Between the Lines

Autodesk University 2018 Tips

We are now less than two weeks from Autodesk University! Autodesk University is the premier Autodesk customer event held yearly where several thousand creative design and visualization experts descend on Las Vegas. They arrive wide eyed, craving knowledge from the best in the industry. They leave tired and full of valuable knowledge to make them more productive back at work. After attending every Las Vegas based Autodesk University, I have compiled a long list of tips over the years for... Read more →

Inventor Tip: Frame Generator Custom Notch

This Autodesk Inventor tip was submitted by Peter Barker. Whilst the ‘Notch’ tool available within Inventor’s Frame Generator is very powerful, it doesn’t always give us the exact shape we would like to manufacture. Take a look at the example below: The default notch of the circled area would give us the following profile: But would we really cut the Frame end to that shape? Maybe not intentionally! More likely we would want something simpler such as this: This can... Read more →

Share How to Do Something Using Screencast

Autodesk Screencast is not your ordinary screen recording tool, its purpose built for Autodesk products and FREE. Screencast records: Keystrokes Mouse movement and clicks Commands on the timeline Screencast supports AutoCAD, Inventor, Maya, Fusion 360, 3ds Max, Revit, InfraWorks, and other popular Autodesk products. Go Record, Edit & Share! https://knowledge.autodesk.com/community/screencast You can also just watch some Screencasts to learn something new and follow along with every click, pick, and command they use. Choose a product to see its Screencasts Questions?... Read more →

Free Training Courses

In addition to all the free great classes and keynotes from Autodesk University (Autodesk University 2017 Classes Posted), LinkedIn is providing 40 courses for free covering Autodesk product training and certification preparation, construction management, technology like artificial intelligence, and business. In addition to English some courses are available in French, German, Japanese, and in Spanish. LinkedIn Learning Teams Up with Autodesk to Offer Free Access to 42 Technology Courses Go get some new skills, for free! Read more →

Migrate Settings from an Older AutoCAD

So you are upgrading from an older version of AutoCAD to a shiny new version, and you want to know how best to accomplish the migration of your settings from old to the new. Luckily we have that covered for you in our Autodesk Knowledge Network. Read more →

Autodesk Answer Day is Tomorrow May 18th

If you have Autodesk product questions, we have answers. Join the big Autodesk answer day tomorrow online and speak with people from several Autodesk product teams. What: Autodesk Answer Day – You have questions, we’ve got answers! Date: May 18th, 2016 Time: 6am to 6pm Pacific Time Products: AutoCAD, Maya, 3ds Max, Civil 3D, Revit, Inventor, and Vault. http://autode.sk/answerdays Read more →

Big Autodesk Answer Day May 18

It’s free. It’s easy. It’s Autodesk Answer Day. Join us online May 18th, 2016 for the next big event. Have questions that you’ve always wanted to ask? We’ll be answering questions in the AutoCAD, AutoCAD Civil 3D, Revit, Inventor, Vault, Maya, and 3ds Max forums. What: Autodesk Answer Day – You have questions, we’ve got answers! Date: May 18th, 2016 Time: 6am to 6pm Pacific Time Topics: AutoCAD, Maya, 3ds Max, Civil 3D, Revit, Inventor, and Vault. http://autode.sk/answerdays Read more →

Check out the Autodesk Fusion 360 Design Differently Blog

There is an Autodesk Fusion 360 blog named Design Differently that has great tips, tricks, and info like what is in the latest monthly Fusion update. If you are a Fusion 360 beginner or a seasoned Fusion user looking for advanced techniques and inspiration this might be the perfect regular resource for you. http://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/blog/ There was a post this week detailing the latest Fusion update that was far more than just a new logo. April 13, 2016 Fusion Product Update... Read more →

Great Fusion 360 Article & Training Resources

I just spotted a great Fusion 360 article by Josh Mings of SolidSmack and had to share. Fusion 360 Model Features You Have to Try: Part Modeling If you want to learn the basics of Autodesk Fusion 360, check out the free live webinar being held tomorrow. Webinar: Fusion 360 Basics “Attend this session to learn the basics in Fusion 360. This is intended for those out there who are completely new users of Fusion and 3D design. After an... Read more →

