Monthly Archives: March 2008

AutoCAD 2009 – The Prequel Part 13 – ViewCube

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For many 3D users of AutoCAD, the ViewCube is likely to be the most useful new thing in AutoCAD 2009. There are a couple of problems with it, at least in the Release Candidate:

  1. It does not work in 2D wireframe mode (which is, paradoxically, where 90% of my 3D work is done). You need to choose another visual style before it will appear.
  2. It seems to slow things down quite a lot in complex drawings.

That said, if you have more than enough computing power for the drawings you usually deal with, then this is a very, very nice interface addition. You can just pick intuitively on the various parts of the ViewCube and your view of the model changes accordingly. You can also click and drag on the cube, and it will move where you place it, while snapping on to the various 45 and 90 degree view directions when you get near them, in the same way that Polar snap works. There is a right-click menu with a bunch of useful options, including a quick and easy switch between parallel and perspective views.

Messing with the ViewCube

You can also easily switch between User Coordinate Systems using the little menu thing under the cube. Unlike some of AutoCAD 2009’s new user interface elements, the ViewCube looks like a finished, polished tool and provides a genuine boost to productivity. Beautiful.

Music – Top 3 Debut Albums. Number 3: Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin

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For this review of my third favourite debut album of all time, I dusted off the trusty old turntable so I could hear it as it was originally heard.

Led Zeppelin on the turntable

It seems that certain stock phrases must be included in all Led Zeppelin reviews. So before we go any further, here they are: primal scream, origins of heavy metal, The New Yardbirds, Keith Moon, supergroup, plagiarism.

I must declare a personal interest here. My late father knew John Bonham’s father. Dad once told me about “snotty-nosed little Johnny” running around in shorts in his dad’s garden. The man who would become the model for generations of rock drummers, the man whose sampled snare you will find on countless modern recordings, was born in the same town as myself and lived a couple of miles from where I spent my childhood. On the day of his funeral, I kept looking out of my high school’s windows to try to catch a glimpse of the funeral procession, but I never did. His grave lies about four miles north of my old home. Robert Plant is another local boy made good.

I remember as a teenager listening to this album while being driven by my brother in a Mini van at silly speeds in the dark along narrow English country lanes through that very area, and being impressed by the raw emotional power of the music and lyrics. Enough navel gazing, on with the review.

Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin


Amazon link (see disclosure)

Led Zeppelin’s eponymous debut album was recorded in 1968 and released in early 1969. It shows a variety of different influences including folk, psychedelia and even world music, but is primarily a blues-rock album. To say that it was a hugely successful and influential album would be understating the obvious, so I won’t say that. Instead, I’ll give some brief impressions of the tracks.

Good Times Bad Times
This short blues-influenced rocker includes a couple of short but fine Jimmy Page solos.

Babe I’m Gonna Leave You
A slow acoustic blues cover? Yes, but not just that. With Page driving the strings and Plant’s uniquely powerful yet emotional voice controlling the ebb and flow to perfection, this goes beyond the confines of traditional blues.

You Shook Me
More blues, a cover written by Willie Dixon this time, with a call-and-response section that became a live favourite. It features an interesting backwards echo production technique, where the echo is heard first!

Dazed and Confused
Another slow blues number in 12/8, this is essentially a leftover from Page’s Yardbirds days. The song contains an experimental psychedelic section with Page using a cello bow on his guitar. If listening without the aid of recreational substances (as I do), this drags on a bit. But all is forgiven when it leads into a blistering cymbal-driven guitar solo.

Your Time Is Gonna Come
At the time, this was something like a pop number, despite starting with an extended Jones organ solo. Not an outstanding track, it’s not a bad one either.

Black Mountain Side
This (arguably) stolen acoustic guitar instrumental with tambla drums is, for me, the weak point on the album. I think it would have been a better album without it.

Communication Breakdown
If this song isn’t the origin of the phrase “machine-gun riff”, it should be. Simple, heavy, fast, sweet. Another fine Page solo is crammed into this short song.

I Can’t Quit You Baby
A slow blues cover, again written by Willie Dixon. The fluid bass work is a standout here, but an otherwise unremarkable track.

