Monthly Archives: August 2018

Explaining the four tiers of AutoCAD license

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Yesterday’s tiers

Once upon a time, long long ago, you could buy AutoCAD with or without sets of features  called Advanced Drafting Extensions (ADE) containing optional extras such as dimensioning. At one stage you could buy four tiers of AutoCAD license at different prices:

  1. AutoCAD
  2. AutoCAD + ADE1
  3. AutoCAD + ADE2 (incorporating ADE1)
  4. AutoCAD + ADE3 (incorporating ADE1 and ADE2)

(Interestingly, the above situation is similar to the current arrangement with BricsCAD, where BricsCAD Classic, Pro and Platinum are available with incrementing prices and feature sets, with BricsCAD BIM and Sheet Metal available on top of Platinum).

As almost everybody bought AutoCAD + ADE3 anyway, the ADEs were eventually absorbed into the main product and AutoCAD became just AutoCAD again. Later, the AutoCAD line would split again into AutoCAD LT, AutoCAD, and various AutoCAD-based vertical products such as AutoCAD Mechanical and Civil 3D.

Today’s tiers

Fast forward thirty-odd years and AutoCAD licenses are again available in four tiers (even if we ignore AutoCAD LT and Civil 3D). For an AutoCAD 2019 user, these are:

  1. A perpetual license holder who allowed maintenance to lapse after activating AutoCAD 2019.
  2. A perpetual license holder still under maintenance.
  3. A subscription user who switched from maintenance under the Move to Subscription offer prior to the release of AutoCAD 2019.
  4. A subscription user who switched from maintenance under the Move to Subscription offer after the release of AutoCAD 2019 or who started a new full-price subscription at any time.

Note that Tier 1, etc. is my description of the category and not Autodesk’s.

What the tiers mean

This table shows what is available to customers in each of the above tiers:

Tier Perpetual Usage Updates Support Cloud Shared Views Web/Mobile Toolsets
1
2
3
4

Here’s what the table headings mean:

  • Perpetual – a perpetual license that allows continued use into the future without requiring further payment.
  • Usage – rights to use the license at home, use of previous versions and internationally.
  • Updates – formerly known as Service Packs, these bug fixes and minor feature enhancements are withheld from customers who are not actively paying Autodesk.
  • Support – the ability to log a service request that will be addressed by a technician. There are actually multiple levels depending on how much you pay: Basic, Advanced and, for subscription users, the ability to schedule a call to talk to somebody.
  • Cloud – online services such as storage and rendering.
  • Shared Views – formerly available to all AutoCAD 2017 and 2018 users, this feature was renamed, updated and made subscription-only in AutoCAD 2019.
  • Web/Mobile – the AutoCAD Web and AutoCAD Mobile App viewer/markup tools.
  • Toolsets – the ‘Only One AutoCAD’ set of AutoCAD-based verticals now called Specialized Toolsets (excluding Civil 3D). Note that if you’re a customer in Tier 3 who originally had a vertical product (e.g. AutoCAD Mechanical), you will still have access to that toolset and plain AutoCAD, but not the others.

Moving to three tiers

Felice at Autodesk has explained that Autodesk plans to move everybody in Tier 3 to Tier 4 at some point in the future (subject to legal disclaimers). But for now, if you took up the Move to Subscription offer at the wrong time, you don’t yet have access to Specialized Toolsets.

Thanks are due to Felice for patiently answering my questions to clarify the situation and explain the detail.

Where on Earth is Lynn Allen going?

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Well, this is a fun video for CAD geeks. The third in the BricsCAD Unplugged series of weekly webcasts, this one promotes the Bricsys 2018 conference which will be held on 23 and 24 October in London.

These live broadcasts run on the Bricsys Facebook page and are then quickly transferred to YouTube.

This one is interesting because of the people in it and some interesting news. It features Bricsys regulars Don Strimbu, Heidi Hewett, Vince Aman and Matt Olding, but also a couple of special guests. First on the scene is Robert Green (see 4:57) but the real surprise comes at 9:23 when somebody who may be familiar to you appeared in the bottom right corner:

The fun part comes when Lynn is “persuaded” with the promise of beer to turn up in London. Lynn won’t be going to AU this year (“My invitation must have got lost in the mail!”), along with quite a few others. So if you’re going to Vegas you’ll have to put up with somebody slightly less popular on stage instead.

So Bricsys 2018 in London is where all the cool people will be. Lynn and Heidi will be there and Robert will be rocking out with the Bricsys band. I might not be lead-guitarist-cool but I’ll be there too. What is said in the video about Bricsys conferences being great for meeting people is very true. Everybody’s approachable, right up to Bricsys CEO Erik De Keyser, so come up and say hello.

If you want to join us, sign up here. At the time of writing, there are just a few hours until the end of Early Bird pricing on the tickets.

Did I mention it’s being held in a brewery?

Oh, and there’s some CAD stuff.*

Here’s the full video:

* The CAD stuff alone made the Bricsys Conferences well worth attending for me in past years.

