AutoCAD 2009 - Fit and Finish (Continued)

Here are some more tips and tricks for AutoCAD 2009. We are still talking about fit and finish items in the upgrade. Fit and finish items are those little things that help to make an upgrade worth it. They are the little fixes and enhancements in AutoCAD 2009 that add up and make it worth the effort.

Nonrectangular Viewports in Properties. AutoCAD 2009 properties pallets will now support nonrectangular viewports. If you had one of these, and opened it up in the properties pallet, there would be two items listed; one was the viewport, the other was a polyline. You had to then select the viewport (another step) to be able to edit it. Not anymore. Now AutoCAD is smart enough to know that you want the viewport, not the polyline.

Missing Plotters. Do you know the error message you get when an assigned plotter (to a file) is missing from your computer? This often happens when you receive files from outside sources, they have a different plotter than you. Well, now your print manager will prefix that plotter name with “missing”. It’s a little thing, but it helps.

Additional DGN Support and Layer Control. If you have to import DGN files on a regular basis then you will like this. AutoCAD 2009 can reference R7 and R8 type of DGN files. It can also import the leveled layers of Microstation into AutoCAD layers! No more layer 1, 2, 3, 4 ,5, 6 . . . You can give them names so that they make sense! Use the DGNMAPPING command to do this.

Hide Xref Scales. This is a must. Use the VPSCALE setting to hide the annotation scales that come in through xref files. You won’t get those xref 1:100 scales anymore, unless you want to??

Happy CADDING !!