How Many More Times
This track was listed as 3:30 long on the original record sleeve, apparently deliberately in order to trick radio stations into playing the song. It’s actually 8:28 long, and at the time that represented quite an epic. Shuffle, riffage, soaring guitar work, buildups, wind-downs, pauses, more psychedelic bowed guitar and snare-free drumming, inserted blues covers, sexually charged lyrics delivered with gusto, this song has the lot. If you’re of the opinion that an album should finish with a barnstormer, you should be happy with this one.

The album as a whole showcases Page’s varied guitar work, Bonham’s powerhouse drumming, Jones’ precise and fluid bass work, but more than anything, this is the album that introduced Robert Plant to the world. Things were never quite the same after that. The artwork is great too. Simple, iconic, brilliant.

Criticisms? The album was recorded in a hurry (35 hours) and in places it shows. Jimmy Page wasn’t as scrupulous as he should have been in giving credit to other people’s songwriting work. A couple of later Led Zeppelin albums reached greater heights than this. Jimmy Page, for all his towering achievements as a session musician and “guitar god”, was prone to be sloppy (especially live) and was technically bettered by several contemporaries (not to mention a million unheard guitarists today: guitar standards have come a long way in 40 years). Oh, and the rear cover would have been better (if less amusing) if John Bonham had been wearing something other than a cable-knit sweater that looks like it was a gift from his mum.

None of that matters enough to knock this debut album out of my top three. It’s still a great album.

[Disclosure: Amazon links have been provided to give easy access to further album information, samples and other opinions. However, the link includes an ID referring to this site. If you follow the link and do actually buy something, Amazon pays me 4%. This arrangement has no editorial influence whatsoever. However, if you object to it, feel free to navigate to Amazon or any other site yourself without using my link.]

AutoCAD 2009 – The Prequel Part 12 – Controlling Screen Elements

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How do you turn the new screen elements on and off using the keyboard? How about the not-so-new ones? See this table:

Element On Off Toggle
Advanced Render Settings RPPREF RPPREFCLOSE  
Clean Screen CLEANSCREENON CLEANSCREENOFF Ctrl+0
Command line COMMANDLINE COMMANDLINEHIDE Ctrl+9
dbConnect DBCONNECT DBCCLOSE Ctrl+6
DesignCenter ADCENTER ADCCLOSE Ctrl+2
Layer palette LAYER LAYERCLOSE  
Lights LIGHTLIST LIGHTLISTCLOSE  
Markup Set Manager MARKUP MARKUPCLOSE Ctrl+7
Materials MATERIALS MATERIALSCLOSE  
Menu bar MENUBAR 1 MENUBAR 0  
NavCube NAVCUBEDISPLAY 1 NAVCUBEDISPLAY 0  
Properties palette PROPERTIES PROPERTIESCLOSE Ctrl+1
Quick calc QUICKCALC QCCLOSE Ctrl+8
Ribbon RIBBON RIBBONCLOSE  
Rollover tool tips ROLLOVERTIPS 1 ROLLOVERTIPS 0  
Sheet Set Manager SHEETSET SHEETSETHIDE Ctrl+4
Status bar STATUSBAR 1 STATUSBAR 0  
Status bar
tray icons		 TRAYICONS 1 TRAYICONS 0  
Tool palette TOOLPALETTES TOOLPALETTESCLOSE Ctrl+3
Tool tips TOOLTIPS 1 TOOLTIPS 0  
Visual Styles VISUALSTYLES VISUALSTYLESCLOSE  

Music – Best Debut Albums?

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With all this AutoCAD 2009 stuff, I haven’t given much attention to some of the other things this blog is supposed to be about, such as music. I will rectify that soon with posts about my three favourite debut albums of all time. In the meantime, have a think about this: if you could only have three debut albums in your collection (or on your iPod, or whatever), what would they be? I’m sure if I asked 1000 people I would have a list of nearly 3000 different albums.

My set of three has one album that stands a good chance of being on a few people’s lists because it’s from a band that was huge in the 70s, one that stands a marginal chance because the band had a UK number one album in the 80s, and one band that is very current but which very few of you will have heard of.

Feel free to state your own top three, or speculate on mine. 🙂

AutoCAD 2009 – The Prequel Part 11 – Docked Vertical Ribbon

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This video shows how the AutoCAD 2009 vertical Ribbon behaves when it is docked on one side. The labels explain what is going on.