A & B Tip 8 – drilling holes 2

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In this series of posts, I’ll be providing tips that show how to do something in both AutoCAD and BricsCAD, hence A & B.

The Series

The idea behind this series is to provide useful information for several sorts of reader:

  1. AutoCAD users.
  2. BricsCAD users.
  3. People in the process of transitioning from AutoCAD to BricsCAD and who need to know what to do differently (if anything).
  4. People considering transitioning from AutoCAD to BricsCAD and who want to know about the differences and similarities.

Drilling holes

This post continues to explain more about how to put holes in your 3D models. More than one method involves starting with a planar object (e.g. a circle for a cylindrical hole), but it needs to be in the right spot and in the right plane. The most efficient way of drawing an object in a given plane, where that plane exists on a 3D solid, is to use Dynamic UCS.

Dynamic UCS

First, we need to make sure Dynamic UCS is turned on. In AutoCAD, the Dynamic UCS icon looks like this:

If that’s not visible, you may need to make it visible using the hamburger menu on the far right of the status bar:

In BricsCAD, the text-based toggle (like the one AutoCAD users have been asking to return ever since it was removed a few releases ago) is DUCS:

Just in case that toggle’s not visible, there’s a list of toggles in a menu at the bottom right of the BricsCAD user interface, too:

You can also toggle the Dynamic UCS status in both applications using F6.

Having established that DUCS is on, invoke the Circle command. Hover over the plane that’s on the left as we’re looking at it, thus:

You are now working in a temporary UCS with an origin point in one corner of the 3D solid’s face, and as you move around you can use the coordinate display to get an idea of where the coordinates lie. If I enter -100,50 this is used in relation to the origin of the dynamic UCS and I will get a circle here:

Things work in a similar way in BricsCAD. You don’t get the on-screen dynamic coordinates, but you can still see them in the status bar and you do get a UCS icon that shows you how the temporary UCS is aligned. If you move your cursor around, you will be able to obtain different UCS alignments and easily see where the origin is and which way X and Y are oriented:

With this visual information and the dynamic UCS shown above, you can enter 100,50 to place the circle in the same spot as in AutoCAD.

Now we have our circle (and it could just as easily be a filleted rectangle or any other shape), we could extrude it as described in my previous post. Instead, let’s push and pull it into shape as described below.

Presspulling or Push/pulling

Instead of using the EXTRUDE command, planar objects can be extruded by presspulling them. Before drilling some holes, I should explain that there are several differences (some subtle) between extrusion and presspull:

  • Extruding replaces the original objects whereas presspulling leaves them in place and creates new objects.
  • The EXTRUDE command expects you to select objects to extrude; the PRESSPULL command allows you to point within an enclosed area. Depending on what you’re starting with, one command will be more suitable than the other.
  • Extruding an area enclosed by individual objects (e.g. lines) extrudes the objects into planar surfaces. Presspulling such an enclosed area results in a 3D solid being created based on an extrusion of the enclosed area.
  • An EXTRUDE of an enclosed planar object (e.g. circle, closed polyline) creates a 3D object. PRESSPULL can also do this, but when the planar object lies on the surface of a 3D solid, it can also create a hole in that solid.
  • Both commands can be used on faces of 3D solids; EXTRUDE will create a new solid based on an extrusion of that face and PRESSPULL will modify the original solid.

Presspulling in AutoCAD

In AutoCAD, you can use the PRESSPULL command:

Alternatively, you can use Ctrl+Shift+E to invoke presspulling: hold all three keys down and point within an enclosed area. Here’s an example. A circle has been drawn on the left vertical surface of our solid. Hold down Ctrl+Shift+E together and pick the interior of the circle. Let go of the keys and move your mouse to the right:

Pick a point beyond the extents of the solid. A hole is automatically created in the solid without having to explicitly subtract it, thus:

User actions required: a three-key combination and two picks. Note that the original circle is still present and if you don’t want it there you will need to erase it.

Push/Pulling in BricsCAD

In BricsCAD, there is no PRESSPULL command. Instead, the closest equivalent command name is DMPUSHPULL (the DM stands for Direct Modeling).

This command expects to work on faces of 3D solids, which is not exactly what we’re after for drilling holes. Instead, we use the DMEXTRUDE command. Now it might seem confusing that there are different commands to use for similar things, but in practice that doesn’t matter. That’s because we can just use the Quad Cursor and really not care what the underlying command is called. If you hover over a 3D solid’s face, the Quad Cursor gives you the options you need for dealing with that, and if you hover over a circle you are given the appropriate options for that instead.

Here’s the same example as above, this time done in BricsCAD. Hover over an object that defines an enclosed area, in this case our circle:

The Quad Cursor uses AI technology to initially provide the option that it thinks you’re most likely to use with that object under the current circumstances. I find it’s remarkably good at guessing what you want to do. If it’s wrong, you can get at a whole bunch of other options with a bit more hovering, but in this case it’s right; we do want to extrude the circle. Pick that icon, move over to the right and pick. That will create the hole:

User actions required: a hover and two picks. Again, the original circle remains behind and will need to be erased if you don’t want it left hanging around.

