Dynamic Drain Block

The Dynamic Drain block is meant to be used in our grading plans. It is a dynamic block that will allow you choose from 10 different drain symbols and 3 pipe connectors. It can be inserted from several places:

1. Construction->Grading -Drains pulldown menu
2. Keyboard command: "Drain"
3. Toolpalette->Grading Tab
4. Grading Toolbar (shown below)

THE DYNAMIC BLOCK PROPERTIES
Once the drain block has been inserted into the drawing, click on the block to reveal the light blue dynamic block grips.

	A.) Rotation Grip - will allow you to rotate the drain as needed to be perpendicular to the pipe B.) Visibility State - will allow you to pick which type of drain you would like to use C.) Stretch to scale grip - will allow you to change how large the drain appears on the drawing.

THE ROTATION GRIP
Use the rotation grip to align the drain perpendicular to the pipe line. Once rotated to the pipe the pipe can be trimmed to the edges of the drain.

D.) Select the block to show the dynamic block grips

E.) Select the rotation grip to rotate the drain to the pipeline. This will align the drain perpendicular to the pipe. The nearest snap usually works best to snap to the pipe.

THE VISIBILITY STATE GRIP

The visibility grip will allow you to choose which of the drain blocks or utilities to use. There are 10 drains and 3 connector blocks shown once the visibility grip has been clicked on (shown to the right). A list of all the visibility states and their blocks are shown below. The connector blocks are meant to be used after the drain has been placed and rotated to be perpendicular to the pipe. Once, the drain has been placed and rotated, change the visibility state to one of the connectors. With the connector showing, draw a line snapping to the endpoint at the center and at the endpoint of one of the connectors. Change the visibility state back to the drain and use the extend command to extend the line to the next pipe.

THE STRETCH TO SCALE PROPERTY

Use the stretch to scale property to change the size of the drain. This is not meant to be an accurate inch per inch drain, but a representation of where the drain is supposed to go on a large scale drawing. The drain can be scaled in 6" increments.

Hatch Patterns That Look Broken

Why Do My Hatch Patterns Look Broken?

The farther away you get from 0,0,0, the harder it is for AutoCAD to process and make accurate calculations. To quote AutoDesk Support,

"When objects start to exceed 100,000 or 0.000001 units in precision, the mathematical calculations are at risk to push beyond the processor limitation."

The result is a hatch pattern that looks like the image below.

How Do I Fix The Problem?

A.) Either Double click on the hatch pattern or use the "HATCHEDIT" command and select the hatch pattern you would like to edit.

B.) In the Hatch Origin panel click on the "Click to set new origin".

C.) There is no magic to this, but the point to select for the origin should be somewhere very close to the hatch pattern. I usually pick the lower left corner of the hatch pattern.

Click "OK" and now your hatch pattern should look normal once again.

The Risks Of Copying and Pasting Blocks

Why Do My Blocks Look Different From Drawing To Drawing?

There is one reason really:
The block was already in your drawing and the block has been edited.

The Problem
It is ironic that we create block libraries to develop continuity in our drawings, but because they can be edited, they are one of the items that can cause a lot of problems. The more a block is edited, the higher probability you have some sort of block problem with your drawings (especially if you are collaborating with people within the office). This problem will manifest itself when copying and pasting blocks from one drawing to another.

Block Characteristics
Blocks have this distinct characteristic, "the first block there wins", and by that I mean if an edited block is in the drawing before the standard block, the standard block will look like the edited block. Inserting a block from a palette, pull down menu, or dialog box will not always insert the most current and up-to-date block from the block library. It will only be the most current and up-to-date block, if that block has not been inserted before. If the block has already been placed in that drawing, AutoCAD will continue to use the block already stored in the drawing.

Common Scenario
One of the most common scenarios, is the copying and pasting of plant blocks from one drawing to another. Which block you will see? It all depends on which block was there first (shown below).

A.) The edited block has been turned green
B.) The standard block on the right has been copied.
C.) The standard block has been pasted into the drawing with the edited block. Notice that the standard block now looks like the edited block.

