A.I. for Kartell by Starck powered by Autodesk (Kartell)

Arthur Harsuvanakit | A Design Mastermind and His AI Apprentice

Arthur Harsuvanakit talks of designing a chair for Starck that is ergonamically perfect using 100% Recycled Material.

The interesting thing in the design of a chair is exploring its mysteries. Apart from its obvious ergonomic, industrial and ecological functions, there is also its meaning and its background and above all the background of the people who will experience it.” Ph.S

Dimensioning has been drastically over-hauled in AutoCAD 2016! Starting with a new layer control, you can preset what layer you want dimensions to be located on regardless of the current layer. With the new DIMLAYER system variable you can also create a new layer to be used.

Next item drastically increases productivity in dimensioning inside AutoCAD 2016 is its built-in intelligent feature that automatically creates the appropriate dimension with a preview based on the object you are hovering over during the creation process. For example, if you start the DIM command and hover your cursor over a linear object (e.g. Line…) A preview of a horizontal, vertical or aligned dimension will display. If the display looks correct, just pick the object (e.g. line) and them pick the dimension line location. The extension lines will automatically snap to the endpoints of the object you are dimensioning. Or… after picking the first line you can then hover the cursor over another non-parallel linear object and it will automatically switch to an angular dimension, you can then pick that object then place the angular dimension.  You can also force the type of dimension through the command line or the right+click shortcut menu during the process.
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Have you ever had someone else use your computer, or accidentally click on something that changed the way your AutoCAD operates or behaves? Or you just simply ran a Lisp routine and some of your settings were changed and not set back by the routine? If you have, you know how pain staking and time consuming it is searching around trying to get everything set correct again.

Well the good news is that AutoCAD 2016 now has System Variable Monitor that will not only alert you when a system variable(s) that you have specified changes, but you can reset them all back to your desired settings in a click of a button!

The new SYSVARMONITOR command enables you to identify system variables that don’t conform to your standards. The “System Variable Monitor” dialog box is preset with the most common inadvertently modified variables.

But it allows you to add or remove variables you want to monitor by clicking the Edit List… button.

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AutoCAD 2016 now offers a Geometric Center object snap. This was the #2 item on the AUGI wishlist.

When using the Geometric Center osnap you can snap to the geometric center of Closed Polylines, including Polygons and Rectangles. The Geometric center osnap appearance on screen is similar to an 8 pointed asterisk.

You can access it through the command line by typing GCE and works similar to all of the other AutoCAD object snaps. It can be set running (or ran as an override) using the same traditional AutoCAD osnap access and setting methods; including the Drafting Setting dialog box, the Status bar, and the Right+Click contextual menus, (including the Shift+Right+Click menu).

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Well AutoCAD 2016 is out and loaded with a bunch of new features, and once again I will be covering a lot of them in my up-coming blogs and community sites. Although, this is a great way for or clients to be aware of what is out there, it still makes me wonder how many people really take advantage of these new tools or really learn how to use them properly to make their jobs easier? This reminds me of a conversation I had with an artist that made Hand Crafted Furniture. He took pride in making each piece with “no modern electric tools”. His pieces had a few flaws, which he explained is what made them “unique” and of course everything was overpriced, because they took so long to make, which also made them very difficult to sale. He did some neat stuff, so I asked him if he had a shop. His answer was “Are you kidding me, I am a starving artist, I’m just hoping to sell one of these to pay for my gas to get home.”  This got me thinking… Being an Educator and Consultant of AutoCAD software for a long time now… “What would happen to the CAD industry if everyone took the same approach?” Answer is simple; we would all become “Starving Artists”. (I am not saying there is anything wrong with that. But I can bet the starving part is NOT by choice.)  So from a business standpoint, I am sure we can all agree taking advantage of newer technology; will not only make your life easier, but in most cases make them more profitable.

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If you are like most people, the first time you opened your AutoCAD 2015 the first thing you probably did is start closing all of the palettes that popped up on your screen, (like everyone did with AutoCAD 2014 and so on) to get it back to the way old way you are used too. That’s typical human behavior. So I figure it is my job to explain what that palette you closed does. From there you can make the decision whether you think that this is something you feel could be useful in your normal everyday workflow to help communication with your Coworkers, Clients, Consultants or Contractors.

