Our next meeting will be held on Thursday, July 17, 2008.

For more information (such as meeting topics or directions) please click the Calendar link above.

Meeting Minutes

For previous years, please click the corresponding links below:

Past meeting minutes for 2004:

December 16th, 2004 meeting minutes:

Mike Taylor opened the meeting at 7:00 pm. He welcomed everyone and introduced Nick McCully. Nick McCully, who works in the Civil Engineering field, began his presentation of tips and tricks using AutoCAD 2005 by reviewing the features of the Quick Select tool and its use in modifying the properties of groups of objects. He also covered the use of the <Enter> key with the Trim and Extend tools to select everything in the drawing as a cutting plane and the use of the Shift key to toggle between Trim and Extend. In addition, a discussion ensued regarding the use of the command SnapBase to declare a new origin for subsequent Hatch patterns. Although several of the points he wished to cover dealt with Express Tools, which were not loaded on the demonstration computer, he was able to describe the uses of the Block Replace Tool. It was noted that in AutoCAD 2005 the Express Tools are integrated into the appropriate standard AutoCAD menus and not listed on a separate Express menu as in previous editions. Mention was made that an evening dedicated just to the Express Tools might be a desirable topic for a future meeting.

During the short break between sessions, the attendees discussed various corner topics and refilled with snacks and drinks. .

After the break, Mike Taylor delivered what might be considered a beginning tutorial on the art of 3-D Modeling. Through examples from his own experience, he showed PowerPoint slides of many mistakes by an inexperienced modeler. Most of these mistakes fell into the twin categories of "over-modeling" and "under-modeling" which centered around knowing how the model was actually going to be used. For a "front view only" rendering there is no need to construct the backs, sides and interiors of the objects. Models for "fly-thrus" can be prepared quickly and compactly by mapping photographs onto non-essential objects that will be rapidly passed by. And there is no need to reinvent the wheel for each new model - common 3-D objects (people, vehicles, plants, etc.) can be purchased from vendors rather than created from scratch.

The prize portion of the program was like bargain night at Macy's basement -" Everything Must Go!" Mike had a backpack full of goodies and drawings were held for everything, including the backpack. The meeting broke up shortly after 9:00 pm.

November 19th, 2004 meeting minutes:

EVAUG President Beau Turner opened the meeting, and introduced our first speaker, Rich Stow. Rich passed out hardcopies (soon to be available for download) of his drawing that shows all 256 symbols available with various font files. By freezing and thawing layers, a chart can be plotted for each font. Rich demonstrated how more fonts can be added to the file by creating a new layer and text style, copying the existing symbols, and converting the copied matrix to the new font (text style) and layer.

Typically the first 32 characters are reserved for formatting controls, and the next 96 or so are accessible directly from the keyboard with or without holding <Shift>. The higher numbered characters need to be accessed by "%%" and the character number with AutoCAD single line text, or by holding the < Alt> key and typing the number with Multiline text. Rich added that CAD operators should always include the non-standard font files when forwarding drawings to clients and colleagues. Another option is to use eTransmit.

During the break discussions went on all throughout the room, old
acquaintances were renewed, new acquaintances were formed, and networking ran rampant.

Beau provided the second presentation, and demonstrated AutoCAD 2005's new feature "fields". Beau showed how fields can populate much of the text in title blocks, using information from Architectural Desktop 2005's Project Navigator and Project Browser. The title block template drawing can later be used to automatically update the information for drawing owner, project location, sheet number and sheet set, drawing file name, and CAD operator login name, etc. Fields can even be used to document the area of closed polylines, to help generate cost estimates in spread sheets.

Beau also demonstrated ADT 2005's construct drawings using Project Navigator, for multi-floored buildings.

For the major door prize, an NFR copy of Autodesk Building Systems 2005 (given by http://www.inlettechnology.com) was given away. Smaller prizes were footballs and freebees from Cadopolis (http://www.cadopolis.com), and a CD with 3000 Cadopolis architectural details.