Color is not the only item that can be changed. Changing the scale, insert units, and attributes are all quite common issues as well.

Fixing A Standard Block
To fix a standard block back to the original, use the Update Block command (TBG shortcut "UB"). If the name of the block is the same as the one in our standard library, update block will change all the blocks with that name in the drawing to the original standard block.

Please be aware....
Some blocks may have different insert points (due to editing) and may not appear in the same place. A good example would be updating our "older" spot grade symbol to the "newer" spot grade. They have different insert points. If this happens, just use the undo command to put them back the way they were.

Relative Paths For Reference Files (DWG, JPG, TIFF, DGN, DWF, & PDF)

Relative paths are partially specified folder paths for reference files (DWG, JPG, TIF, DWF, DGN, and PDF's in AutoCAD 2010) that assume drive letter of your current drawing and the common folders (or path) of the current drawing.

Relative paths enable you to:
1. To move a set of drawings from your DD or SD folder set to the CD folder set without having to remap images, drawings, DWF’s, or DGN’s
2. To rename a project folder that uses the same folder structure (if they are already relative xrefs).
3. Allows consultants to keep the same folder structure (or close to it) and find our drawings.
4. Also, makes archiving drawings easier, because the links to the drawing or image paths will not be lost.

All reference files have 2 different paths:
1. "Saved" path
Tells AutoCAD what the path type is. (Relative, Full, or No Path)
2. "Found At" path (is editable and can change the Saved Path)
Is an editable display of where AutoCAD is finding the drawing based on the path type just by clicking on the path. Notice how the two paths differ below.


The 3 ways to make a reference file path a relative path:
1. When inserting the reference file, choose the relative path option. The current drawings must be saved to use this option.

2. Run the Xref Repath command or "XRP" to change existing reference file paths to relative paths. (Click on the images to enlarge)

3. Manually change the “Saved path” by changing the “Found At" path.


How do I manually change my reference path and what do all the symbols mean?
1. Host drawing path (or in other words the drawing you have open for this example is:

"Z:\TBG\Bridgelands\Parkway Planting (A06353)\04 CD\Work\A06353-plant.dwg"

2. In this example, all changes will be made to the xref (or reference file) after it has been inserted into the drawing. These changes will be made in the "Found At" location of the xref dialog box. Once "Enter" is pressed after changing the path, the "Saved Path" location will change to a relative path.

When Folders Are The Same:
3. ".\" (1 period and a backslash) Means the image or drawing is in the same directory as the host drawing listed above, or in other words, the directory path is exactly the same.

Host:
Z:\TBG\Bridgelands\Parkway Planting (A06353)\04 CD\Work\A06353-plant.dwg
Reference:
Z:\TBG\Bridgelands\Parkway Planting (A06353)\04 CD\Work\A06353-site.dwg

That will then leave you no remaining folders. Remember the site file is referenced into the planting file and that is one you are changing. Because these are in the same folder there will only be one (1) period before the backslash. This is the only different one. All other examples follow the pattern below.
".\A06353-site.dwg

When Folders Are Not The Same:
4. "..\" (2 periods and a backslash) Means the image or drawing is in the same directory as the host drawing but one folder was different. You can add as many "..\" as needed like this "..\..\..\" .

Shown below is the host drawing path and the reference path. What a relative path will do is remove the common path shown in light gray below:
Host:
Z:\TBG\Bridgelands\Parkway Planting (A06353)\04 CD\Work\A06353-plant.dwg
Reference:
Z:\TBG\Bridgelands\Parkway Planting (A06353)\04 CD\Xref\A06353-civil.dwg

That will then leave you with the folders in Red. You will then replace each folder with a "..\" Remember the civil file is referenced into the planting file and that is one you are changing.
Work\A06353-Planiting.dwg
"Xref\A06353-civil.dwg" will become "..\A06353-civil.dwg"

Now you have all the information you need to automatically or manually change your reference files.

