Sunday, July 29, 2012

"Improvements"


In Windows XP and even Windows 98, you could right-click on the upper-left corner of a window, and from the menu that opened you could select search (or, in 98, find) to search just the files and folders listed in that window. That's a lot faster than searching the whole hard drive.

Can't do that in Vista or 7.

Or you could right-click on a folder in the open window and search the folder you clicked. Can't do that either, any more.

Oh, and another thing


New to AutoCAD 2013, blocks and external references now have a visible, selectable border after you crop them with XCLIP. This border appears as additional lines in the drawing. It clutters things up.

Why would they do that, anyway? The purpose of cropping a block is to eliminate unnecessary stuff from your drawing. Yes, and then they add an unnecessary box around the part you wanted to be visible.

Yes, you can turn off the visibility of that border. But doing so only creates a more frustrating problem, because you cannot turn off the selectability of that border. You think you are clicking in a blank space on the drawing, and you end up selecting the block you cropped!

They fixed that


In AutoCAD 2012 I could use the mouse wheel to zoom in on a detail and, if I got too close, zoom out one click and zoom in one click, and the detail would be just a bit smaller on the screen. It was an excellent use for the mouse wheel.

AutoCAD 2013 fixed that. Now when you zoom out one click the detail gets smaller, yes. But then when you zoom in one click, the retail return to the same size it was before you zoomed out.

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Doesn't work in AutoCAD

In Excel you can select multiple worksheets, then click print and print them all. Doesn't work in AutoCAD. Only the visible paperspace tab prints.

In Windows you can right-click on an excel file, click print, and print the file you clicked on. This works, even if you have a different Excel file already open. Doesn't work in AutoCAD. AutoCAD just re-prints the drawing that's already open.

For the record: Apparently you can't buy Excel, you have to buy Office. The price ranges from $119.99 to $499.99, depending which version you get.

You can upgrade AutoCAD for $1995 or buy it for $3995.