October 21st, 2004 meeting minutes:

EVAUG President Beau Turner opened the meeting, and moderated the first presentation, “Tips & Tricks” Some of the “Tips & Tricks” covered included the use of Layer 0 in the creation of blocks, Express Tools Layer Walk and Layer Translator, building your own shortcut keystrokes in the Acad.PGP file, controls to modify the use of Grips (especially the “C” for copy and the “Spacebar” to toggle the activity), Scale to a reference dimension, the Align command with the Scale option, and the MOROCO command that provides continuous Move, Copy & Rotate capability.

During the break discussions went on all throughout the room, old acquaintances were renewed, new acquaintances were formed, and networking ran rampant.

The second presentation, also moderated by Beau, was on “Real World User Problems”. Attendees were invited to share their more intriguing AutoCAD problems with the group and to offer any assistance they might have on those of others. Some of the problems, like adding a bay or bow window into the corner intersection of two walls in ADT, required the construction of multi-level wall units. Other problems, such as chamfering or filleting multiple lines (100+) while leaving the base line untrimmed were relegated to the Autodesk wish list or were referred to DSX tools. There were discussions regarding the use of True Type Fonts vs. AutoCAD fonts, the use of RTEXT with a Diesel expression in AutoCAD 2004 & earlier or Fields in AutoCAD 2005 to insert data into a drawing, the use of the Time command and Xdata to track user time on drawings, and using OLE objects to insert raster images permanently into a drawing. There was also a lot of interest in the problems of inserting Excel tables into AutoCAD regarding the limitations, whether to use linked tables or AutoCAD entity tables, and the referral to use 3rd party software from DotSoft.com.

For the major door prize, an NFR copy of AutoCAD 2005 was given away.

September 17th, 2004 meeting minutes:

EVAUG President Beau Turner opened the meeting and hosted a conference call with the developers of VisionREZ (see http://www.americad.com/VisionREZ/ ), an add-on package that simplifies Architectural Desktop (ADT). Roofs made by VisionREZ software can be built and edited easier than with stock out-of-the-box ADT. Interested? Download a free 30-day evaluation version.

Besides VisionREZ software, the presentation introduced the attendees to Skype's "GoToMeeting" video conferencing software, from https://www.gotomypc.com , for about $500 per year. The developers Jay Moore, Darwin Belt, and Ned Sharp, could hear questions called out from the EVAUG attendees, and control the video that the attendees watched.

After the brief break for snacks and corner topics, Beau turned the floor over to Nick Fuller, of Bowman, Foster & Associates, P.C. (see
www.bfa-eng.com), another EVAUG officer. Nick continued his series of presentation demonstrating Autodesk's Building Systems (BS) software. Built on top of ADT, BS uses "intelligent objects" for duct work, and plumbing systems within a building design. BS detects fouls between plumbing and ventilation components, and schedules air flow ammounts.

For door prizes this month, attendees won a Canon coffee cup, a blue blinkie thing, an Avatech mouse pad, an AutoCAD 2002 manual "No Experience Required", and a copy VissionREZ software.

August 20th, 2004 meeting minutes:

EVAUG President Beau Turner opened the meeting and presented a tutorial/demonstration of Architectural Desktop's (ADT) "Project Navigator". A fairly new concept, Project Navigator is a text-based .xml file that coordinated the elevations of floors of buildings. Each ATD drawing file then can concentrate on details of individual floors, while referencing the others as "background". This allows the operator to quickly change ceiling heights as the building concept is revised.

After the brief break for snacks and corner topics, Beau turned the floor over to Nick Fuller, another EVAUG officer. Nick continued his series of presentation demonstrating Autodesk's Building Systems (BS) software. Built on top of ADT, BS uses "intelligent objects" for duct work, and plumbing systems within a building design.

For door prizes this month, attendees won an Autodesk pen, a copy of DotSoft ToolPac (see http://www.dotsoft.com), and a "not for resale" version of Architectural Desktop 2004.