AutoCAD - Layer Names and Structure

LAYER STRUCTURE:
The Layer structure at TBG has been organized according to, type of drawing (category), topic (sub-category), and detailed topic (sub-category descriptor), and/or scale specific items. This layering system is a hybrid of our previous system of layering and the AIA standard. The AIA layering standard would have all of our layers starting with "L". The naming structure looks like this:

LAYER NAME & DESCRIPTION
0S-walk-bldr-The first two letters “0S” designate the Classification of the layer
0S-walk-bldr: The next four letters designate the Division. ** The Division should not exceed 4 letters
0S-walk-bldr: The next item we can call the Sub-Division. ** The Sub-Divisions should not exceed 4 letters
0A-note-A-0010: “A” is the Category for that note. There are categories A,B, and C.
0A-strt-0010: ”0010” is the Scale in which that item was drawn. Any layer that has the scale at the end of a layer name is typically called a Dimscale Layer.

Converting A PDF To JPG Or TIFF

Believe it or not, opening a PDF in Photoshop is not the only way to convert a PDF to a JPG or TIF. Photoshop does a lot of interpretation of a PDF when it is opened, and depending on if the PDF was scanned vs. printed to PDF it may interpret the pixels differently and elongate them making the image a different size. I propose a more stable way to convert PDF's to images.

A. Open Adobe Acrobat (not Reader).
B. Open the PDF you would like to save to an image. Then go to the "File->Save As" option and choose the "Save As" command.

C. When "Save As" dialog appears, there should be an option at the bottom of the dialog box to let you choose which format to save that PDF. (There is also an options dialog once selected that we will not cover here).

D. Click the "Save" button to complete the conversion. Now you have a PDF the correct size with a standard pixel width, the correct scale, and paper size.

Grading Flow Arrow Dynamic Block

Every once and a while you need a flow arrow to either:
A. Show Direction of a slope
B. Show directioin and size of Pipe
C. Or just show the size of pipe and slope.

You can find the Grading Flow Arrow in several places.
For the command line type "GF".
For the Toolbar Button, it is on the TBG Cadscape - Grading Toolbar
For the Palette, it is on the grading tab
For the pulldown menu, it is on the Construction->Grading-Flow Arrow

The grading arrow (shown below) shows the arrow and how it is to be placed on the pipeline. Once placed on the line, the arrow can be flipped 180 degrees, flipped to the other side of the line, stretched, rotated to match the line, or changed to one of the three visual states that exist on on the flow arrow.

To place a flow arrow with no text on a pool deck or sidewalk just to show the general direction of water flow use the Flow Arrow No Text.

To just add text to a pipe to show size and slope of the pipe use the Piping Text.


If the line moves:
1. Use the base grip to move the arrow by snapping to the new location.
2. Use the rotate grip (shown as a blue circular grip) to rotate the arrow to the new location.

Exporting an AutoCAD Table to Excel

You can export a AutoCAD Table to Excel with a few easy steps.
1. You will need to have your right click set up for the short cut menu option.
A.. Type "OP" or "Options" on the command line.
B. Go to the "User Preferences" tab.
C. Click on "Right Click Options"
D. Check the "Enable Shortcut Menu"

From TBG's Two Minute Training

2. Select the outer boundary of the table. Do not select a cell only, this will not work. You will need to select the entire table for the shortcut menu to appear.

	Notice that only the cell is slected and not the entire table. If you have selected a cell by accident then hit ESC a couple of times and try selecting the outer border again.

	This table has been selected. You can tell the difference by noticing how everything in the table is highlighted. Once everything is highlighted, right click to bring up the shortcut menu.

3. Select "Export" on the shortcut menu to export the table to .csv or (Comma Seperated Values) which Microsoft Excel can read. If you open up a .csv file with notepad, will will see every cell that was in table is seperated by commas. When opened with Excel, it will interpret the data into columns and rows.

Once "Export" is clicked on it will ask you where to save your file. Select your project folder and place it in the appropriate folder

4. Once the file has been exported. Either open Excel and open the .csv file or double click on the .csv file to open it (it should default to Excel).
5. Now you have successfully exported an AutoCAD Table to Excel.