So to start, what is AutoCAD Design Feed? The Design Feed palette provides a way of adding and sharing messages and/or images to your AutoCAD drawings online through Autodesk 360. The posted content is available to in the drawing to review, respond or resolve whether you access them from your desktop, over the web, or on a mobile device.

With that said, most people shied away from this feature because they did not want to store their drawings on the Autodesk 360 cloud. Completely understandable. However, now in AutoCAD 2015 they have offered an alternative and allow you to store your AutoCAD drawing locally on your computer. Please note you will still need your Autodesk 360 account for sharing the Design Feed Posts linked to the drawing, but only the Design Feed Data is stored in your Autodesk 360 and is maintained by a unique Design Feed ID that is linked to your local drawing. You can also store your Drawings on a server and have the Design Feed access the ID from the server location, rather than having to manage files over multiple computer locations and user access is still manage by the permissions set by the server.

You can open the Design Feed Palette from the Share and Collaborate panel on the Autodesk 360 Ribbon tab.

Bubbles are displayed on the drawing if you post a comment using an area or a point and can zoom the drawing to that location when selected on the palette or select the bubble and it will highlight the associated comment on the pallet.

You can control the display of the bubbles in the settings.

You can Tag anyone to notify them by email for changes, comments or questions associated with the drawing and noted in the Design Feed palette.

After posting a comment or image to Design Feed the data is saved to Autodesk 360 and anyone that has access to the file are able to view them. If you no longer need a comment, or the associated replies, you can resolve it to hide it in the palette.

When you save the file under a new name you have the choice to save the Design Feed comments as well, and a new ID will be created for the new file independently of the original.

You can also choose to remove Design Feed data if the file is eTransmited, Archived, or DWG Convert.

Overall, I found that this feature is useful in some cases. When testing, it was neat to have a live interaction with comments and images that get attached to areas or points in my AutoCAD drawing and have that shared interaction with other people even when I had the drawing open in read-only mode. We did have some trouble with reading some emails when sending an invite Autodesk saying they were not valid emails, (even though they were) but that only controls the invites, if they have another email I would try that one, so remember it does not have to be the email associated with you Autodesk 360 login, (That is just for the Design Feed Data ID updates.)

I have listed some links to some very useful videos (by Heidi H. at Autodesk as well as some as the images in this blog) that I think you will enjoy, one for the introduction in AutoCAD 2014 and the added new features in AutoCAD 2015 below.

AutoCAD 2014: Design Feed

http://youtu.be/dw53FfI6jXM

What’s New in AutoCAD 2015: Design Feed

http://youtu.be/jRKfj-8jJtk

And as an additional useful tip; if you notice that the Design Feed palette does not update immediately after you save a drawing in Autodesk 360, then you can force it to update with a right-click on the Autodesk 360 icon, located on the Windows taskbar, and then select Sync Now.

That’s all for this year! I hope you were able to benefit from some of my blogs this year and I look forward to next year with more AutoCAD tips! Have a Happy Holiday Season and New Year!

Since my last Blog was about Text features in AutoCAD, I recently got a support request from one of our clients that made us have to stop and scratch our heads for a minute on the capabilities of using the Find/Replace command with wildcards in AutoCAD. It seemed that in some cases the text would not me found and in others we would lose valuable information. So, after several trial and errors we finally were able to get the command to accomplish what the client needed (and after losing a few hair follicles along the way too!). So I thought this was a perfect time to add to last month’s Blog; so I wanted to share my findings with you…

First let me set the stage of what the customer wanted to do.

They had an AutoCAD Structural drawing with Mtext calling out the member sizes and some of them with the quantities if there were multiple beams, obviously to avoid unnecessary duplication and better drawing clarity. The naming convention was standard (i.e. W12X18 [24]) which denotes a Wide-flange beam 12” by 18” and a total count of 24 beams and so on.

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