July 19th, 2004 meeting minutes:

EVAUG President Beau Turner opened the meeting with a demonstration and tutorial of AutoCAD R2004 and R2005 Tool Palettes. With the new tool palette feature, the system administrator can graphically customize AutoCAD with regular standard icons, AutoLISP routines, blocks and hatches. Tool palettes combine the advantages of: customized pull-down menus, Design Center, and custom toolbars. For example, one tool on a custom tool palette might be to draw Polylines, with a specific width, on a specific layer, similar to what used to be done with a custom pull-down Menu. Another tool might lead to others like a regular flyout toobar. Blocks can be dragged off the tool palette like with Design Center, but customized to prompt for the rotation angle and scale, and to insert on the proper layer.

One completely new feature of tool palettes is transparency. By right clicking, you can set the transparency (and the "Auto-hide") and effectively gain more usable graphic screen space.

Beau also demonstrated gradient hatching, also available in R2004. Gradient hatching is often used to imply curved or spherical surfaces, in 2D drawing.

After the brief break for snacks and corner topics, Beau
turned the floor over to Nick Fuller. Nick, the EVAUG Membership
Manager, showed the group for the first time, Autodesk Building Systems (ABS). Much like Architectural Desktop (ADT) is built on the vanilla AutoCAD foundation (engine), ABS is further built on top of ADT. Duct work and piping have "intelligence" similar to walls and windows in ADT. Similar to ADT walls and stairs, plumbing, mechanical, and electrical (PME) elements are 3D in ABS. Interferences are quickly exposed. "Lower" elements are automatically shown with hidden lines. Error prevention keeps supply lines from being joined with returns. ABS will even cycle through possible "solutions" to route ductwork from one point and shape to another. iDrop components are slowly being developed for ABS, by various manufacturers, such as Kohler.

Nick will continue demonstrations and tutorials further into ABS in upcoming EVAUG meetings.

For door prizes this month, attendees won a license of ToolPac 8.0 from DotSoft.com with over 675 AutoCAD utilities, shirts with the http://www.inlettechnology.com/ logo, and a NFR copy of ADT.

June 17th, 2004 meeting minutes:

EVAUG President Beau Turner opened the meeting and introduced Paul Burgener for the first presentation. Paul passed out handouts and walked slowly through a 3D Solid Modeling tutorial resulting in a table fork using the EXTRUDE and INTERSECT commands. The tutorial also exercised the PEDIT command to join and spline polylines, OFFSET, 3D viewing methods, and ROTATE3D.

After the brief break for snacks and corner topics, Beau demonstrated "Fields", a new feature available in Release 2005. Similar to RTEXT (but more capable), Fields can be used for such things as plot stamp data, labeling area amounts, and indicating system variable settings.

Beau continued with discussing Diesel programming, Xrefs, the new Release 2005 Sheet sets, and Architectural Desktop's Project Navigator and Constructs. Beau also demonstrated a free "rotating" task bar Windows XP utility called Aquadock, from Softpedia.com.

For door prizes this month, attendees won an Autodesk pen, a copy of DotSoft ToolPac (see http://www.dotsoft.com), and a "not for resale" version of Architectural Desktop 2004.

May 20th, 2004 meeting minutes:

EVAUG President Beau Turner opened the meeting with a short review of customizing tips from previous meetings. He then introduced our first speaker, Stephen Collier. Stephen opened a text file for customized pull-down menus, and added a section to insert blocks on the proper layer. The menu paused for user input for placement, and rotation. Stephen pointed out several special characters for writing menu files, including ;, \, and @, along with shortcuts such as L for Last, and P for Previous objects selected. Menus can be written for frequently used procedures, saving several steps for the CAD operator, and standardizing office practices.

After the brief break for snacks and corner topics, Beau turned the floor over the Donald Thompson, of Integrated Industrial Information (www.i3.com). Donald demonstrated his company's free product "FileLine" for encapsulating AutoCAD drawing files for secure email or FTP transfer to clients and colleagues. Via the Internet, the "owner" of the drawing file sets time limits for which the "user" can open and read the file. The owner also can arrange for whether or not the user can alter, and print. With FileLine, the drawing owner can be assured that colleagues are only using the most recent version. For more information, see fileline.com, or call Donald at 919-755-5359. Attendees were invited to try out FileLine and become eligible for a $100 gift certificate to Best Buy.

