In May this year, I held an ‘open to the public’ AutoCAD Toolbelt Productivity seminar in Phoenix [if you would like me to come to your area, please let me know and I'll set one up]. As I expected, Tara (a longstanding customer now at WORKspaces), was interested in customizing the right-click shortcut menu. That solution is in the lead article. Then Dennis (one of three who attended from ethos), pointed out how to bump the number of drawing files listed in the A2009/A2010 Menu Browser. You'll find that in the Odd Spot.

The Power Tool is something I discovered in the A2009 CUI as I was setting up the lead article. And the Basics covers something brand new in AutoCAD 2010: the ability to rotate a viewport and either take the view with it or retain the view orientation; very cool.

Also, in case you missed it, Autodesk had me in the hot seat for their "Ask the Expert" series for 5 days in the middle of May. Gracious, that was a real exercise in humility! Of the 22 questions I was peppered with, I had to look up half of 'em. If you're interested, you'll find the entire series of Expert questions and answers at the "Ask the Expert" archives (http://autocad.autodesk.com/?nd=ask_the_expert_past).

Have a healthy and safe summer!

This month's Power Tool is a long one since it involves a Dynamic Block… but I had a really great time making a video for you to replay! And there's a reminder in Basics about the Taskbar variable; not something I use, but you may be interested in it if your more of a mouse person, than a hot key person.

Spring seems to be taking its good ole time getting around the corner here in Kentucky, but I get to spend some quality on the riding mower.

I used A2010 for all the exercises and screen captures, just to make sure all the routines worked. They do. There have been some incredible improvements in the area of 3D in A2010, but this month I'm going to show you the good ole 3DCLIP command that many of my contract furniture customers will appreciate (which also includes a video to assist in your understanding). The custom button this month comes from a suggestion from my Angola students who always draw circles based upon the diameter, so you may want to take a look at that if you're in that situation most of the time.

Then I had an epiphany and remembered the A2000i command, BROWSER, which lets me access a URL right out of AutoCAD! And while you're accessing the Internet, take a look at our CADTutor Forum or the Help command in A2009 and A2010 that includes direct access to the Autodesk Discussion Groups.

By the way, I sent in my proposal for a 90-minute lab at Autodesk University in December, so let's hope they accept my idea… then all of you sign up and we'll have a good ole time!

Several of this month's articles came up while I was there at Chevron's Malongo camp. It has been several years since I reviewed data extraction, so I have a simple overview of the screens you'll see for that process. I'm finally going to address the Double-Click action settings in the CUI this month, too… and this month will be our inaugural foray into the use of animation for an article!

I made an interesting discovery with one of the Chevron drawings involving a 2D Polyline, too, so that's in the Odd Spot. And one of the folks in my training was interested in the ability of splitting the Model view into viewports - a powerful feature that's been around for a really long time that warrants a Basic review.

All in all, it was a fabulous 2 week at Chevron's corner of Cabinda, and I'm looking forward to the possibility of a return trip to work with the many friends I made while I was there.

This month I have 3D bookends: The Visual Style referenced as ‘X-Ray’ is presented as the lead article, then in the Basics we'll take a look at the ViewCube introduced in A2009. In the Power Tool, you may want to add the SETBYLAYER command to your on-going palette and the Odd Spot looks at the wonderful command that enables you to delete those annoying layers "with nothing on them"… by Name.

For those of you interested in my specific whereabouts in Angola, here's the link using Google Maps (and if you're using Google Earth, here's the .KMZ file).

New Things in 2009

Speaking of longitude, after years of training in the United States (including Alaska and Hawaii), I'll be training in Angola, Africa for a couple weeks in February, working with two teams at Chevron who are responsible for a vast array of drawings. That will add a fifth continent and an eighth country to my list of training locales, and will certainly be a new experience. Look for some insights in future articles from things I'm sure I will encounter over there.

Another idea I hope to implement before the year is out is at least one video clip included with an article every now and then. The Camtasia product makes it very simple to create videos, so our webmaster, David, and I will kick that around a little and see what we can do. I'll still have the instructions to follow along with, but a 15 or 20 second clip would be really cool, don't you think?

And finally, before summer, I hope to publish a compilation of all of the Michael's Corner articles from 2003 thru 2008. Tentatively titled, "Michael's Corner: The First Six Years", I'll organize and update all the articles to be applicable for A2008 thru A2010. After a brief poll, it appears that you would rather have a hard copy that you can highlight, sticky-note, dog-ear, and take notes in, rather than a PDF file. If you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear from you.

Ah, yes, and this month continues with a custom button for your ever-growing tool palette, along with a quick trick to modify the attribute definitions of a block. In the Odd Spot I show you how to get that Startup dialog box back as well as a buried command to let you identify who has the drawing open that caused you to get the Read Only box. And finally, I think I may have clarified why that Breakline command from the Express Tools never quite worked out for you.

I hope your New Year is off to a fabulous start!

This month, with the exception of the lead article on customizing a flyout button on a toolbar, all of the topics are AutoCAD 2009-specific. There was no real reason for that, but sooner or later, you're all probably going to be able to benefit from these insights.

Wishing you all a safe and blessed Christmas season and a fabulous New Year!!

In the remaining articles, we take a look at an extremely clever use for Alternate Units in a dimension (thank you, Alaska), as well as how to edit the cells in a Table (a question from one of our loyal readers). In the Basics section I am answering a question that typically comes up in training as I'm covering layer states, and that is how to edit a layer state if the layer condition of that state needs to be modified. This was a fun bunch of features to cover.

Wishing all of my fellow Americans a Happy Thanksgiving and may we always remain thankful for the many blessings the good Lord has bestowed upon each one of us.

Customizing takes over again this month as I bring my monthly Tool Palette button to the front of the pack in an effort to help those of you who are doing area hatches for Phasing or Departments on a floorplan. Then I was thinking about how to automate the cool Quick View Drawings command without putting it on a palette… and thought it would be cool to put it on a Function key, say, for example, that one we all love to hate - F1.

In the Odd Spot I make a quick mention of one of those things that will mess with your head until you finally realize what's going on (see below), and then I wrap it up with a review of the Perpendicular object snap in the Basics.

* Quicker, Better, Smarter, Faster. I made that up. You can use it.

I will readily admit the CUI is sometimes a mystery to me, but I knew RJ (Sheppard's Business Interiors in Omaha) would have an answer on how to export a toolbar. For the tool palette button this month, the wonderful ladies that oversee all things facilities-related at Lawrence Berkeley Labs asked me if they could put the Express tool feature of Enclose Text With Object on a button… so we did! Then I was training the folks responsible for the space planning of the corporate facilities of Union Pacific Railroad in downtown Omaha, and they encountered a few other things that comprise the remaining topics of interest this month.

Finally, I want to thank Herman Miller for inviting me to speak at their first-ever North Area Design Forum in Chicago later this month. I'll be covering the AutoCAD and furniture-specification areas of interest and I'm looking forward to seeing all those who will be in attendance, many of whom are existing customers.

Bonfires, S'mores, and roasted marshmallows are just around the corner!