What about more complex holes? There are more tips and tricks coming, so watch this space.

A & B Tip 7 – drilling holes 1

2 Replies

In this series of posts, I’ll be providing tips that show how to do something in both AutoCAD and BricsCAD, hence A & B.

The Series

The idea behind this series is to provide useful information for several sorts of reader:

  1. AutoCAD users.
  2. BricsCAD users.
  3. People in the process of transitioning from AutoCAD to BricsCAD and who need to know what to do differently (if anything).
  4. People considering transitioning from AutoCAD to BricsCAD and who want to know about the differences and similarities.

Drilling holes

This post explains how to put holes in your 3D models. This post will cover some fairly straightforward topics but I intend to cover more involved details in future posts. I’ll assume you have a basic understanding of creating 3D primitives and the boolean operations (union, subtract and intersect). I will be using the 3D Modeling workspace in both AutoCAD and BricsCAD. I’m going to start with the dynamic UCS feature turned off and the 2D Wireframe visual style.

Vertical cylinder subtraction

Let’s take the simplest case. You have a solid and you just want to place a cylindrical hole in a known location that you already have geometry you can snap to. For example, you want to drill a DIA 40 hole right through this part, using the centerlines shown:

Start with the CYLINDER command:

AutoCAD BricsCAD

Pick the intersection of the two centerlines, enter a radius of 20 and a height of 100. You don’t have to be precise with the height, you can just point to any height that’s over 100:

To create the hole, use the SUBTRACT command:

AutoCAD BricsCAD

With this command it’s important to select the objects in the right order. Select the object(s) you’re substantiating from first, then press Enter to finish the selection process for those objects. Then select the object(s) you’re subtracting and press Enter to finish that selection process. That will give you your hole (temporarily switched to X-Ray visual style for clarity):

Extruding a circle

Instead of creating the cylinder diectly, you can instead extract a circle. This is an extra step if you don’t already have a circle of the right size in the right place, but less work if you do. For example, if you’re converting a 2D drawing to a 3D model, you’ll probably have the circle already.

Invoke the EXTRUDE command:

AutoCAD BricsCAD

Select the circle, press Enter to finish the selection (because you can extrude several objects at once) and specify a height of at least 100, as with the CYLINDER command. Subtract the resultant cylinder and you’re done.

It’s important to note that extrusions work perpendicular to the plane of the object(s) being extruded. In this case the cylinder is created vertically because the circle lies flat (in terms of the World Coordinate System). If you have a circle lying in a different plane, the extrusion will be perpendicular to that plane. For example, here a circle that lies in a vertical plane is being extruded horizontally:

Drawing a circle in the other planes

That’s all well and good if you have a circle in the right plane, but what if you need to draw one? You have several alternatives.

One method is to draw your circle in whatever plane you like, then use the ALIGN command to move it into place. That works, but it’s not that efficient.

Alternatively, you can change your UCS to align with your desired plane, and then just draw your circle. That can be fiddly, but if you have a handy solid object containing the plane you want to draw in, you can use the UCS command’s OBject option (hot tip: E for Entity does the same thing). By carefully hovering over the plane, you can set up your desired UCS with one click and a lot less tiresome fiddling around than trying to work out what the other (somewhat arcane) options of the UCS command all mean. Here, the UCS command’s OBject option is shown in action:

Note that this is an example of one of the very few things that works in AutoCAD but not BricsCAD. The UCS command’s OBject (and Entity) option exists, but you can’t use it to align a UCS with a solid’s face. You can, however, use the UCS command’s Face option. That exists in both applications, but I prefer the way it works in BricsCAD where the origin of the UCS is placed in one corner of the face with no further interaction required. In AutoCAD, the default is to place the UCS origin at some random point you used to select the face so if you need to locate points precisely there is a bit more messing around required.

Upshot: Use UCS E in AutoCAD and UCS F in BricsCAD.

In any case, there are other, more efficient ways to skin this particular cat. In my view, the most efficient way of drawing an object in a given plane, where that plane exists on a 3D solid, is to use Dynamic UCS. I’ll explain that, and how to push and pull your holes into submission, in the next post.

Fix released for Autodesk subscription licensing error (yes, another one)

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Providing yet another entry in the it’ll never happen again file, Autodesk has issued a fix for an AutoCAD 2018 subscription licensing crash.

Thankfully, it’s not compulsory to use the execrable Autodesk desktop app or malware-like Akamai download manager to obtain this fix. There are direct links for the 32-bit and 64-bit fixes.

Lessons we learned from this:

  • AutoCAD doesn’t just phone home once every 30 days to maintain even a long-term a subscription license, it phones home 24 hours later too. And probably every 24 hours after that.
  • Desktop software that relies on the internet to continue working is a terrible idea.
  • Yes, it will happen again.