For door prizes this month, attendees won several shirts (from FileLine and Autodesk), a AUGI foam dice, an Autodesk key chain, and a "not for resale" version of AutoCAD 2004.

April 15th, 2004 meeting minutes:

Back in our regular meeting place the HEWV "Knowledge Cafe" we started our meeting with our standard "Meet and Greet Session". Food and drinks were provided by Shannon Turner.

During the initial socializing, several members discussed issues they were having with CAD and a few ways to solve them.

Beau Turner called the meeting to order and discussed a few group topics, points of interest and the upcoming release of the Autodesk 2005 series of products.

Beau Turner continued with part III of his "Cad Standardization Through Customization" series. This presentation shared 3 important items to get started working on right now (whether you have 2 or 200 people working with you). This was a fantastic presentation that shared a detailed look at some often overlooked customization time savers; acad.pgp, acaddoc.lsp. As well as a basic understanding of Autolisp/Visual Lisp programming. One of Beau's custom utilities emails the recent history of the file to an address he specifies, when one of his colleagues simply starts the program by typing in the name at the line, it get sent. Beau pointed out Dave Stein's DSXcad.com website for add-ons and tutorials as well. AutoCAD can even be "rigged" to launch novelty audio files at certain times, just to break up the office monotony. If you missed this session you really missed a lot of great, timesaving, insider tips and information.

During the short break between sessions, the attendees discussed various corner topics.

After the brief break for snack and corner topics, Stephen Collier, the EVAUG webmaster, took the floor. Stephen continued Beaus's topic of customizing AutoCAD. Soon available on the EVAUG website, Steve went page by page through his customizing document covering several customizing methods. Stephen demonstrated writing custom pull down menus, to automate inserting standard blocks with attributes. Some menu items launch AutoCAD script files of standard command routines. Steve discussed special characters in menu writing. A slash forces the program to pause for user input. A period forces AutoCAD to use the as-shipped version of a command, just in case an earlier program modified it. He also gave a short talk about type-in selection set short cuts, such as R for Remove, L for Last, F for Fence, etc. Lastly, Stephene covered special character and words for AutoLISP programming. For example, Princ prints out to the "console".
Ssget prompts the used to select objects.

Door prizes for attendees included, Autodesk pens, Autodesk key chains, Autodesk cups, Autodesk ID strap, Autodesk and AUGI shirts, an Autodesk "blinky" light pen, and a "not for resale" version of AutoCAD 2004.

March 25th, 2004 meeting minutes:

This meeting was one the once a year EVAUG "Extravaganza", the attendance exceeded 145 and exceeded the seating capacity of the usual meeting location at HEWV in their "Knowledge Café". Because of the large attendance, the meeting was scheduled in the auditorium of the Advanced Technology Center, the newest building at the Virginia Beach campus of Tidewate Community College. We started the evening with our standard "Meet and Greet Session". Pizzas, and sodas were provided by one of the sponsors for the meeting, Avatech Solutions, the local Autodesk dealer and corporate educator.

Beau Turner gave the introduction and opening speech to get the event started and introduced the main speaker for the evening, Lonnie Cumpton, of Avatech Solutions. Mr. Cumpton demonstrated several of the new productivity enhancements found in the 2005 series of products that are starting to ship now. There are a host of new features that make this an exciting release, one feature was the capability to copy/paste spreadsheet cells direct from Excel. Another is its drawing sheet organization capability. Now callouts on architectural drawing sheets can link to the respective drawing and view. When the detail view if moved, the callout is updated accordingly. Drawing indexes such as on "top sheets" or "cover sheets" are now automatically updated as more sheets or views are inserted. Mtext now has intelligent "text masking" to white out the background. Cross hatching new includes a "tolerance" to allow for minor leaks within the border. Draworder is more user-friendly and reduces the need to Regen.

AutoCAD 2005 also improves on .dwf file publishing. When clients double click on an emailed .dwf file, the viewer is automatically downloaded. With the upcoming release of the .DWF composer users will be able to redline for any changes necessary, and email the file directly back to the origination. The original AutoCAD operator can now open the red-lined .dwf file, making a "round trip" with the added client comments.