Autodesk Fusion 360 Answer Day April 6th

The next Autodesk Answer Day is coming up on April 6th, 2016, from 6am to 6pm Pacific Time and will be on Autodesk Fusion 360. This is a live Questions & Answers online event where you can get all those burning questions answered by the teams that support and develop the product. Fusion 360 Answer Day Read more →

AutoCAD Save (Three Different Ones)

SAVE is one of the most common AutoCAD commands; we all know what it does, but did you know there’s more to save than just the little floppy disk icon? Here’s a look at the ins and outs of saving files, and pass the savings on to others! Read more →

Making Property Selection Filters in AutoCAD

When you have a large drawing to work it becomes necessary that you act smart in order to remain productive and reduce your drawing edit time there are many tools in AutoCAD which will help you in becoming more productive and efficient one such tool is Quick Select which can be used not only for making selection filters but it can also be used to count number of objects of a particular type in AutoCAD. Read more →

AutoCAD Shortcuts

You can work more efficiently within AutoCAD by knowing the keyboard shortcuts and be one step closer to being a power user or CAD Ninja. Whether it is the one key shortcuts or multiple key toggles it is just plain more efficient and faster to work. Autodesk has published in addition to the Help documentation a nice web page showing all the shortcuts for AutoCAD. Don't forget you can create your own shortcuts in AutoCAD but I will save that... Read more →

What is Autodesk Screencast?

Autodesk Screencast provides a whole new way to share knowledge in short video recordings and provide training with in-depth contextual meta data from Autodesk products like AutoCAD, Fusion 360, Inventor and Revit you see the commands, dialogs, and menu items on the timeline. The Screencast timeline allows you to scroll back through every details the person recorded to see exactly what they were doing step by step command by command. Autodesk Screencast also records non-Autodesk products but doesn't have the... Read more →

Keeping up Appearances with Autodesk Inventor

Guest post on Autodesk Inventor by Scott Moyse of Design & Motion. Back at the end of March 2012, Autodesk launched Inventor 2013. With that release came a more unified materials and appearance experience with other products in the Autodesk stable. At first it struggled, there were lots of bugs and it was a controversial change with many users. I personally loved the direction, but disliked the reliability and it was just clunky. With Inventor 2014 came a large number... Read more →

AutoCAD Deployment Tutorial

Do you need to learn how to install; or deploy AutoCAD easily onto computers? Don't go installing one by one on multiple machines wasting your time and others, do it fast and easily whether standalone or network licensed use the deployment feature. Read more →

5 Hidden Surfacing Tools in Autodesk Inventor

Guest post by Paul Munford of the blog CAD Setter Out blog. We all love Autodesk Inventor's smooth and clean user interface - but it can make some of Inventor's powerful surfacing tools tricky to discover. In this post we'll take a look at five surfacing tools you may wish you had discovered earlier! Create surfaces using solid tools A solid feature could really be thought of as an automatic way of creating a number of trimmed surfaces. All of... Read more →

Project Chronicle Google+ Hangout

Yesterday we held a live Google+ Hangout with Autodesk's Project Chronicle Product Manager Eric Stover and myself.It was a fun time with Eric and I in the Office of the CTO brainstorm room complete with lawn chairs on fake grass, but there was one big issue. We had over 50 people wanting to attend but found Google+ Hangouts have a limit of ~10. We want to thank everyone that was able to attend from as far as New Zealand and interact and ask questions, but also those that tried to attend. Read more →

Autodesk University 2013 Classes Online

Learn some new Autodesk product skills for free in this new year from some of the very best speakers and class content anywhere. If you attended Autodesk University 2013 but were unable to attend all the classes you wanted to or were unable to attend AU at all, this is your opportunity to enjoy the classes. There is also other great content like Innovation Forums and the keynotes available to watch on demand. The AU2013 classes are now available online:... Read more →

Drag & Drop Directories in AutoCAD for Mac 2014

It has always been a pleasure to publish a guest post from someone in the Autodesk community. It helps the guest author get more visibility among peers as well as shares some valuable knowledge with the readers of this Between the Lines blog, a win – win for everyone. This guest post is by Jim LaPier - blog www.macncad.com. Jim has been an AutoCAD and AutoCAD for Mac expert with his job using AutoCAD and supporting it. In AutoCAD 2014, a new tab bar was added to the drawing interface. This tab system allows for simple and quick drawing switching and also added the convenience of opening the parent folder of the current AutoCAD for Mac 2014 - Open File Locationdrawing. This may seam like a simple addition but it is one I’ve welcomed with open arms. At one point I even added a lisp routine to my AutoCAD setup that allowed me to accomplish this, so I was quite happy that by simply right-clicking on the tab, you can choose “Open File Location” and an explorer window will open at the files location. Why so happy you might ask? Most firms I’ve worked for use a fairly expansive series of folders to manage their projects. When I’m working in a drawing I often need to look at other files pertaining to the dwg file. pdf’s, images of the site, Excel bill of materials, etc. An option like this makes it so much easier than opening Explorer and navigating from Read more →

Happy Halloween - AutoCAD and Civil 3D Trick or Treats

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! Read more →

Autodesk Product Trick or Treat 2013 - Share in the Fun

Last week on this Between the lines blog fun competition was announced to share Autodesk product tips and tricks in the spirit of Halloween. Autodesk Product Trick or Treats 2013 Request for Submissions A couple great submissions have already been received. Both submitted were tricks and we need some treats to share and more products covered. Send in your trick or treats for Autodesk products lie AutoCAD, Revit, Inventor, Fusion 360, Civil 3D, InfraWorks, 3ds Max, and many more. We have thousands of daily readers of this blog and many are Autodesk product ninjas with great tricks and treats to share. Read more →

Autodesk Product Trick or Treats 2013 Request for Submissions

It is that spooky time of the year where people dress up in costumes and you guess if they are in costume, or if that is how they really look. Not many things in the office more awkward than commenting "Nice Halloween costume Kurt" and Kurt responding "what, I am not wearing a costume." To avoid the awkward situations, why not have some fun and also help your fellow Autodesk product users such as 123D products, 360 products, 3ds Max, AutoCAD, Civil 3D, InfraWorks, Inventor, Fusion 360, Maya, Navisworks, Recap Pro and Recap Photo, Revit, Smoke, or one of the many other Autodesk products with a tip or trick? Provide your best Autodesk product trick to fool or torture someone or a treat to help their productivity with a helpful tip or show something really cool that you created. I will with my very own personal wealth (small sandwich bag partially full of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters hidden in my closet) purchase some fun yet inexpensive gifts to gift to some of the submitters with the best tip and the funniest and most creative submissions. Guidelines are simple to follow as this is just for fun and not a contest or official competition. Submit a Trick Show how to prank someone like setting their mouse wheel zoomspeed to warp factor increments. More examples were in a past blog post AutoCAD Pranks. But please make sure the tricks are non-destructive and in the spirit of fun. NO setting their UNDO command to UNDO 3 times and save the file thus making them lose work. How about code to make their computer beep when they do something like use UNDO. Submit a Treat Show how to do something ninja like in an Autodesk product saving time and creating nice things. Or how about a pixel treat showing something really amazing you created using an Autodesk product. Make sure you try to keep the Trick or Treat short and simple but yet detailed enough that people will understand it. Screen captures, sample files, scripts and LISP are welcome. Deadline: October 29th,2013 Submit Your Entry or Entries Now Spread the word so we gets lots of tricks and treats to share in a series of blog posts on October 31st! Cheers, Shaan Read more →

AutoCAD Layer Translator Saves Time Converting Files to CAD Standard Layers

I get asked this frequently and was just asked again which caused me to think, “hey I should blog this.” I received a set of DWG files from a client and want to clean up the layers to my CAD standards, how do I do it and not take days or having to write code? The solution is actually quite simple, and powerful. Read more →

How to Manually Uninstall Software on Microsoft Windows

Have you ever been unable to uninstall some software, and the only thing you were accomplishing was pulling your hair out? Sometimes things happen when trying the normal uninstall method and you run into errors, and just need a fast and easy tool to remove the software application. This great tip comes from an Autodesk Knowledge Base article and applies to other Windows applications not just Autodesk products. Knowledge Base articles are published by Autodesk Support regularly based on support calls or internal discussions and research. Read more →