Autodesk subscription price rise certainty

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In my previous posts exploring the costs associated with various CAD software licensing scenarios, there was always a need for assumptions because Autodesk had failed to provide any pricing information beyond a point a year or so from now. As a result, expecting the worst appeared to be the safest strategy.

To Autodesk’s credit, this situation is now partially addressed. From this Autodesk web page:

We’re extending our price commitment through 2028 for customers who continue to renew after they switch. The special Move to Subscription renewal suggested retail price will increase by no more than 5% in 2021, 2023, 2025, and 2027. There will be no change to the renewal suggested retail price in 2022, 2024, 2026 and 2028.

There are some weasel words in the fine print that allow Autodesk some wriggle room, but let’s go with the numbers we have. It works out to an increase of 21.5% by 2027. If you’ve already switched and you’re paying $1000 a year then you’ll be paying $1215 a year in 2027 and 2028. That’s a pretty reasonable level of increase. Of course, the total number of dollars you’ll hand over is several times higher than for, say, keeping a permanent license of BricsCAD up to date.

The above refers to customers who give up their perpetual licenses that are currently under maintenance and switch to subscription (rental) under the special conditions of the Move to Subscription offer. Pricing is still in the air for you millions of stubborn users who insist on owning your software licenses, and for those who are paying sky-high rates under the conventional subscription deal.

There are also no guarantees about what you’ll be paying for. If AutoCAD 2019‘s anything to go by, you can expect little improvement, feature removal and poorer performance.

A & B Tip 6 – making polylines when you don’t have any

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In this series of posts, I’ll be providing tips that show how to do something in both AutoCAD and BricsCAD, hence A & B.

The Series

The idea behind this series is to provide useful information for several sorts of reader:

  1. AutoCAD users.
  2. BricsCAD users.
  3. People in the process of transitioning from AutoCAD to BricsCAD and who need to know what to do differently (if anything).
  4. People considering transitioning from AutoCAD to BricsCAD and who want to know about the differences and similarities.

Why might you need a polyline?

In my last post (A & B Tip 5 – polyline areas) I described different methods of finding the areas (and perimeters) enclosed by polylines. That’s all well and good, but what if the objects that enclose your area aren’t nice convenient polylines? This post will help you make some. There are other reasons you might want polylines rather than whatever you have now. These include:

  • You can offset a polyline in one go rather than offsetting multiple objects and then joining them together.
  • You can apply fillets to a whole polyline with a single pick rather than lots of them.
  • A polyline can be extruded to make a 3D solid (or hole).
  • You can use a polyline to define a path that is used to extrude or sweep another polyline to make a solid with automatically mitred corners.
  • You can apply a width to a polyline and override that width for individual segments.
  • You can use a polyline as the basis to create a region, which allows you to do various cool things such as perform boolean operations on 2D objects.
  • Using polylines to define a hatch boundary can be less error-prone than using individual objects.
  • You can locate the geometric center of a polyline with the GCE object snap.
  • A polyline’s linetype can be persuaded to flow around the whole polyline rather than being confined to individual segments. In some cases, this means you will see a linetype where you would otherwise see only solid lines.

Having established various uses for polylines, and assuming you already have some objects and don’t want the tedious job of drawing over them manually, what can you do? Read on.

Note: in this post, the operations are exactly the same in both AutoCAD and BricsCAD with a couple of minor exceptions that I will point out as I go along.

PEDIT Join

If you’re fortunate enough to have a series of lines, polylines and/or arcs that are connected end-to-end without overlap to exactly define the area you want, then you can use the PEDIT command’s Join option to convert those objects to a single polyline. The command sequence dates from the mid-80s and is rather convoluted:

Command: PEDIT
Select polyline or [Multiple]: [pick an object]
Object selected is not a polyline
Do you want to turn it into one? [Enter] (this only appears if you pick a line or arc)
Enter an option [Close/Join/Width/Edit vertex/Fit/Spline/Decurve/Ltype gen/Reverse/Undo]: J
Select objects: [select a bunch of objects]
Select objects: [Enter]
X segments added to polyline
Enter an option [Close/Join/Width/Edit vertex/Fit/Spline/Decurve/Ltype gen/Reverse/Undo]: [Enter]

Note that the Do you want to turn it into one? prompt can be suppresses if you set PEDITACCEPT to 1. It’s also worth noting that if the properties of the objects vary, then the properties of the first-selected object will be used for the resultant polyline.

If you do a lot of this kind of operation, then it can be made more efficient using a menu macro. Some of us even made commands in LISP to simplify matters. A few releases ago, Autodesk did that for us when it added the JOIN command. BricsCAD followed suit to maintain command compatibility. This command joins various things in various ways, and one of those ways involves creating a polyline.

JOIN

The JOIN command, when applied to the same kind of convenient end-to-end objects described above, performs the same task as PEDIT Join, but with fewer prompts. Why not use it all the time then? Because sometimes it doesn’t work (in AutoCAD, at least). See the video for an example.

