2 Articles in AUGI Hotnews

Hello everyone. I just wanted you to know that AUGI was kind enough to print two articles of mine in Hotnews this month!! That's a record for me, two at one time!
They are about AutoCAD 2009 Action Recorder and Impression's similarities with AutoCAD.

Here are the links:

Action Recorder

Impression: A Familiar Face

I hope you find them useful.

How to stay up to date with AutoCAD

I have a treat for you today. Today's post is guest written by Ellen Finkelstein. She is the author of several AutoCAD books, including the AutoCAD 2008 Bible. Her latest, the AutoCAD 2009 Bible will be available soon. She has also written several books on PowerPoint and other topics. Here are some links to Ellen's website and blogs.

http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com
AutoCAD Tips Blog
PowerPoint Tips Blog

Thanks Ellen for sharing with us.

How to stay up to date with AutoCAD

AutoCAD is a complex program and it's crucial for your work. Obviously, the better you know how to use the program, the quicker and more accurate your drawings will be. This is where the importance of education comes in.

Education has two parts:

• Learning more about the base AutoCAD features that you use, or could use.
• Keeping up with new releases as they come out

Some organizations upgrade only every few years. I sometimes get e-mails from people who are upgrading from R14 to R2008! But many upgrade every two or three years, which means that education is a regular feature of the job.

Autodesk has a subscription program in which you pay an annual fee and automatically get every new release. Additional benefits are "extensions" (new features released between major releases), e-learning tools, and Web-based support. While companies on the subscription program get each release as it comes out, they don't necessarily install and use it. But they generally upgrade more often than companies not on the subscription program. Even with the e-learning tools, retraining becomes a feature of life.

How can you learn as much as possible about AutoCAD and also keep up with new releases?

Basic learning resources

When you first learn AutoCAD, it may be from your dealer, from a book, or from on-the-job training. But it's never enough. Why?

1. You forget a lot of what you learned, because you don't use it every day.
2. New tasks arise and you need to discover the best method of completing them.
3. There's always pressure to be more competitive, which completing tasks more quickly. Therefore, you need to regularly incorporate new customization and automizing techniques.
4. Problems arise, whether due to the melding of drawings from many sources, network issues, having to incorporate multiple software applications, etc.

Here are some resources when you need to learn a new feature, answer a thorny question, or just find a better way:

1. Your peers: If others in your organization use AutoCAD, ask them first. They may have figured out what you need to know.
2. Books: Always have a good reference book on hand. The answer may be as simple as looking in the index or table of contents. (Shameless plug: Look on the right for links to my books.)
3. Discussion groups: The Autodesk AutoCAD discussion group is very active and will often give you an answer within an hour or two.
4. User groups: There are many AutoCAD user groups around the country and the world. Go to AUGI (Autodesk User Groups International) to search for the one nearest you. Their site is also a great source of support.
5. Courses: Many colleges, especially community colleges, offer courses in AutoCAD. The schedules are often geared around working people, so you can take them in the evenings or on weekends. Bonus: The teacher and other students can become a permanent networking resource. You can also purchase video courses.
6. Events: Autodesk University (annually) and CAD camps (several times a year) are great learning opportunities that offer classes specialized by discipline.
7. Newsletters: Several newsletters, including mine (AutoCAD Tips Newsletter), offer regular tips, techniques, and articles. Subscribe!
8. Web sites: There are loads of Web sites, too many to mention. Just start searching and you'll find many. They have free code to download, free tips, and lots more.

Updating your skills

There are several things you can do to specifically help you with new releases. Most of these are time-dependent, matching the cycle of the new software:

1. Beta programs: You can apply to participate in the AutoCAD beta program, which evaluates the software before it's finalized. You need to have some time to commit to this, as you're usefulness is related to the amount of testing you do and comments you submit. You'll learn the new features before they go to market, giving you a jump on the training process.
2. Upgrade training: Most dealers offer upgrade training for each release. Ask your dealer about it.
3. New feature articles: Just after a new release comes out, many sites and newsletters publish a description of the new features. For example, you can find my list of 2009 new features here.
4. If you're a subscription member, you'll have access to e-learning content for the new release.