Door prizes for attendees were numerous and included several Autodesk tee shirts, hats, mugs, mouse pads, Autodesk notebooks, and special edition Autodesk ledgers, NFR copy of Architectural Desktop 2004, an NFR copy of AutoCAD 2004 and much, much more. We would also like to take a moment to thank Brad Martin and Lonnie Cumpton from Avatech Solutions, Ralph Denton from Tidewater Community College and those who attended, who made this one of our best meetings yet.

February 19th, 2004 meeting minutes:

We started the evening with our standard "Meet and Greet Session". Food and drinks were provided by Shannon Turner.

During the initial socializing, several members discussed issues they were having with AutoCAD and Architectural Desktop and ways to solve them.

Beau Turner called the meeting to order and discussed a few group topics, points of interest and the upcoming release of the Autodesk 2005 series of products.

Beau Turner continued with part II of his "Cad Standardization Through Customization" series. This presentation shared 3 important items to get started working on right now (whether you have 2 or 200 people working with you). This was a fantastic presentation that shared a detailed look at template files, what you may want to put in them for standardization and the best way/location for everyone in your organization to use them. The next item covered in great detail was plotting/plotters and how to reduce the common headaches associated with them thru some very simple customization. We actually took an Autodesk 2005 installation and learned how to customize the installation right out of the box to ensure company compliance. Several users asked questions and shared related stories, both good and bad that made a great case for customization. From .dwt's to .pc3's if you missed this session you really missed a lot of great, timesaving, insider tips and information.

During the short break between sessions, the attendees discussed various corner topics.

After the break for networking and snacks, Brad Martin (fresh off a plane) briefed the attendees on the upcoming 2005 release of Autodesk products. With the release of AutoCAD 2005 you can spend more time drawing and less time worrying about file names thanks to the Sheet Set Manager. Avatech will support us in an EVUAG Extravaganza at a larger facility, on March 18. Watch this website and the EVAUG newsletters for further details.

Next Stephen Collier explained and demonstrated elementary script file writing and usage. Stephen's on-the-spot script file flashed a line of text, letter by letter. Using Notepad, Stephen then wrote another script that built a text style, and explained it line by line. Basically, a script file is simply the operator's half of the command line communication.

Stephen next demonstrated and explained how menu's work and shared with us a custom menu he developed for electrical work in floorplans. He quickly inserted electrical outlet blocks neatly snapped to the walls of a room, on the proper layer. Arrows drawn with text characters develop cascading menus in the menu file. An asterix at the beginning of a line forces it to repeat until stopped by hitting <Escape>.

Door prizes for attendees included an Autodesk calculator/travel clock, Avatech playing cards, two Autodesk tee shirts, Autodesk key fob, and an Autodesk compass, ruler, multi-tool and flashlight set.

January 15th, 2004 meeting minutes:

We started the evening with our standard "Meet and Greet Session". Food and drinks were provided by Shannon Turner.

During the initial socializing, several members discussed issues they were having with their daily production.

Beau Turner called the meeting to order and discussed a few group topics, points of interest and the dropping of support from Autodesk for AutoCAD 2000 based products

After a small introduction Rich Stow started his presentation on using Design Center and the use of Detail/Symbol Libraries. This was a fantastic presentation that shared the use of blocks, Design Center and how to share them with other users in an office setting. With the release of AutoCAD 2004 we now have access to palettes for storing your information as well. Several users asked questions and shared related stories on how a good block library can make your production work much faster.

During the short break between sessions, the attendees discussed various corner topics.

After the break for networking and snacks, Beau Turner gave a presentation on CAD Standards. While this is a large topic that could easily fill hours Beau managed to provide an overall explanation of what type of information standards should include, how to develop and implement them and how to give your users access to this information. Several software programs were shared that can make the creation of your documented standards much easier. Beau also covered 3 must start with tips for users to take back with them and start with right now. This was the first part in a 4 part series on establishing creating and enforcing CAD Standards.

Door prizes for attendees included an Autodesk tee shirt, Autodesk hat, Autodesk pens, Autodesk mouse pads, Autodesk Inventor Book and an NFR copy of Autodesk Inventor.