Video – PEDIT Join and JOIN in AutoCAD and BricsCAD

BOUNDARY

The BOUNDARY command, unlike the joining commands above, does not require that the objects lie conveniently end-to-end. Any group of objects that form an enclosed area can be used to create a closed polyline. Also unlike the joining commands, the existing objects are not converted to a polyline. Instead, a new polyline is created on top of the existing objects. The current properties (layer, etc.) are used to create the new polyline.

Assuming you’ve set your current properties to match the objects you want to create, invoke the BOUNDARY command (short form BO). A dialog will appear. There are minor differences between the AutoCAD and BricsCAD dialogs, but nothing that need concern us here.

Just pick the button at top left and start picking inside bounded areas. When you’re finished, press Enter and you’ll be left with a bunch of closed polylines. This video shows how it’s done.

Video – BOUNDARY in AutoCAD and BricsCAD


Finally, you can cut out the dialog box altogether and go straight to picking points if you use the command-line version, -BOUNDARY (note the leading hyphen). Just enter -BO, pick pick pick, Enter and you’re done.

A & B Tip 5 – polyline areas

2 Replies

In this series of posts, I’ll be providing tips that show how to do something in both AutoCAD and BricsCAD, hence A & B.

The Series

The idea behind this series is to provide useful information for several sorts of reader:

  1. AutoCAD users.
  2. BricsCAD users.
  3. People in the process of transitioning from AutoCAD to BricsCAD and who need to know what to do differently (if anything).
  4. People considering transitioning from AutoCAD to BricsCAD and who want to know about the differences and similarities.

What area is that polyline?

There are several ways of determining the area enclosed by a polyline. This post goes through the various methods. You will also notice that in each of the methods, you get the length (perimeter) as a bonus.

Spoiler alert: the most efficient methods are at the bottom. There’s a one-click method in AutoCAD (it needs a little setting up first) and a zero-click method in BricsCAD.

LIST command in AutoCAD

The oldest method is the good old LIST command. Although this has been around for ever, here’s how it works in recent AutoCAD releases. Issue the LIST command, select the polyline, press Enter to finish the selection, and above your floating command line AutoCAD will show something like this:

If this display goes away and you want to see it again, hit F2 and it will return. If you have a docked command line, AutoCAD will display the information on the text screen, which it will then display:

If you have a floating command line but want to see the text screen rather than the over-the-command-line popup, you can switch to it using Ctrl+F2.

LIST command in BricsCAD

The command works in just the same way in BricsCAD as it does in AutoCAD with the docked command line.. The main differences are that the BricsCAD default interface has a docked command line, and that the text screen (called Prompt History in BricsCAD) is displayed even when using a floating command line.

If the text screen goes away or is obscured, you can restore it using the familiar-to-AutoCAD-oldtimers keystroke of F2 (not Ctrl+F2, which toggles the ribbon in BricsCAD).

Unit precision in BricsCAD

Another difference you might notice is that the only whole units are displayed. This is because BricsCAD respects the setting of DIMZIN when displaying values in the AREA command and AutoCAD doesn’t. In this drawing, DIMZIN is set to 8, which suppresses trailing zeroes. Because the area is exactly 448.0, BricsCAD displays it as 448. If DIMZIN is not set to suppress trailing zeroes, this doesn’t happen. If DIMZIN is set to 0, BricsCAD displays the area using the setting for linear units precision, LUPREC. If this is 4, the LIST command will display the area as 448.0000, as it does in AutoCAD.

This respect for DIMZIN applies in other places in BricsCAD too. For the remainder of this post I’ll have DIMZIN set to 0.

AREA command in AutoCAD

Another good old method is the AREA command. Issue the command, use the Object option and pick your polyline. You will be shown the area in two places as shown here:

AREA command in BricsCAD

The AREA command works similarly in BricsCAD. Although the options displayed indicate that the subcommand is Entity rather than Object, you can in fact use either E or O to initiate selection of an object. Unlike AutoCAD, the area is displayed in one place only, the command prompt area:

Note that the AREA command in both applications gives you more options, including adding together several areas.

Properties palette in AutoCAD

If you have the Properties palette visible (Ctrl+1 will toggle it on), you can simply select the polyline and the area will be displayed in the palette, thus:

Note that unlike the AutoCAD AREA command, the Properties palette does respect the value of DIMZIN. To display the trailing zeroes, first set DIMZIN to 0.

Properties palette in BricsAD

Using the Properties palette in BricsCAD is identical to AutoCAD. Here’s the display:

Quick Properties in AutoCAD

Quick Properties is a cursor-based cut-down version of the Properties palette. It’s not what you get when hovering, which is this:

What you want is Quick Properties, which you only get when you select an object, for example:

Unfortunately, Area is missing. It was there once upon a time, but there were performance problems so it was removed by default. However, you can add it back in. Invoke CUI and pick Quick Properties on the left. Scroll down on the right and pick Polyline.