AutoCAD 2009 Docked Vertical Ribbon

The main thing that used to drive me batty with the Dashboard was the way in which expanding one panel would contract another. The vertical Ribbon doesn’t do that, it leaves panels how you left them, which I much prefer.

Something else you may have noticed is that when there is no docked horizontal Ribbon, the red A in the corner shrinks. I’ll describe what’s lurking beneath that A in future posts.

Five More Simple Tips for AutoCAD

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More simple AutoCAD tips, as promised:

  1. If you erase some objects, draw a few things and then want your erased objects back without losing the things you drew in the meantime, enter OOPS rather than undoing the commands.
  2. At any Select objects: prompt, you can select using a triangle, non-orthogonal rectangle or other odd shapes, by entering the WPolygon (WP) or CPolygon (CP) options.
  3. If you have a paper space viewport entirely inside another one, it can be hard to make that viewport current just by picking in it. Try Ctrl+R to cycle through viewports instead.
  4. Move some objects, rotate them to match something and optionally even scale them to match too, all with the ALIGN command (Modify > 3D Operations > Align). Despite the menu location, this command is great for both 2D and 3D work.
  5. The ID command tells you where a point lies in space. In many cases you can do that without a command. Select the object, hover over a grip, look at the coordinate display in the bottom left corner. For this to work, the coordinate display can’t be frozen. If it is, double-click on it to free it up.

AutoCAD 2009 – The Prequel Part 10 – Dude, where’s my Dashboard?

Dude, Dashboard’s dead. Defunct. Done. AutoCAD 2009 replaced the Dashboard with the Ribbon. If you type in the DASHBOARD or DASHBOARDCLOSE commands, they are just converted to the RIBBON and RIBBONCLOSE commands, which turn the Ribbon on and off.

If you’re a fan of the Dashboard (and I never was), there is good and bad news. The good news is that you can right-click on various parts of the Ribbon, pick Undock and you get a Dashboard-like floating vertical Ribbon that can be resized and configured very easily in terms of turning panels on and off. You can’t do that with Microsoft’s Office 2007 Ribbon. Performance aside (more on that later), I generally prefer the way the vertical Ribbon works, compared with the Dashboard. But I’m still not a fan.

AutoCAD 2009's Vertical Ribbon

The bad news is that if you put a lot of effort into customising your Dashboard in 2008, your work is lost. There is currently no automated migration path from your Dashboard to the Ribbon, so it’s time to start again. This involves using CUI, and unfortunately the process is slow and immensely frustrating. This is due to a combination of the long-standing CUI shortcomings and a set of new ones introduced to go with the Ribbon. Buy yourself one of those squeezy stress-ball things, you’re going to need it.

Five Simple Tips for AutoCAD

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As my forced change to a different blog theme (thanks IE7) has meant the demise of my random AutoCAD tip feature, you may as well have the tips in a blog post instead. Here are the first five. These are fairly simple tips that apply to all recent releases. You probably know most of them, but just in case…

  1. If you need to draw circles, slots or rectangles around multiple text objects, use the Express Tools command TCIRCLE (Express > Text > Enclose Text with Object).
  2. When using the TRIM or EXTEND command, you don’t have to select any edges. Just hit Enter and AutoCAD will assume all of the visible objects are to be used.
  3. The TRIM or EXTEND commands can be used in place of each other by using the Shift key. When picking an object in TRIM, hold down Shift and the object will extend.
  4. The MULTIPLE command will force the next command you enter to repeat until you hit Esc. In CUI or menu macros, you can do something similar by starting the macro with *^C^C instead of just ^C^C.
  5. You can fillet or chamfer all vertices of a polyline at once. Use the FILLET or CHAMFER command’s Polyline option and pick just once instead of picking every corner twice.

That’s it for now, five more tips later.

AutoCAD 2009 – The Prequel Part 9 – Docked Toolbars

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If AutoCAD 2009’s floating toolbars are the best ever, what about when they’re docked? As a starting point, here is AutoCAD 2008 with the Express Tools toolbars docked.

AutoCAD 2008 Docked Toolbars

Here is the same thing in AutoCAD 2009.

