I received both Tricks and Treats for AutoCAD and Civil 3D after posting for readers to send Autodesk product tips and tricks as Tricks and Treats. There are 8 tricks for AutoCAD based products and 3 treats for Civil 3D for you to try.
For the 6 people submitting these tricks and treats I will send them something fun. If they are attending Autodesk University 2013, I will give it to them there and of course buy them a beverage of their choice as a small token of thanks for participating and sharing in the fun.
Enjoy the Tricks and Treats!
Tricks Submitted
For AutoCAD:
- Robert Lehman – SayIT.LSP when run in AutoCAD says Happy Halloween through your computers speakers.
Download SayIT.lsp
- Eric Guelen – Trick your colleagues with a Halloween sound and DWG when they double-click text. Instructions and required files in Halloween.zip
Download Halloween.zip
- Greg Battin – Speak.LSP Redefines some commands to prompt with funny messages from your computer speakers including the SHAAN command (bonus points for sure). Download Speak.lsp
- R.K. McSwain http://cadpanacea.com submitted 2 tricks
- Trick #1 bub.lsp This LISP has been around for ±20 years here. Load it on a machine then wait for the user to come and ask you what's going on, point out that the current layer is off, then wait for them to turn it back on. Download bub.lsp
- Trick #2 Requires about 60 seconds on the victims unlocked machine (works best on single monitor systems)
- Maximize AutoCAD (optional: open some palettes and dialogs)
- Use the Windows Snipping tool to capture a screenshot of the entire desktop.
- Save this image to a JPG file.
- Minimize (or close) all apps.
- Right click on the desktop and choose View>Show Desktop Icons (UNCHECK it)
- Set the saved image as the desktop background.
- Murray Clack submitted 4 tricks
- Trick #1 – Edit the text style being used in a dimension style by setting the fixed height to “0.00000001” which will appear in the STYLE dialog box as “0.000”, but no matter what text height in inputted in the dimension style, the dimension text will always appear TINY.
- Trick #2 – Set the cursor color to the same color as the drawing background
- Trick #3 – When a co-worker is away from their desk, set the AutoCAD sysvar MTJIGSTRING to say something funny like “You Suck” which will appear when they use the MText command
- Trick #4 – Create a piece of "blank" MText with background masking and stretch the limits to hide large portions of the drawing (the victim will then be looking for wipeouts, not MText)
Treats Submitted
Civil 3D
- Christopher T. Cowgill P.E. submitted 3 treats in one LISP routine.
Download C3D LayFreeze.lsp- The first subprogram is the guts of the program, it basically determines the layer of a selected sub entity of a Civil 3D object
- The second program will freeze the layer of the selected sub entity
- The third program will list the layer of the selected sub entity on the command line.
Thank you Robert, Eric, Greg, R.K., Murray, and Christopher!
Have a Happy and Safe Halloween!
-Shaan