Turn on Area (and Length if you want). Pick OK. Now see what happens when you select a polyline:

Note: in AutoCAD 2014 (and maybe others), the Area option was missing. There’s a workaround, but it’s a complex hack and well beyond the scope of this post.

Quad cursor in BricsCAD

The easiest way to find a polyline area in BricsCAD is just to hover over it. The Quad cursor will appear, giving you the information you need:

Alternatives

If you’re doing this regularly, it makes sense to automate it as much as possible. Depending what you want, menu macros might help. There are also various free LISP routines around that do this sort of thing, for example these by Lee Mac. If you have more specific requirements (e.g. automatic area label, export to CSV), then that’s the sort of thing I do for a living so feel free to get in touch.

A & B Tip 4 – turning on toolbars

6 Replies

In this series of posts, I’ll be providing tips that show how to do something in both AutoCAD and BricsCAD, hence A & B.

The Series

The idea behind this series is to provide useful information for several sorts of reader:

  1. AutoCAD users.
  2. BricsCAD users.
  3. People in the process of transitioning from AutoCAD to BricsCAD and who need to know what to do differently (if anything).
  4. People considering transitioning from AutoCAD to BricsCAD and who want to know about the differences and similarities.

Your First Toolbar

If you are using a ribbon-based workspace, you may want to have some toolbars visible, too. There are several reasons you might want to do this. You might want some buttons to be consistently visible, no matter what the ribbon state. Although the QAT in AutoCAD provides some toolbar space, you might want more space than it offers. You might also want toolbar controls that are not available in the QAT; several of them only work in conventional toolbars. You might want the buttons in a different place, such as down one side or on a second screen.

If you have at least one toolbar visible already, things are easy. If you right-click on that toolbar, you will get a menu that allows you to turn on any other toolbar in the same customization group (CUI or CUIx file). Here it is in AutoCAD:

Here’s the equivalent in BricsCAD:

Note that in BricsCAD, the list of toolbars is one level down because the first-level right-click menu in BricsCAD gives you many more interface options.

What if the toolbar you want to turn on is in a different customization group? You can get at those easily enough by right-clicking on any blank (unused) area of a docked toolbar area. AutoCAD:

You can do the same in BricsCAD:

The difference with BricsCAD is that you don’t need to have a docked toolbar with spare space in it to access toolbars in different groups. They’re all available by right-clicking any toolbar button, docked or not.

That’s all easy enough, but what if you don’t have any toolbars visible? You’re stuck in a Catch-22 situation. You need a toolbar to click on to load a toolbar. How do you get that first toolbar loaded?

AutoCAD Interactive Method 1

The first trap to avoid in AutoCAD is using the TOOLBAR command. From Release 13 to AutoCAD 2005, that was useful. With the introduction of CUI files in 2006, the TOOLBAR command became a near-useless cut-down version of the CUI command.

Ignore that. If you’re going to use the CUI interface, use the whole thing. Enter the CUI command. In the top left pane, pick the workspace you want to change:

In the top right pane, pick Customize Workspace. In the left pane, expand the Toolbars part of the tree and turn on one of the toolbars:

Pick Done (top right) and OK (bottom). Your chosen toolbar will appear.

AutoCAD Interactive Method 2

If you have your pull-down menu bar turned on, you can get at the toolbars using the Tools menu as shown here:

You can turn on your pull-down menu bar by setting MENUBAR to 1.

Thanks to James Maeding for pointing that out.

BricsCAD Interactive Method

In BricsCAD, you can turn on toolbars interactively even if there are none visible, without having to deal with the CUI interface. Just right-click in any part of the ribbon, and you will see the same menu you get when right-clicking a toolbar area. That gives you access to all of the toolbars in all of the groups.

AutoCAD Command Line Method

If you want to use the command line to turn on a toolbar, you need to use the -TOOLBAR command (note the leading hyphen). You also need to know the name of the customization group and what the toolbar itself. One example is the Object_Snap toolbar within the ACAD group. The command line required is therefore:

-TOOLBAR ACAD.Object_Snap Show

To be sure this will work in all environments, I recommend you add the special characters _ and . thus:

_.-TOOLBAR ACAD.Object_Snap _Show

BricsCAD Command Line Method

In BricsCAD, you don’t need the leading hyphen in the TOOLBAR command (although you can use it if you like). The customization group and toolbar names will be different, but the syntax is the same. For example:

TOOLBAR BRICSCAD.TB_EntitySnaps Show

The recommended special characters also do the same job in BricsCAD:

_.-TOOLBAR BRICSCAD.TB_EntitySnaps _Show

What’s new in AutoCAD 2019 for maintenance customers?

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So you’re a long-term customer who has used AutoCAD since it ran on an abacus. You paid for upgrades when you could and switched to maintenance (then called Subscription) when that became the only cost-effective option for keeping current. You’re not about to fall for the subscription (rental) trick; they can prise your perpetual license from your cold, dead fingers.

