put up with", "get used to" and re-learn where my

commands were hiding in Microsoft Office 2007, the dreaded "Ribbon" interface has

been added to AutoCAD. This is likely to be the initial response of many users when

presented with the new AutoCAD 2009 Interface, but wait a minute... there's more,unlike Microsoft's change to the Office products, Autodesk have provided the users

with the choice of using your standard interface. Not only that, you have a

combination of the Ribbon interface and your well known pull down menu system.

When I looked at the first beta's of the latest version of AutoCAD, I have to say my

initial reaction was... "Oh no, not the ribbon, anything but the ribbon!". Unfortunately

I was going through the painful transition from Microsoft Office 2003 to 2007 at the

same time, and not having much fun!

Initial reactions are important, and I believe a lot of people will have similar reactions

when faced with the new AutoCAD 2009 UI, but give it a chance...

I have to say, and I know I'm probably opening myself up to some criticism... but in

my opinion I believe Autodesk have done a good job here. After a relatively short

time spent looking at the options Autodesk have given us in the 2009 UI, in particular,

access to our familiar pull down menu structure, increased drawing area real estate,

command tooltips/help system, I like it.

What's New...

Application Window

Ribbon Interface

Tooltips
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Menu Browser

Quick Properties

Quick View Layouts

Quick View Drawings

3D Navigation...Steering Wheel
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and ViewCube

Action Recorder

AutoCAD 2009 A closer look at the Action Recorder

The new action recorder in AutoCAD 2009 can help you increase productivity by

automating those repetitive tasks!

For example, imagine youre a landscape architect and each time you receive a new

site plan from a client, you have to add standard layers with the appropriate layer

properties. You could create a custom LiSP file, but for such a simple task, it hardly

seems worth the effort especially if you dont have an in-house LiSP expert! You

could store your standard layers in a template file but, still, you must somehow get

them into the clients drawing, which takes time.

Using the new action recorder, you simply begin recording and then perform those

monotonous tasks that youve performed many times before. While it is recording,

you can launch commands, enter values, and select objects using familiar AutoCAD

functionality. The action recorder records everything that passes through the

command line plus it can also record typical actions from:

Toolbars Ribbon panels Pull-down menus Properties window Layer Properties Manager Tool Palette
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When youre finished performing a repetitive operation, you simply stop the

recording and enter an appropriate name for the action macro. Each action macro that

you create is saved as an individual file and stored in the location specified by the

Action Recording File Location option in the Files tab of the Options dialog box. A

second option for Action Recorder Settings on the Files tab enables you to include

locations for reading additional action macros making it easy to share action macros

among your design team. The action macros in these specified locations are

automatically listed in the Action Recorder panel.

You can create more robust and interactive macros by including text messages and

requests for user input. And, you can edit input values even after youve recorded the

macro.
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Action macros behave very much like commands. You can type them at the command

line, assign short-cut aliases, and can call one macro from another. You can even call

LiSP and ARX routines from a macro simply by running the routine while recordingthe macro!

ShowMotion
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Other Improvements...

File Navigation Task Dialogs Interactive Array Preview Modeless Layer Management

Find and Replace

XREF Clipping - with grip editing of the clip frame

Lighting Working with DGN files InfoCenter
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autocad 2009 in 2 minutes

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