Succeeding in the AutoCAD world means being a perpetual learner. Hopefully, this list will help you find the best learning tools.

Displaying Reoccurring Data in a Drawing Set

I started this off as a CAD-a-Blog QUICK TIP, but it got too long, but, do you ever need to show the same information, a name, number, amount, etc. on many of your drawings in a set ? Is that information subject to change through the drawing process? One way to deal with this is to use fields and sheet sets.

To set it up with sheet sets, open your sheet set manager. Load the sheet set you need. Right click on the sheet set name. Then open the properties window. At the bottom of this window is a button, EDIT CUSTOM PROPERTIES. Click it to open the Custom Properties window.

Here you can add any bit of information to your sheet set. Click the ADD button and fill it out. Give it a NAME and a default value. Click ok and close all of the windows.

Now go to your drawing file. Edit the text you want the info to show up in. This can be Mtext, Dtext, Leader Text, Multileader text, or in a dimension. Wherever there is text you can add a field, which is what we are going to do.

In your text editor, press CTRL+F, or right click and then click ADD FIELD. This opens the FIELD manager window thingy (I don’t know what it’s actual name is, sorry.) In the FIELD Category pull down menu, select SHEET SET. This will bring up all of your field options in that sheet set.

Go to the sheet set (in the Field Names menu), in the sheet set navigation (yes it’s complicated, but you’ll get it quick enough) browse to your sheet set (it should open up to the proper one automatically). Then select your field property in the PROPERTY menu at the bottom right corner, then click ok, ok, ok, etc.

When done, you will see the information displayed in your text. Do that on every sheet wherever you need it and when the info changes, just go to the sheet set manger, load your sheet set, open the custom properties again and edit that value. Bingo!! All instances where your field “links” to that value will be updated.

This is a real quick "how to set it up" kind of a tip. I plan on getting into it more deeply in later posts.

Happy CADDING!!

Review-CADsmart-Good for Managers?

I want to talk to you again about CADsmart. I have posted about it a couple of times now (here and here) giving you some information about the software. We first spoke about what it does, generally speaking. Then we took a look at the assessments and how they work. Now I want to look at CADsmart from the manager’s aspect. What can we do with the information we just collected?

CADsmart really excels in the larger firms and for assessing interviewees. It doesn’t perform as well with small firms that have four or five CAD techs. If you are managing only five CAD users, then you already know where they struggle and where they excel. But if you have twenty, fifty, a hundred, or more, then you don’t have the time to know them as well. That’s where CADsmart can help. I also like it when assessing interviewees. It provides a fair environment for the tester, which gives you a more accurate assessment. Many firms have customized their CAD environment and that can intimidate and overwhelm a candidate if they are trying to get a job by taking a test in a place they are unfamiliar with. Sometimes upper management doesn’t understand these types of situations. CADsmart is a fairer assessment process.

Now that we have assessment data on our CAD users, how do we get to it and what do we do with it? Access is easy enough. Go to CADsmart’s website and log in. You will need an account to be able to do this. We will talk about getting an account later on. When you log on there are several options available to you. You can go directly to the performance charts, or go to the assessment results.

The performance charts provide a quick visual guide to the information collected. You can see your scores sorted by group (employee, interviewee, etc.) The charts provide you with a performance spread in one graph and a stage performance in a second graph. This gives you an overall look and a more detailed comparison. There are different color codes to help you differentiate between the groups and the benchmark. Hopefully the benchmark is the lowest set of scores you have! Everything here is online, but you can get the data and print it, transfer it to a PDF, or export it to a spreadsheet. There are many ways to see the data and to get it to use for yourself.

The assessment results tab is where you can go to get more detailed information about the individual test results. You can sort the data by any column and in any order. You can sort it and then resort it by clicking on the headers. You can add and sort your users results by groups. The default groups are Employees and Interviewees. In my test I added groups for our departments; engineering and surveying. This is a nice feature if you need to manage the results from different offices or departments.

