Wednesday, August 24, 2011

AUGIWorld August 2011 Issue Released!



Collaboration is more than just a tidy word to describe diverse users working together toward a common goal. Collaboration is a mindset and a culture which, fortunately for Autodesk product users, is aided significantly by the products they use every day.



In “Keys to Collaboration Success,” author Brian Benton offers some practical tips for collaborating on AutoCAD projects.


Melinda Heavrin’s article “Collaboration with Autodesk Design Review” elaborates on how drawing markups can become an easy, streamlined operation.


And Andra Marquardt demonstrates how AutoCAD Map handles the critical process of file import and export in “Speaking the Same Language.”


Also, a tiny article by me.


Monday, August 15, 2011

Speed Up Cropping

Anyone who has ever cropped a view in Revit has gotten used to the "rolling doughnut" in Windows 7, or the hourglass, or what ever tells you that your computer is thinking about the crop region. One side at a time the crop regions need to be adjusted, and it doesn't matter if it is a big or small adjustment, each move starts the doughnut rolling again. Adding to the pain is when an annotation crop region is also required for the view. Now the effort doubles.


Well, maybe not. In this case, all I want to do is pull the annotation crop in as tight as possible to the crop. Start by selecting the crop region, then pick the Size Crop tool on the contextual ribbon.




This will open the Crop Region Size dialog. In this dialog change the annotation offsets to 1/8". Revit will not allow 0".




Click OK and get on with the rest of your cropping. Ultimately a crop by window tool would save the most time, but while we are waiting, this will help.