It’s no secret that the value for your maintenance dollar has been poor for years. Autodesk is jacking up maintenance prices in leaps and bounds; is the maintenance being performed at a rate that matches the amount being charged?

In short, is AutoCAD 2019 enough of an advance over its predecessor to make it worth the maintenance money you paid in advance for it? This post seeks to answer that question.

What you’re not getting

As a maintenance customer, you’re being denied the big item that would make the answer to that question a definite ‘yes’ – Specialized Toolsets. Despite the name and the There Can Be Only One hype, if you’re a renter you’re not getting one AutoCAD that has the extra bits available. You’re getting the availability of a bunch of seven different AutoCAD variants and one add-on (Raster Design), each of which needs to be downloaded, installed and run individually. This initiative has been unkindly referred to as ‘shovelware’, and it’s highly likely that throwing in all of these verticals for ‘free’ means that we’ve seen the end of their meaningful lives. Expect no significant future enhancements and you may avoid disappointment. However you look at it, it’s subscription-only and therefore need not concern us further.

Similarly, as a maintenance customer you’re not getting AutoCAD Web and Mobile. Despite the names, these aren’t AutoCAD. They’re simple online viewing tools with some editing and markup functionality.

What you’re getting taken away from you

You may recall me describing (and praising) the AutoCAD 2017 feature, Share Design View. This was slightly improved in AutoCAD 2018. In AutoCAD 2019 it has been revised again and renamed to Shared Views. Presumably, the Views you’re Sharing are no longer of Designs. Whatever the reason for the rename, it has a sinister connotation. Share Design View is considered obsolete and has been removed. Shared Views has been provided only to subscription customers. The upshot is that this is a feature removal. Yes, you’re getting negative value for your maintenance dollars. This is one of the more petty, vindictive attempts to convince you to go rental. Whoever put their hand up at the product meeting to suggest this particular piece of anti-customer nastiness probably got a gold star from Andrew Anagnost, but I don’t approve and I think it is likely to prove counterproductive.

Another feature that has been removed from AutoCAD in 2019 is the ability to export to FBX files. If you didn’t use this feature, you won’t care. If you used it as the basis of a Virtual Reality workflow to allow you to get your DWG 3D models into, say, Unity to create a virtual environment, then you will probably care a great deal. Similarly, FBX import has also gone. Autodesk’s suggestion that you use the DWG import and export feature in their other products instead is no use at all to you if you don’t use those products in your workflow.

Because Autodesk A360 has been deprecated, a bunch of related commands have also gone AWOL. The lesson here is to not get too used to any Autodesk cloud-based workflows; they could vanish on a whim at any moment.

What you’re getting

What’s left? What are you getting for your hard-earned? Here are some enhancements:

  • Some of the icons have been slightly modified. This includes the status bar icons. Unfortunately, Autodesk remains deaf to the many requests for the return of text to this area.
  • 2D graphics performance is supposedly improved.
  • The Graphics Performance dialog box now has a 2D section.

OK, these are minor tweaks. Some are welcome (performance), others (icon tampering) are just tinkering that nobody will care about. How about worthwhile new functionality?

Well, there’s one feature that many will find useful: Drawing Compare. But wait! Isn’t that new? Well, no. Let’s put aside the fact that this is just playing catch-up to a core BricsCAD feature. Purely within the AutoCAD world, it’s still not new. Drawing Compare has been available as an Autodesk-supplied free app since 26 April 2012. It’s still available now for AutoCAD 2016 and later, even though the one for 2013 to 2015 has been ‘unpublished’.

I’ll examine the differences between the AutoCAD 2019 core feature, the AutoCAD add-on and the BricsCAD core feature in a future post. I can tell you that Edwin Prakaso thinks the old add-in is better than the core feature, but I’ll compare the compares for myself and you can make up your own mind.

Summary

For Autodesk giveth (a bit) and taketh away (a bit more). Overall, maintenance customers are down on the deal. Customers are paying ever-increasing amounts for tiny or even negative benefits. Why do they bother?

A & B Tip 2 – realistic threads

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In this series of posts, I’ll be providing tips that show how to do something in both AutoCAD and BricsCAD, hence A & B.

The Series

The idea behind this series is to provide useful information for several sorts of reader:

  1. AutoCAD users.
  2. BricsCAD users.
  3. People in the process of transitioning from AutoCAD to BricsCAD and who need to know what to do differently (if anything).
  4. People considering transitioning from AutoCAD to BricsCAD and who want to know about the differences and similarities.

Realistic Threads

This post explains how to create realistic-looking threads for screws, nuts and the like in your presentation 3D models. I don’t suggest you do this routinely because it will add pointless complexity to your everyday models, but occasionally you will need to make a model that looks highly realistic. For example, you might need a photorealistic rendering of an assembly or an exploded view for a user manual. This example will use ISO metric parts, but the principles are the same for all threads. I’ll assume you have a basic understanding of creating 3D primitives and the boolean operations (union, subtract and intersect).

