Autodesk® AutoCAD® R14
Drafting/Design Software

Comments by: Odin Cary

Review
The following represents my personal notes as I studied this program in preparation for training my students. Please forgive the disorder and possible self-contradictions; I just wrote as I went along.

I loaded the full installation of R14 and discovered the bonus buttons.

These tools are impressive. Lisp routines would normally do these tasks, but it is nice to have them integrated.

Bonus Layer Tools:

Layer manager is something I have been wishing for for ages.

You cannot only save the state of your layers but export your layers as well in their own file.

Now I will just have to create a routine for flipping through the layer states more quickly.

The rest of the routines on this palette are just normal lisp style routines like lock objects layer, etc. good but not amazing.

Bonus Text Tools

Text Mask is awesome. With WIPEOUT, you can chose to show your frames around your text or not. The wipeout frames around your text can be manipulated via grips and is thus totally adjustable for special tight situations.

Arc Aligned Text

This routine is great. The new text dialogue boxes are intuitive. It is great to see routines that work so well in other programs like Corel.

Bonus Standard Toolbar

Well I laughed a bit at this group, but there are some new options and totally new commands so I am happy to see them.

WIPEOUT is great.

REVCLOUD was troublesome at first because the default arc length is tiny. Set the Arclength by picking relative points on the screen and then the routine works well.

You have to loop back to the beginning point and you are done.

Preferences Dialogue Box

Files Tab

The first thing I tried here was to set Word as my default word processor and by assigning Word.exe as the choice of processors, it worked immediately and painlessly.

Display Tab

I set AutoCAD to be Maximized upon load.

Pointer Tab

You can set the Cross Hair to normal by setting Cursor Size to 100% <default value is 5%>

Printer Tab

Fairly intuitive approach to setting up a printer, though the old text window style of selecting printer(s) and options is antiquated.

Being able to save a configuration as a .PC? file is a nice safety guard.

Profiles Tab

Export and Import <.ARG> allows users to not only retrieve their AutoCAD graphic setup on any station on a network via the Server, but also have different setups for different tasks; e.g., toolbars and colors for 3D work vs. 2D work.

Printing from R14:

Well, yes they have improved this area dramatically, but Autodesk still deviates from WFC structure and manages to find a way to run with less ease than other Windows programs. The Print dialogue box allows the user to select "Device and Default Selection" which is where we should see the standard WFC type dialogue box - look at Word or Excel, for example. My gripe is with AutoCAD’s reluctance to recognize anything other than the "Set As Default" printer as the system printer. We should be able to change to any other printer in the list of System Printers, but AutoCAD only reflects the default printer and you have to use the "Show" button in order to see if you have chose the correct alternative. Then, once you have printed with that alternative printer, AutoCAD automatically reverts to the default printer.

BASE

This variable does not seem to affect the grow point of bhatch anymore, instead change the UCS origin.

$ BONUS FEATURES:

Bonus>>Tools>>pop-up menu

This feature is very cool. Use Alt + Right Click to select a menu and then Ctrl + Right Click to have your Automenu change to different customizable menus.

HATCH

This routine has been significantly improved: hatch is a new object type. It is stored without the information redundancy of its predecessor: a block.

Notice the new solid hatch pattern.

Fillmode (also FILL) controls the display of hatch patterns now.

R13 hatch patterns must be converted with CONVERT for the updated improvements to take effect or be edited; which will invoke an automatic conversion.

R14 hatch boundaries will remain associative even when some edges are erased; the proviso is that the remaining edges form a closed region of space.

SPECIAL CHARACTERS

In R14 you type "-" before a command to invoke the non-dialogue version and/or to run r13 style command options that have been removed or changed.

OLE 2.0 Support?

Ex. From AutoCAD, go to insert>>OLE object…>>Create from file>>Select a Word Document.

As before the magnification factor currently set seems to determine the size of the inserted OLE object, but now stretching a corner maintains aspect ratio and the sheet can be changed to an actual 8.5x11 if you have a rectangle to use as a guide. This method still is not very accurate and somewhat unacceptable.

If the Word Document has more than one page, the first page is the only item brought into AutoCAD. (I attempted to make my Word Document much longer per page so that AutoCAD might see it as one long document, but Word reported that I could only make my page 22" long - this will require more investigation).

The OLE object resides only on the current layer and cannot be changed to another layer. If the current layer is locked, the OLE object is not selectable.

The OLE object can also be turned into a non-selectable object: Right click and deselect "Selectable".

Undo does not really function on the OLE object; i.e., a move cannot be undone but erase can. To Undo Move, use the Right click and select UNDO. The DELETE feature offered on "normal" gripped objects does not work on OLE objects, the erase command must be used or Right Click for the CLEAR option.

Double click on the OLE object works well and changes to the source document come back.

OLEHIDE

to turn OLE visibility on/off. 0 => Visible

1 => ModelSpace

2 => PaperSpace

3 => Model/PaperSpace

RASTER IMAGE Support

Ex. From AutoCAD, go to Insert>>Raster Image…Attach.

The new Raster Image Manager Dialogue Box is a great feature and allows the user to manipulate and track Raster Images much like Xref objects.

To Reload one or a large number of Images, type -IMAGE.

Raster Images display an edge representing the layer the object resides on.

This frame is controlled by IMAGEFRAME.

Image Clipping is a great feature and simple to use and understand.

DRAWORDER

This command will set Sortents to 127. This setting will increase file size and the more objects affected by draworder, the larger the file; and, consequently the drawing will run slower slower. The Display order can be set to 0 and then back to 127: SORTENTS.

AUTOMATIC SNAPS

When I first began using these, I found having them running caused some problems when I was attempting to get one particular snap very close to another; invariable I would get the one I did not want.

The solution to this problem is to use the TAB key when the AutoSnap marker displays; this will cycle you through all of the active AutoSnaps you have set.