|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Meeting MinutesPast meeting minutes for 2000: August through December 2000 meetings were cancelled.July 20th, 2000 meeting minutes: Topic: Programming Options for AutoCAD. Dave Stein (http://www9.ewebcity.com/dstein1/, see more contact information on the "Friends" page) showed and explained the advantages of AutoLISP, Visual LISP, Visual Basic for Applications and Visual Basic (standalone). The Visual LISP environment colorcodes special characters (comments, parenthesis, etc) for easy reading and writing code. Shortcut keys allow for fast jumping around the code. Dave quickly wrote a few short programs with different programming methods, and fielded questions from attendees. On a borrowed notebook computer, Dave showed us the just-released AutoCAD 2000i, and demonstrated several of its new features. Accessing the Properties for objects now only requires double clicking, instead of right-clicking. The UCS icon is different, taking up less screen space. Internet access is easier, and regen speed is also improved. Dave demonstrated the improved Help section, especially the section for programmers and developers. For the door prize, a copy of AutoCAD LT 2000 was given away. June 22th, 2000 meeting minutes:Topic: AutoCAD Attributes. Paul Burgener demonstrated the creation and usage of attributes, using a simple 3-cubicle office floor plan, and symbols of furniture and telephones. Paul created block attributes for the weight, price and model number for the furniture. For the telephone blocks, Paul had the person's extension, name, salary, and department. Using Notepad, Paul developed and explained an attribute template file. After extracting the attribute values with the template file, Paul imported them into Excel and calculated the total payroll of the office staff, and the total price and weight of the furniture. Nearly all the attendees contributed to the discussion with descriptions of their usage of attributes. Various options within Excel were discussed and tried. Because of the interest of the attendees, the meeting didn't adjourn until after 8:30, possibly a record for the longest meeting. For the door prize, a copy of AutoCAD LT 2000 was given away. May 18th, 2000 meeting minutes:Topic: AutoCAD 2000 Tips and Tricks. Lee Pitts, electrical AutoCAD operator and Night School instructor, demonstrated several shortcuts in AutoCAD 2000 and earlier releases. Several of these are real time savers and only require right-clicking at the right time and place. Others are all-but-forgotten, but still useful from the DOS days of AutoCAD. Sorry, no door prize was given this month. April 20th, 2000 meeting minutes:We didn't have any meeting in April. The presentor, the chair and the host at the VA Center all had plans or problems that made the meeting inconvenient. Because of all the conflicts combined, the meeting was canceled and rescheduled for May 18th. Sorry. March 16th, 2000 meeting minutes:Topic: Field Trip to Ridgway's Reprographics http://www.ridgways.com. For the first time, the group met off-site, at the Virginia Beach Ridgway's shop. John Barberio hosted the group through a tour of the Ridgway's shop and equipment. Ridgway's provides a variety of services:
Many times the old methods prove to be best. Blue line copying (ammonia blueprints) is still very popular, being fast and inexexpensive. Color drawings still haven't gotten out of design shops, except for advertisements and artistic renderings. Blue or black line drawings are still prefered at construction sites, costing only 20 cents per square foot. Sorry, no door prize was given this month. February 17th, 2000 meeting minutes:Topic: Dimensioning Procedures and Standards, using AutoCAD 2000. Paul Burgener, chair of the group, demonstrated making, using, and modifying Dimension Styles and Sub-Styles. The attendees discussed many dimensioning topics including Alternative Units, Arrow head specifics and colors, text placement and orientation, adding text and special characters, tolerances, changes since R14, and centerlines. The atmosphere of the meeting was unusually casual, with over half the attendees contributing with questions and answers. On occasion, the conversation strayed into tangent topics such as Paper Space, True Type Fonts, input devices and styles, and many others. This month's door prize was an AutoCAD 2000 LT. January 20th, 2000 meeting minutes:Topic: Architectural Desktop (ADT) Version 2. The guest speaker for the meeting was Rick Feineis of Avatech Solutions at http://www.AVAT.com/site/index.stm. Attendance was unusually low, especially for a major topic as ADT. The severe weather of the day was to blame. Most schools had closed, which kept parents at home. Several businesses shortened the work day or simply didn't open. The low attendance, however, lead to a very informal atmosphere for the group. Rick covered topics wherever questions from the floor directed. Before Rick's presentation, Jesse Bacon, of the Veteran's Affairs Facilities Department, showed the group one of the larger AutoCAD files used by his office. Developed by a contractor, the 2D drawing provided locations of buildings, pavement, utilities and even the approximate "shadows" of every tree on the VA Center. Lead by questions from the attendees, Rick demonstrated Partial Opening and Loading of drawings, Lineweights, Scaling of Plots, Filtering of Entities, Editing Xrefs, and Hyperlinks. Other questions lead Rick to show AutoCAD 2000's Migration Assistance features, including Batch File Converting, AutoLISP Checking, and Drawing and License Harvesting. Once into ADT V2, Rick demonstrated its catalog of 3D parts, generated a quick Bill of Materials, and developed labels, using information stored in the catalog. Due to the low attendance, no door prize was given this month. © Eastern Virginia AutoCAD User Group |