Preview Guide: AutoCAD® 2000
Table of Contents PREVIEW GUIDE: AUTOCAD® 2000 .................................................................................................................... 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS ........................................................................................................................................... 2 HEADS-UP DESIGN ENVIRONMENT ..................................................................................................................
WITHIN A POWERFUL TECHNOLOGY FRAMEWORK .............................................................................. 34 ObjectDBX/ObjectARX .................................................................................................................................................. 34 HEIDI(tm) - 3D graphics pipeline.................................................................................................................................... 34 Windows and Web optimized ...........................
® Introducing AutoCAD 2000…Where Design Connects. By every objective measure, AutoCAD® Release 14 has been one of the most successful products in the history of design software with a customer base of nearly one million users. Developing and delivering a new release that delights even the most satisfied AutoCAD customer is the challenge that AutoCAD 2000 is designed to meet.
Heads-Up Design Environment Connecting you to a world of intelligent, automated design In a very real sense, AutoCAD 2000 represents a movement away from keyboard dependence into a world of efficient “heads-up” design. Features such as the Multiple Design Environment, AutoCAD DesignCenter (ADC), and Enhanced AutoSnap enable you to direct your attention to the drawing and the task at hand, thereby working smarter and more efficiently than ever before.
® Open Multiple Drawings in a Single AutoCAD Session AutoCAD DesignCenter™ The AutoCAD DesignCenter (ADC), similar to the Windows Explorer in appearance, provides a more intuitive and efficient dialog interface in which you can “mine your design.” With ADC you can easily view and copy data from any drawing⎯open or not. You can list drawing content such as blocks, layer definitions, layouts, and xrefs from sources as varied as local machines, network drives, and even Internet sites.
The AutoCAD DesignCenter also provides a powerful, timesaving Find tool that enables you to search for drawings using drawing content information such as a layer name or block name, summary information such as subject or title, or by drawing date. Once the drawing is found, you can load it into ADC and then drag and drop the entire drawing or any of its components, such as blocks or layers, directly into the currently open drawing.
Polar Tracking Tab of Drafting Settings Dialog IntelliMouse™ Support – Real-time Zooming and Panning AutoCAD 2000 supports Microsoft IntelliMouse and compatible pointing devices with Real-time Pan and Zoom features. Rotating the IntelliMouse wheel performs a Real-time zoom; clicking and dragging the wheel performs a Real-time pan and double clicking the wheel performs a zoom extents function. With these operations, drawing navigation proceeds smoothly and transparently—even in the middle of a command.
QDIM⎯Dimensioning with Four Picks Partial Open and Partial Load A significant overall increase in performance and productivity can be gained when working with large drawings by using the new Partial Open feature. With Partial Open, you can open any desired portion of a drawing and external reference files, based on saved views or customer-specified layers or the geometry shared by both.
smart object-demand-loading automatically loads the required data. For example, if a hatch boundary is modified, the hatch pattern definition will automatically demand load and modify accordingly, instantly providing feedback to you. 3DOrbit – Persistent Shading and Advanced 3D View Control AutoCAD 2000 marks a further advance in 3D visualization in AutoCAD software, making it both faster and more intuitive.
UCS per Viewport – Viewport Independent User Coordinate Systems Both new and experienced users will find it much easier to work in both 2D and 3D with the new UCS per Viewport feature. The User Coordinate System (UCS) can now be defined on a per viewport basis. This enables you to change from one viewport or view to another without having to reset the UCS.
IMPROVED ACCESS AND USABILITY Designed to clear your path. AutoCAD 2000 is continuing to shift the user interface from command-centric to design-centric and making the software more transparent throughout the design process. One way to accomplish this is to enhance productivity and make commonly used tools more accessible and easier to use. AutoCAD 2000’s productivity enhancements are designed to increase ease of use by automating certain tasks and by making AutoCAD more integrated with Windows.
Find –Find and Replace Text AutoCAD 2000 introduces the Find feature, which provides you with a quick and easy method for finding and replacing text within a drawing file. You can use the Find tool to locate text in block attributes, dimension annotations, and hyperlink/URL names. Once you have located text of interest, the Zoom option enables you to locate and zoom to it in the drawing file.
containing all circle objects found on a given layer can be built quickly. Once defined, a selection set can be further refined with additional applications of Quick Select. When used with the Object Properties dialog, Quick Select becomes a powerful, quick, and intuitive way of selecting and editing AutoCAD objects.
Five basic modes of shortcut menus are implemented in AutoCAD 2000 and all are customizable and extensible. The basic menu modes include the following: Edit-mode menu appears when you right-click with objects selected but no command in progress. For some high-level objects such as dimensions, the menu will display object-specific editing tools. Default menu appears when you right-click in the drawing area and no command is in progress or when a selection set is available.
