LD Assistant 's Creating Seating Functions by Stephen Ellison Creating a block of seating using the old method of dropping a seat onto the drawing then creating an array can be tedious. If you want to move that grouping around you either have to select each chair carefully or turn them into a group, or block. In this edition of LDAC there are new tools under the Production tab to help you out. There is a section named “Seating’s” that offers three tools to help you create seating layouts. Let’s first look at the Table/Chair tool. Here you can create your own table, and/ or chair, with the option of creating a combination of a table and chair(s). So if you can’t find the furniture you need in the Content Palettes, and you don’t want to take the time to build a 3D block of your chair, you’re in luck. When you choose this tool, a window pops up that lets you specify the size of the furniture and how many chairs of what size you want. This could be useful for those boardroom drawings with a custom table and huge plush chairs that the Interior Designer has specified. All you have to do is fill in the blanks on the form and hit ok to get a 3D block ready to insert. You can also then use this new furniture in a larger seating plan. The next tool to look at is the “Fill Area Table-Chair”. This tool creates an array of furniture in your space. In its simplest form the tool will fill a defined area with chairs. To start, draw a rectangle that is a room. Add a chair to the drawing, then click on the tool and you will be asked to first select the object that represents the area to fill in, and then you will be asked to select the object to multiply. Once these are selected a pop up box appears which allows you to set the distance between rows and columns. Once you hit okay the array is created, and in the command line you are provided with the Total of Objects. At this point you can either move the array as a group or explode the group so that you can manipulate them individually, or work with them using Group commands. The Fill Area Table-Chair can also do more complex seating arrangements, making the layout of a ballroom for a dinner with dancing event quite simple. Starting with the outline of the room, add rectangles to represent the areas that will not have tables and chairs, such as the stage, dance floor, and food stations. Now when you are selecting objects you will select these rectangles (or other shape) at the same time before selecting the object to multiply. So in a few short steps you can get a layout that will fit the maximum number of tables into the space and give you a total of how many people you can seat. The last way to lay out chairs is the “Seating” tool. This one allows you to setup objects using a line, arc, polyline, or any drawn object. The way this tool works is similar to the Fill Area tool, the difference is that you only select the object to base the seating around. The object you create to base the seating around is erased when the seating is created, since it is being used as the basis for the array. In this manner you can create theater seating quickly for any shape space. These tools can speed up your seating layout and free up your creativity, allowing you to create your own tables and chairs which you can lay out in unlimited scenarios in just a few mouse clicks. These are just a few of the tools available to save time. Featured Rendering - by Kevin Denzel CAD Articles How to: create DWF/PDF automatically when you save AutoCAD drawing. by Edwin Prakoso Do you need to create DWF or PDF for your drawing to share it with your coworkers? Sometimes you have to do this because not everyone have access to AutoCAD. Of course, you can ask them to install DWG TrueView, free DWG viewer from Autodesk. But not everyone want to install it, especially if they don’t have a good hardware. PDF probably is a better choice if you often share your drawing with non CAD users. Almost everybody today has PDF reader installed in their computer. And you can open DWFx by using Internet Explorer 7 or later (doesn’t work with other internet browser, only IE. Try this link to open a sample DWFx) Auto Publish AutoCAD offers automatic publish to DWF or PDF. You can choose it to create DWF/PDF automatically when you save your file. When you share your drawing on a shared location, you can be sure if the PDF is also updated. No need to worry that you forget to update it! To enable Auto publish, open AutoCAD options. In ‘Plot and Publish’ tab, you can enable Automatic Publish on the bottom left of the dialog. Click here to keep reading Attach Drawings with Sheet Sets by Danny Korem - "I can't remember when named views joined AutoCAD's functionality, but it seems that they've always been there. When AutoCAD users' biggest headache was waiting for screen regeneration, views were the perfect solution. When layouts joined the family, I started to use the viewport perimeter to create a rectangular polyline, change space (to model space), use the rectangle to create a view, and at the end restore the view within the viewport, including the original viewport's scale. "When I started using sheet sets, I wondered what the model space views meant. It seemed a bit mysterious, so I tried it, and discovered a new way to attach xrefs into a sheet without using the xref attach feature. "Here is a short procedure that functions as both a sheet creator with ready-to-reuse data and the xref attach to DWG: 1. When in a sheet set, create a new sheet (based on a layout, a template, or other). 