Tips and "How To" Articles

AutoCAD

1. Getting Toolbars to Stay Put in 2006 (and 2007)
2. Creating Multiple Leaders from a Single Leader
3. A Faster Way to Change an Object's Elevation Using MOVE
4. Speed Editing with Grips.
5. How to list an endpoint or vertex elevation using Grips
6. Numbering in MTEXT across multiple columns (2006 ONLY)
7. Single Line Editor for MTEXT
8. AutoCAD Toolbar Customization (2004 and prior releases)
9. Purging Named Layer Filters from a Drawing
10. Improving Performance in AutoCAD 2006
11. How to find files in the AutoCAD Search Path
12. Viewers and Converters for DWF and DWG
13. Using UCS to align annotation to a viewport.(video)

ShastaCAD

1. How to Add Custom Color Books to ShastaCAD 6.0

Land Desktop

1. Creating a Surface Boundary using Shrinkwrap (1.8Mb video)
2. Building a Description Key File from Scratch using an Existing Point Database
3. Creating an ASCII Point File from the Insertion of any Block with Attributes (*revised)
4. Land Desktop Tips: Quick Section and Spot Elevation Label
5. Terrain Models in Land Desktop (also published in CAD Digest)
6. Terrain Model Basics is an article which steps you through the basics of creating a Terrain Model in Land Desktop. Ways to visualize a surface in 2D and 3D are also described. There are many pictures in the article to help illustrate commands and results.
7. Working with exploded point objects
8. What data files to ask the surveyor to provide.
9. Block Scaling Problem in Land Desktop 2006. Is the Datum block on your Profile too small?

Civil Design

1. Creating FG Points from a Profile in Civil Design is an in depth article describing a site grading strategy. This technique is a great way to start the grading process for your site. It uses the Profile features in Civil Design to generating design points in your drawing.
2. Creating Points at a 3' offset from the Back of Curb. (Video)
3. Setting Ditch Parameters in Design Control (Video)

Survey

1. Plotting Deed Descriptions using Autodesk Survey

Map

1. Shade Parcels with No Sewer Connection
2. Driveway Quantity Take-Offs

Express Tools

1. Using Fast Select to verify that objects touch each other
2. Count blocks in the current drawing using the BCOUNT command.

Microsoft Excel

1. A faster way to copy cells by dragging.
2. Combining many cells into one cell.

Windows

1. File Utilities on the Windows XP CD
2. Finding out who sent an email without opening the message in Outlook
3. Command Prompt Here shows you two neat tricks to tweak Windows Explorer. You can right click on a folder and get a Console Window (DOS Prompt) at that folder. You can right click on a folder and get a recursive list of files and folders displayed in Notepad.
4. What's the difference between DOS and Windows text files? I thought they were the same but they are not.
5. Hold down the SHIFT key when you insert a CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive to prevent the CD-ROM from automatically playing.

---

Try these.... Keyboard Shortcuts The first 7 are my favorites ..or take a look at the complete list of Keyboard Shortcuts from Microsoft.