Solids Editing toolbar Drawing Properties With Drawing Properties, you can embed ancillary data in drawing files and perform queries and retrievals of these drawing files based on this data. The drawing file then becomes more than just a repository for drawing data; it provides you with base-level file-retrieval and file-management capabilities.
Clockwise: dbConnect Manager, Data View, and Query Editor DXF Enhancements In AutoCAD, the DXF format is synonymous with the DWG format. The entire AutoCAD community has always been able to work with DXF files through the familiar commands that access and save drawing files. AutoCAD 2000 expands on this powerful capability by providing an improved database exchange, more “intelligent” DXF files, a higher degree of interoperability, and reduced loading times.
STREAMLINED OUTPUT Connecting from Design to Documentation AutoCAD 2000 is not just about making you more productive; it is also about better communications. AutoCAD 2000 includes many new features and enhancements intended to help you better communicate design intent.
Non-rectangular Viewports In AutoCAD 2000, viewports can be defined or clipped with any closed shape; they no longer need to be rectangular. This capability makes for a more efficient use of drawing presentation space and gives you the flexibility to better present viewport data by “designing” your viewports to fit the minimal area necessary.
New Viewports toolbar and dialog Plotting Enhancements Virtually all AutoCAD users generate output in one form or another. Most generate paper plots and, in AutoCAD 2000, many will want to produce DWF (drawing web format) or ePlot output as well. The streamlined plotting in AutoCAD 2000 offers ease of use, power, and flexibility tailored to your needs, and the new Plotting feature modernizes and updates AutoCAD software’s plotting functionality.
Plot dialog – Plot Settings tab Lineweights If you do not wish to use Plot Styles to control line thickness, AutoCAD 2000 introduces a new object attribute⎯Lineweight⎯to layers and objects in your drawing. Lineweights can be assigned from the Object Property toolbar and in the Layer Properties Manager dialog. Lineweight represents another AutoCAD 2000 WYSIWYG enhancement to viewing and plotting, giving you more control over screen display and printed output.
1. 2. 3. By entering a width and height in AutoCAD units. By assigning a height corresponding to the point size of a font contained in the OLE object. As a percentage of the current height and width. OLE Properties dialog True Color Support AutoCAD 2000 breaks the 255-color barrier with 24-bit True Color support of rendered and raster images, increasing the on-screen and hard-copy quality of both. The standard ZOOM command can also now be used on rendered images.
GREATER CUSTOMIZATION AND EXTENSIBILITY Connecting AutoCAD to your needs has never been easier AutoCAD software has always been open and easily extensible, but never more so than with AutoCAD 2000. The addition of the Visual LISP API to AutoCAD 2000, for example, not only updates the AutoLISP environment, it also greatly expands AutoCAD ActiveX support by including additional ActiveX objects and events.
Visual LISP Editor provides a complete Development Environment • Windows Integration. Visual LISP provides the following Windows integration and feature extensions: ! ! ! ! ActiveX automation interface for AutoLISP. Visual LISP reactors that respond to AutoCAD events. Additional operating system file-operation functions. Additional AutoLISP functions for list processing. Full Objectification In AutoCAD 2000, developers can now derive from all AutoCAD object-classes in the ObjectARX AcDb database.
VBA Projects With AutoCAD 2000, users and developers can build, load, and embed multiple VBA projects in AutoCAD, a great improvement over the single-project limit of Release 14. This enhanced functionality also lets users and developers rapidly distribute customized solutions built in VBA that need to remain with the drawing file.
Options dialog – User Preferences tab Toolbar and UI API Release 14 introduced ActiveX Automation as an AutoCAD API. AutoCAD 2000 leverages this interface by adding two new objects⎯MenuBar and MenuGroup⎯to the ObjectARX database. These additions provide a seamless integration of APIs, especially where toolbars are the preferred method of user interaction with the program.
WITHIN A POWERFUL TECHNOLOGY FRAMEWORK Under the hood of this extensive, yet friendly, product exists a powerful technology framework. AutoCAD 2000 is designed to solve the problems of today while creating the foundation for your needs tomorrow. A few of the key technologies included in AutoCAD 2000 include: ObjectDBX/ObjectARX Autodesk’s industry leading object oriented database (ObjectDBX) and accompanying API (ObjectARX) form the underpinnings of this release.
Up and Running in No Time Web Registration To get up and running quickly with AutoCAD 2000, you can go directly to the Registration website to obtain an authorization code any time of the day⎯or night! Installation Enhancements The AutoCAD 2000 installation procedure provides a virtually “hands-off” installation. You retain the flexibility to choose from several setup options including Typical, Full, Compact, and Custom.
In Summary We built this release of AutoCAD to meet your evolving design software needs. One of our goals with AutoCAD 2000 was to address many of the Top 50 Wishlist Items for AutoCAD functionality. This release is designed with you in mind: to provide the quality, performance gains, features, ease-of-use, and connectivity that you requested. We hope that AutoCAD 2000 will help you work smarter and more efficiently.
