‘The Out-of-Office Reply’
March 4, 2013 in Fun things, Random
AutoCAD 2013 for Mac Documentation
February 17, 2013 in AutoCAD, AutoCAD for Mac
AutoCAD 2013 for Mac documentation:
- AutoCAD 2013 for Mac users guide
- AutoCAD 2013 for Mac command reference guide
- AutoCAD 2013 for Mac customization guide
This documentation, including Installation and Licensing, and Developer documentation can be found on the Autodesk website.
Update:
And also, the AutoCAD 2013 Tips & Tricks booklet by Lynn Allen:
Much of what’s in here has not been specifically written for AutoCAD 2013 for Mac, but useful nonetheless!
Meteorite impact area
February 16, 2013 in Random
Yesterdays meteorite impact in Russia left thousands wounded and a lot of damage to buildings. Here is some new information provided by NASA:
“New information provided by a worldwide network of sensors has allowed scientists to refine their estimates for the size of the object that entered that atmosphere and disintegrated in the skies over Chelyabinsk, Russia, at 7:20:26 p.m. PST, or 10:20:26 p.m. EST on Feb. 14 (3:20:26 UTC on Feb. 15).
The estimated size of the object, prior to entering Earth’s atmosphere, has been revised upward from 49 feet (15 meters) to 55 feet (17 meters), and its estimated mass has increased from 7,000 to 10,000 tons. Also, the estimate for energy released during the event has increased by 30 kilotons to nearly 500 kilotons of energy released. These new estimates were generated using new data that had been collected by five additional infrasound stations located around the world – the first recording of the event being in Alaska, over 6,500 kilometers away from Chelyabinsk. The infrasound data indicates that the event, from atmospheric entry to the meteor’s airborne disintegration took 32.5 seconds. The calculations using the infrasound data were performed by Peter Brown at the University of Western Ontario, Canada.
“We would expect an event of this magnitude to occur once every 100 years on average,” said Paul Chodas of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “When you have a fireball of this size we would expect a large number of meteorites to reach the surface and in this case there were probably some large ones.”
The trajectory of the Russia meteor was significantly different than the trajectory of the asteroid 2012 DA14, which hours later made its flyby of Earth, making it a completely unrelated object. The Russia meteor is the largest reported since 1908, when a meteor hit Tunguska, Siberia.”
Rotating autoCAD paperspace viewport
February 16, 2013 in AutoCAD
Sometimes, when you are working with real world coordinates for instance, it makes sense to rotate your paperspace viewport to align your drawing elements the way you want to.
This is very easily done. Starting of, you have an element (or collection of drawing elements) that are rotated in modelspace, but wanting those to be aligned with your paper in paperspace.
We start of with this situation:
This is just a simple square, rotated 45 degrees, to illustrate how to do this. In paperspace (in a viewport) it looks like this:
Now we want to rotate this square to so that is will be aligned with the paper. First, double-click into your viewport to activate it:
Next, type in:
UCS [enter]
And:
OB (for object) [enter]
Now select the object or line you want to appear horizontal on screen. Once you have done this the crosshair in your viewport will be aligned to the object or line you selected.
Next, type in:
PLAN [enter]
C (for current UCS) [enter]
Your viewport should now be rotated, like so:
Double-click outside of your viewport to exit. Note that you have changed your UCS within your viewport, when you switch back to modelspace, you UCS is still the way you had it before you rotated the view within your viewport. Especially when you are working with a coordinate system in modelspace, you can rest assured, it won’t mess that up! Also, in modelspace the square appears as drawn; rotated 45 degrees.
I personally use this frequently when using real world coordinates in plot plans among other things.
Meteorite crashes in Russia
February 15, 2013 in Random
This video shows the entry into the atmosphere really well. Amazing footage.
Listen to the sound of the meteor. Nuts.
Here a series of different videos showing the meteor:
