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AutoCAD 2012 & AutoCAD LT 2012 Bible

The most comprehensive AutoCAD book around!

AutoCAD 2012 Bible

Open AutoCAD with a specific template

You can launch AutoCAD with a specific template of your choice. You do this with a command line switch.

When you double-click the icon on your desktop or start AutoCAD from the Start menu, you are executing a statement. You can customize this statement by adding parameters, also called switches.

To learn the statement of your desktop [...]

Get rid of the default grid in AutoCAD

Starting with AutoCAD 2011, Autodesk has made the grid on by default. Do you turn it off every time you start AutoCAD?

If you don’t know how to turn it off permanently, here are the steps:

Open the template you usually use. If you use the default, acad.dwt, open that. The location will depend on your release [...]

How to lock AutoCAD’s user interface

This is a guest blog post from Paul Munford.

It’s happened to all of us. A car outside backfires, a door slams or a cheeky college sneaks up behind you and gives you a tickle; before you know it your AutoCAD user interface is a mess!

If you’ve invested a lot of time setting up AutoCAD’s UI [...]

Reduce mouse-clicks and increase productivity using AutoLISP

This is a guest post by Sanjay Kulkarni, an AutoCAD programmer. You can read more about him at the end of this post.

The number of mouse-clicks required to perform a task is generally a good indicator of productivity. The fewer the number of clicks, the less time required–hence more productivity.

In this post we will see [...]

Change the font of a text style using AutoLISP

This is a guest post by Sanjay Kulkarni, an AutoCAD programmer. You can read more about him at the end of this post.

In the current era of globalization, many times you may have to work on drawings received from others. Sometimes, you may not be able to control the quality of the drawings you receive. [...]

Understanding how dimensions are associated with objects

This is a guest post by Sanjay Kulkarni, an AutoCAD programmer.

Learning AutoLISP (or any other programming language) doesn’t compel you to become a programmer. You can still use it to better understand the internal working of AutoCAD and enhance your interactive working skill. This can also give you an edge over others.

Recently [...]

How to load an AutoLISP program

This is a guest post by Sanjay Kulkarni, an AutoCAD programmer.

This post describes the method to load an AutoLISP program in an open drawing.

Some basic & fundamental information before we move to the procedure

An AutoLISP program runs inside (in the same workspace of) an open drawing. Therefore it is necessary to load the program in [...]

Another way to align a rectangle with a line on the fly–using AutoLISP

This is a guest post by Sanjay Kulkarni, an AutoCAD programmer. You can read more about him at the end of this post.

In an earlier post, Ellen showed how to align a rectangle with a line on the fly. You can easily create the same effect using AutoLISP. This AutoLISP routine is simple, and you [...]

Access related files with search paths

All AutoCAD drawings are connected to related files. At the very least, all drawings need access to a customization user interface (CUI) file. Some drawings also need to access fonts, plug-ins (such as AutoLISP and VBA files), linetypes, and hatch patterns. Drawings may have externally referenced drawings (xrefs).

You can make your AutoCAD life easier by [...]

“AutoCAD Block Best Practices,” an e-book by Edwin Prakoso

Edwin Prakoso has written an excellent and thorough e-book on AutoCAD blocks. In 69 pages, he covers the following:

Creating, inserting, modifying, and replacing blocks
Creating and using attributes
Creating annotative blocks
Creating dynamic blocks, including visibility states, parameters, and constraints
Extracting data from blocks
Best practices examples
Managing and sharing blocks

The book is only $10 and he’s offering a 40% discount [...]