Friday, April 25, 2014

Stupid


If you save a spreadsheet, then print it, then click the button to close it, Excel doesn't ask if you want to save the file. Excel knows you didn't change anything. Excel isn't stupid.

If you save a drawing, then print it, then try to close it, AutoCAD asks if you want to save before closing. AutoCAD does not know that you didn't change anything.

//

This isn't a minor matter. It's not "just one more click". It's much more than that: AutoCAD disobeys me.

You didn't pay for "tidy"


If you're working on a drawing in AutoCAD and you close the drawing, then go into the Windows folder and try to rename that file, you get an error. Windows thinks the file is still in use because AutoCAD doesn't tidy up properly.

Sunday, April 20, 2014

Orion is setting


For the longest time I didn't know why I only see the constellation Orion in winter. Where is it in the summer? Below the horizon??

Finally figured it out. I was out with the dog just now, an hour or so after sunset, and Orion was setting in the western sky. That means it was up in the sky in the daytime. It didn't go anywhere. It was right there. But I couldn't see it because of the daylight.

So, that question is finally answered.

Saturday, March 22, 2014

Doesn't do anything for me


I started the computer the other day and got this surprise:


I clicked the "Click Here", but nothing happened. I waited, to be sure, and nothing happened. I guess that's just an example of what they mean by "End of Support".

Sunday, January 19, 2014

Forward slash


If you have one that you call a back slash, do you really have to identify which way the other one goes?

Friday, July 12, 2013

What did we pay for AutoCAD? What did we pay for AutoCAD?

The left pane of the AutoCAD Help window for the REGION command:


Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Assemblies that fit together in sequence

At my work, we build stuff that connects together, one after the other, in a particular order. We build the stuff in the same order. And we -- the AutoCAD users -- draw them in the same order. We don't have to draw them in that order, but it often creates confusion when we don't.

Simple minds.

Anyway, sometimes in AutoCAD I want to open three or four drawings at once. I click FILE:OPEN and then select the drawings in order, one after the other, the same order described above, and then click the OPEN button.

Used to be okay to select the files and then just slam the ENTER key to open them, but that doesn't work any more. AutoCAD fixed that a couple years back, and now I have to click the OPEN button to open multiple files. That was an "improvement".

Anyway, I select the drawings in the order I want them, and click the damn OPEN button, and the files open for me. But one of them is always out of order. I think it's the first one I select. Always out of order.

In the free Blogger program I use to write my economics blog, I just selected 8 graphs at once and loaded them all into the post I'm writing. I like to number my graphs when I write. And in this case, since there were so many, I just identified them by number when I named the files.

I selected them in order, one through eight, and clicked the button to upload them. And you know what? Blogger kept them in order.

Blogger kept them in order, for free. Too bad AutoCAD can't do that.