AutoCAD 2009 Docked Toolbars

So a few pixels have been shaved off in one direction and added in another. The end result is that they use about 99% of the space used in 2008. Not too bad, but I think it could be better. Here’s my suggestion:

AutoCAD 2009 Docked Toolbars Suggestion

That uses about 80% of the space. In addition to shaving off a few more pixels, I think this looks a lot neater. I find AutoCAD 2009’s dark grey bars between toolbars ugly and distracting. Not at all cute, unlike their floating counterparts. The bars don’t seem to serve any useful purpose, so hopefully they will go away in a later release.

My own personal preference would be to shave off even more pixels, but the above would do as a compromise between compact efficiency and a pretty face.

There are many other areas of AutoCAD 2009’s new interface that should have the razor applied, with both practical and aesthetic benefits. I will return to those areas later.

AutoCAD 2009 – The Prequel Part 8 – Vista Startup Times

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I’ve now tested startup times of various AutoCAD releases under Vista. Here are the results, alongside the XP results for ease of comparison:

Release First
Startup		 Subsequent
Startup
XP Vista XP Vista
12 8.6 – 8.2 –
13 2.6 1.8 1.3 0.8
14 2.1 – 0.5 –
2002 3.2 2.1 0.6 1.1
2004 – 4.3 – 1.7
2005 – 7.9 – 4.5
2006 14.9 8.7 2.6 4.4
2007 13.8 11.9 3.5 6.6
2008 14.6 10.5 3.6 6.0
2009 28.9 17.3 7.2 13.3

Same caveats as before, plus the following:

  1. Some AutoCAD releases were not installed on both XP and Vista partitions, hence the gaps in the table.
  2. The Vista tests were performed on the same PC as the XP tests.
  3. The system had a 1 GB USB key hanging out the back, giving Vista a theoretical startup benefit over XP.
  4. It’s very difficult to get meaningful performance results out of Vista because its SmartFetch and ReadyBoost technologies are doing their best to improve performance without user intervention. I may be a geek, but I’m not a good enough geek to be able to tell what Vista was doing behind my back during these tests.
  5. Repeated startups of AutoCAD 2009 revealed a gradual improvement in startup performance. Startup times went 17.3, 13.3, 12.5, 12.5, 11.0 seconds.

Make of that what you will. In short, in my tests AutoCAD 2009 startup time in Vista is still roughly double that of its recent predecessors and about ten times longer than older releases like R13 and 2002.

AutoCAD 2009 – The Prequel Part 7 – Subsequent Startup Time

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This table shows both the initial and subsequent startup times for various releases. Most of the qualifications and caveats from my AutoCAD 2009 – The Prequel Part 6 – Initial Startup Time post still apply here.

Release First
Startup		 Subsequent
Startup
12 8.6 8.2
13 2.6 1.3
14 2.1 0.5
2002 3.2 0.6
2006 14.9 2.6
2007 13.8 3.5
2008 14.6 3.6
2009 28.9 7.2

AutoCAD 2009’s subsequent startups are much less slow than its agonising first startup, as to be expected. Windows XP is doing that by caching and reusing recently used parts of memory. Release 12’s old code, running in 16-bit emulation, is not able to take advantage of that. It’s definitely an unfair test of Release 12 on this system.

In my tests, AutoCAD 2009 startups (both initial and subsequent) are about twice as slow as other recent releases. Users of older releases on modern systems can enjoy startup performance over ten times better.

AutoCAD 2009 – The Prequel Part 6 – First Startup Time

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One thing you’ll notice (and dislike) right away with AutoCAD 2009 is that it takes a lot longer to get started. How much longer? About twice as long as recent releases, or about ten times longer than ancient speed demon Release 13. (I bet a 1994 AutoCAD user transported forward in time would be shocked to hear that description being used). Here’s a video that shows what the first startup looks like in a collection of releases from Release 12 to 2009:

AutoCAD First Startup Time Comparison

Now for the qualifications and caveats:

  1. Tests performed on a Core2Duo E6600 PC with 4 GB RAM, under Windows XP SP2 32 bit.
  2. This is not a strictly scientific comparison. Only one system restart and settle-down period was performed prior to timing all releases one after the other. Strictly, each test should get its own restart and settle-down period.
  3. Anti-virus and other security software was left on, but was not performing a scan, during the tests.
  4. This is the first startup time only. Subsequent startup times during the same Windows session are quicker, and this subject may be the subject of further coverage.
  5. Vista startup times may be better, particularly if you leave a spare USB key hanging out of your PC and allow Vista to use it to improve system performance. This may also be the subject of further coverage.
  6. The AutoCAD 2009 time is for the Release Candidate, not the shipping product. It’s possible that Autodesk managed to wring more performance out of 2009 before the code hit the manufacturing stage.
  7. Application startup time should not be used as an indication of overall performance. It’s just one aspect of it.