2. Within the Sheet Set Manager, go to Model Views, right-click on Add New Location, and point to the folder(s) holding the drawing(s) containing the specific model view(s) (in the first screenshot below, A1 and Daniel are the two named views within 922-6SD.dwg). 3. Select the model view; drag and drop it into the layout. 4 .Remember that while you create a model view, an optional Save Layer Snapshot with View will assist you in displaying the correct picture (see the second screenshot below). This allows you to create identical (spatial) views with different layer snapshots. 5. Don't worry about removing locations; that can be achieved by right-clicking the top of the hierarchy tree. The options are Collapse, Add New Location, and Remove Location. 6. Now you can check your external references palettes. Most likely you'll find the parent file(s) of the named model views." Click here to keep reading AutoCAD Lengthen Command By RK McSwain, CAD Panacea The LENGTHEN command has been around for over 18 years, it was introduced with Release 13 in November of 1994. Yet, I still see many instances where it is ignored and some other method is used in its place. So what can you do with the LENGTHEN command? Let's look at the 4 options, or ways it can work. •DElta - Use this option to extend or trim a Line or Arc when you want to add or subtract a certain amount. Let's say you have a line of unknown length but you want it to be 10 units longer. Use the DElta option and provide a value of 10, and the entity will be extended by this amount. Provide a value of -10, and the entity will be shortened (or trimmed) by this amount. You do not need to know anything about the original length and you do not have to draw (and later erase) any construction lines. •Percent - Use this option to extend or trim a Line or Arc by a certain percentage. Again, let's say you have a Line of unknown length and you want to double its length. Use the Percent option and provide a value of 200. If you want to trim the line in half, enter a value of 50. Using a value of 100 will do nothing since you are telling the command to make the line 100% of its current length... get it? Click here to keep reading Adding to the Existing acad.lin File by Maribel Pabalan, The CAD Masters he first method consists of adding the definition of your custom linetype to your acad.lin file. To find the location of this file, at the command line, type (findfile “acad.lin“). The acad.lin file is where the definitions of many of the default linetypes reside. Let’s take a look at one of the existing definitions to see how they work. *BORDER,Border __ __ . __ __ . __ __ . __ __ . __ __ . A,.5,-.25,.5,-.25,0,-.25 - them all. Every linetype definition consists of two lines of text. The first line consists of a standard asterisk, the linetype name, and a description including a text preview of the linetype. The second line is where it starts to get tricky. First we have a standard letter A to specify the alignment type (always A in AutoCAD linetypes), then a series of values to define the actual pattern. Positive values represent a line of that length, negative values represent a space of that length, and zeroes represent periods. Below you can see how these values relate to the actual linetype. Click here to keep reading LD Assistant Ac System Requirements LD Assistant Ac 2013 will install on Win 7 32 bit or 64 bit OS. When installed on WIN 7 64 Bit OS LD Assistant will take full advantage of all the RAM you have on your computer. Requirements for 2D Drafting • Microsoft® Windows® 7 Enterprise, Ultimate, Professional, or Home Premium or Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional (SP3 or later) • For Windows 7: Intel® Pentium® 4 or AMD Athlon™ dual-core processor, 3.0 GHz or higher with SSE2 technology • For Windows XP: Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon dual-core processor, 1.6 GHz or higher with SSE2 technology • 2 GB RAM (4 GB recommended) • 6 GB free disk space for installation • 1,024 x 768 display resolution with true color (1,600 x 1,050 with true color recommended) • Microsoft® Internet Explorer® 7.0 or later web browser. Requirements for 3D Modeling • Pentium 4 or Athlon processor, 3 GHz or greater or Intel or AMD dual-core processor, 2 GHz or greater • 4 GB RAM or more • 1,280 x 1,024 true color video display adapter 256 MB or greater, Pixel Shader 3.0 or greater, OpenGL, Microsoft® Direct3D®-capable workstation-class graphics card. Standard Rendering Requirements • 4 to 6 GB RAM High-End Rendering Requirements • Depending on the size of drawing, 12 to 16 GB RAM may be needed. Thank You! Design & Drafting appreciates your interest in our products. Please forward this newsletter to your friends and associates, however, NO part of this newsletter may be used without permission. © Copyright 2013 by Chicago Stage Equipment Company Inc. D.B.A. Design & Drafting. Autodesk, AutoCAD, AutoCAD LT, DWF, DWG, DXF, ObjectARX are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the USA and/or other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders.© 2012 Autodesk, Inc. All rights reserved. Rufus Warren Editor