The assessment results tab lists each user by name. If you click on the users surname it will open up a window that provides the basic testing data (time, date, CAD platform) and recommendations for training based on the assessment results. If you click on the result score, another window opens up providing a more detailed analysis of each stage. It provides the end score, the time taken, and an analysis. The analysis lets you know what the candidate did incorrectly! This is a great feature because it can better explain to you why they scored the way they did. How useful is an assessment that just says, “You scored an 85%.”? Not very. At the end of the assessment results it compares the score and time with the benchmark letting you know how your skills compare. When you are finished, you can click the print button to print out the certificate (that’s what they call the data sheet.) I was disappointed that CADsmart didn’t provide other output devices as in the Performance Chart Tab like the PDF and Spreadsheet options. That’s how you look at and use the assessment data. It’s very simple to use.

There are other tabs too that you would expect; account details (name, address, password, etc.), resources (this is where you download the assessment software and instruction guides), software settings (turn off testing options like the clock, intro movie, welcome message, and extra candidate labels), booking system (where you can schedule assessment times), support (where to go if you need help), and logout (that one’s obvious!)

You can see that with CADsmart, managers have many tools available to them to better assess the CAD skills of their users. There are many resources to go to for help (like the managers’ video) and more instruction. CADsmart also has some customization features that might help you out too. Overall I feel that CADsmart is a good program and a great service. It is easily used and implemented.

The biggest question is; how much does it cost? CADsmart has two methods, the Premier and the Classic. The premier provides unlimited use and with all the assessment data, recommendations, the whole thing. The Classic level of subscription only provides unlimited use of the Assessment Software and access to your data. This might be enough for some managers. It will depend on you, your needs and your budget.

The pricing varies from the classic to the premier and by the number of users. It seems to me that they are looking for a general usage amount. The website states that you can assess your users as many times as you want including as many interviewees as you have.

The price difference on 1 to 15 users from the classic to the premier was only about $300 (U.S.), ranging from about $1500 to about $1800 per annum. The price on 100 users ranged from about $6300 to about $7500 per annum. You will need to check for yourself as prices may change. They also provide pricing for other countries. The more users you add the higher the price.

Depending on the amount of employees you have, the price will obviously vary. If you have about 100 users, then the cost will be about the same as one license of your CAD software! I think that is a good price and well worth the money spent. I feel that CADsmart is a good investment in your company.

Multileaders with Blocks

CAD-a-Blog posted earlier about Multileaders and Multileader Styles. Now lets take a look at Multileaders with Blocks for annotation.

When you set up a multileader style, you have three options for the annotation: Mtext, Block, or None. You can set this in the Multileader Style Manager under the CONTENT tab. It’s the first option in the tab. Just click the arrow and the available options will be displayed. Select the one you want. Today we want to look at the BLOCK setting.

This setting will create the callout as a block. You can pick from several standard blocks that come with AutoCAD, or you can use your own. Do what you need. If the standard blocks fit your needs, then why make one? If they don’t then make it the way you like it.

Having the annotation as a block works great for assemblies, subassemblies, charts, or any other drawing that you need to display similar objects in. The other great thing about making the annotations (or callouts) blocks is that it makes it so much easier to be able to extract that data from your drawing.

Imagine that I (or you) am working on a landscape drawing. It shows the types and amounts of different shrubs and trees that we need for the project. I can count each symbol, or I can use data extraction (see previous post) to read the multileader block information and count it for me, and place it in a table for my drawing or report.

The other benefit is visual. I can use different blocks to represent different types of objects. For example, in my landscape drawing we mentioned earlier, I can use hexagon shaped blocks for shrubs, round blocks for trees, and square blocks, for flowers. This will make the drawing much easier to read for other people.

If you want to get real fancy, create blocks with fields and extract that data, or tie it to other objects in your drawing.

Give multileaders with blocks a try. I think you will find them useful.

Happy CADDing.