If you only start AutoCAD once a day, it’s not a significant issue. If, like me, you start AutoCAD dozens of times a day, it becomes rather wearing.

Advertising Oops!

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I just spotted this image flash up on a banner advertisement on a CAD-related site. At first glance, I thought it was a nasty Autodesk ad promoting Revit (it’s on top, after all) and unkindly suggesting that Bentley software is only fit for disposal.

Bentley Bin

Then I spotted Bentley logos elsewhere on the ad and worked out that it was supposed to say BENTLEY BIM, not BIN. Even if you blow it up, it still looks more like an N than an M.

Bentley Bin

That’s the trouble with trying to fit a meaningful attention-grabbing image into a small space. Sometimes, it just doesn’t work.

Customer Service 3 – On Hold

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What’s the longest you’ve waited on hold? I broke my own personal best last week when I rang my bank. I phoned up, went through the menu system, typed in my account number and was advised that there could be “some delays” due to “technical difficulties”. I left the phone on speaker and went about my other business.

I did some actual work, prepared the evening meal ingredients, made sure my kids had showers and music practice, greeted my wife as she returned home, cooked the evening meal, served it, ate it, cleaned up, did some more work, and after all that my phone was still telling me, “We apologise for the continuing delay. We appreciate that your time is important and will ensure that your call is answered as soon as possible.” For the hundredth time.

After two hours, I was ready to give up. I would normally have given up much earlier, but my perverse streak made me want to go for the record. As the phone timer display hit about 2:01:00, my finger was poised over the “Off” button when an actual real human started speaking!

Fortunately, this person spoke in an accent I could understand and was very helpful, so I was able to sort out my business to my satisfaction in a few minutes. Because of that, and because this was a one-off, I will refrain from naming the guilty in this case.

Here’s the phone display immediately after hanging up:

Can you beat that? Anybody who has tried to contact MD Web Hosting in the past three weeks could beat it, I’m sure. (More on that later). What’s your record?

AutoCAD 2009 – The Prequel Part 5 – Floating Toolbars

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There are many areas of AutoCAD 2009’s new user interface that pointlessly waste your screen space. Floating toolbars do not. You have probably already noticed that AutoCAD 2009 concentrates on the Ribbon as its primary screen-based user interface, with the default state lacking any toolbars at all. So it’s somewhat ironic that AutoCAD 2009 sports what are easily the best floating toolbars in the history of the product. Ironic but very welcome.

Why are they better? Because they’re smaller. Let’s compare the number of pixels taken up by a typical small group of floating toolbars in different AutoCAD releases. These are the Express toolbars, which I mocked up in Releases 13 and 14 to show the same number of buttons and dividers (the Release 14 Bonus toolbars had more buttons than shown here). This provides for a totally fair comparison of the interface itself.

Floating Toolbar Comparison

Using Release 13 as the base for comparison, Release 14 uses 103% of the number of pixels, AutoCAD 2000 to 2008 use 93%, and AutoCAD 2009 uses only 43%. That is, it’s 2.3 times more space-efficient than Release 13 and 2.15 times more efficient than any recent release. Good stuff!

This space efficiency is gained at the expense of having a visible toolbar label. So how can you find your way around a bunch of floating toolbars as you get used to things? Hover over the dark grey area to the right of the toolbar and a tooltip will show you what’s what.

Floating Toolbar Tooltip

Thanks for the welcome

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A belated thank you to Kiwi Robin Capper for his welcome to the CAD blog world. Here’s a snap I took of Robin at Autodesk University 2006:

Robin Capper

Similarly, thanks to Lynn Allen for linking to my post about her famous Cell Phone Story. Here she is, also at AU 2006, presenting me with a signed copy of her excellent book AutoCAD: Professional Tips and Techniques which I won by skillfully (ahem) waving my arms furiously at the right moment during her presentation.

Lynn and Steve

Finally, thanks to Shaan Hurley for welcoming me to the blog fold. Here is one of the more sensible shots I have of him at AU 2006. You really don’t want to see the others.

Shaan and Steve