BricsCAD Standard Parts

The first thing to note is that unless you insist on the threads being helical, you probably have very little work to do. Have a look at this ISO M10 screw and bolt. It doesn’t have helical threads, but is it good enough for your needs?

If so, and if you have BricsCAD Platinum, you can save yourself a lot of work. I created this model using the Standard Parts panel on the left. To create the nut, I used ISO > HEX NUT > ISO 4033 > M10 x 1.5. Having chosen my component, I just dragged and dropped it from the panel (the bit that’s highlighted above) into the drawing and specified an insertion point. The screw was similarly easy: ISO > HEX NUT > ISO 4018 > M10 x 1.5 and Length 50.

Here’s a close-up. This is good enough for most cases, but if you’re picky you can tell the threads aren’t helical. If you’re really, really picky you can tell that the threads aren’t the exactly correct profile (e.g. no flats on the peaks or troughs).

Also, getting really, really, really picky, there is neither a runout of the thread at the top nor a spherical end at the bottom. If that’s not good enough and you need to construct a model that provides a completely accurate representation, how can you do this? Read on.

Creating helical threads in BricsCAD and AutoCAD

I’m going to recreate the above screw as our example, but will make it dimensionally accurate. For simplicity, I’ll ignore the hex head and just do the shaft part. I’ll use BricsCAD to work through this, but it doesn’t matter. The steps are exactly the same in AutoCAD. There are a few things in BricsCAD’s 3D repertoire that might make things a little easier than in AutoCAD, but I won’t be using them here. I will be switching back and forth between visual styles in order to better show what’s going on with the geometry, so don’t expect consistency between the images.

First, construct a few basic parts from solid primitives. Here are the dimensions you’ll need for doing that:

From left to right, we have:

  1. DIA 20 x 40 cylinder that has been unioned with an DIA 20 sphere
  2. DIA 10 x 50 cylinder
  3. DIA 10 x 1.25 cylinder that has been unioned with a truncated cone DIA 10 to 7 x 3.75

The next step is to create the thread. There are two parts to this: the path and the profile. The path is easy: we just use the HELIX command. Specify the center of the middle cylinder as the base, a base and top radius of 5 (but specify the base radius using a known point such as a quadrant), a turn height of 1.5 (that’s the thread pitch) and a height of 50.

You might be tempted to make a simplified profile using an equilateral triangle with a side length of 1.5 (the pitch). Hot tip: don’t do this. Unfortunately, this will cause problems. Both AutoCAD (usually) and BricsCAD (sometimes) may refuse to create the thread because it thinks it self-intersects. You can use a simple triangle profile, but you’ll need to make it slightly smaller than the pitch: scaling by a factor of 0.95 should do.

Instead, let’s do it more accurately. The profile can be created as a polyline using conventional 2D techniques. Here are the profile dimensions for an M10 x 1.5 thread:

Note: to be completely accurate, the thread profile should also have a root radius. Feel free to add one if you like.

Either draw this profile in place using an appropriate UCS such that it is vertical up against the middle cylinder, or draw it in WCS and then move it into place using the ALIGN command. Although having the profile located in the right plane and location is theoretically not necessary, in practice it makes creating the thread much less fraught.

Here’s a tip that will save you a lot of trouble later: move the profile very slightly away from the center of the cylinder. A distance of, say, 0.01 will do. Here’s what it should look like if you zoom in far enough:

If you don’t do this, your CAD application will get into trouble later when you try to subtract the thread, because the outside of the thread and the cylinder will coincide, causing problems for the software. Having the outside of the thread just slightly beyond the edge of the cylinder will prevent this issue. Instead of kludging things by moving the profile slightly as described here, you could alternatively draw the profile such that it’s dimensionally accurate but with an outside edge slightly beyond the cylinder. Just make sure you don’t extend the profile so far that you run into the self-intersecting problem.

Next, use the SWEEP command, select the profile and the path. That should give you this:

Subtract the thread from the cylinder. Now move the cylinder/cone primitive into place on top of the shaft using CENter osnap and union the two solids, producing the elegant thread runout you see here:

Move the cylinder/sphere primitive into place on top of the shaft using CENter osnap:

Finally, intersect the two solids, producing this domed end to the threaded shaft:

Here’s the finished product in BricsCAD after I added a hex head to the top, unioned the solids together and added a brushed metal material.

Summary

The steps are the same in AutoCAD and BricsCAD:

  1. Create the primitive objects you’ll use later to define the threaded object
  2. Create a thread path using HELIX
  3. Create a thread profile polyline and move it into position
  4. Ensure the profile extends slightly beyond the edge of the shaft
  5. Use SWEEP to create the thread
  6. Subtract the thread from the shaft
  7. Move the cone/cylinder primitive into place and union the parts
  8. Move the sphere/cylinder primitive into place and intersect the parts

If you want to do this in a nut or hole, use the same principles. You just need to reverse the thread profile such that it’s pointing outwards into the hole before sweeping and subtracting.