Anyone who has worked with AutoCAD for any length of time can usually create a standard dimension object. However, if you pay close attention to two items in the Object Properties dialog box, you can get very creative with the way simple dimensions are displayed.

For instance, in the image just below, you can see that there are two Object Properties items highlighted in yellow. One is the “Measurement” and the other is the “Text override”. The Measurement is the measured distance between the dimension definition points (DEFPOINTS) and is read-only. You can also see that the current value for Text override is “< >”. Whenever the less-than and greater-than signs are shown as the Text override value, the Measurement will be substituted for the symbols when displayed in the drawing.

To add just a little more detail to the dimension, you can add descriptive text before or after the “< >” in Text override as shown in the next example below. As long as you keep the “< >”, the correct measured distance will always be displayed as part of the dimension text:

And, making it fancier… In the example below, I have added a “P” between < > and “9 SPACES”. This is like pressing Enter to go to a second line and has the effect of stacking two lines of text above the dimension line:

And, finally, one more option. Rather than entering “P”, if you enter “X” as part of your Text override, you will stack the text partially above and partially below the dimension line.

The “P” and “X” modifiers can also be used in combination to create 3 or more lines of text and allowing you to control how many lines appear above and how many appear below the dimension line.

With a post to their blog last night, Bruce Carlson announced that Carlson SurvPC data collection software (Windows version of SurvCE) can now view and write directly to the Esri .mxd and Bentley Microstation.dgn file formats. This is pretty exciting stuff for both survey field crews and those who wish to design-on-the-fly from the field.

Read more here

Yeah, you know all of them already… Unless you don’t!

Carlson has a lot of great tools that are available for setting points but some of them are a little hidden. I will be covering some features in Carlson Survey and Carlson Civil that will, hopefully, help you increase your productivity.

Register Now! Wednesday, February 29th – Tips & Tricks for Setting Points in Carlson

I just received word from the NJ State Board of Professional Engineers & Land Surveyors that our Woodbridge classes will be accepted for continuing education credit. Our full list of upcoming classes in Columbus Ohio, Chicago Illinois and Upstate South Carolina can be found here.

Boot Camp! Carlson Survey & Field to Finish – April 10, 2012 – Woodbridge, NJ

Boot Camp! Surface Modeling – April 11, 2012 – Woodbridge, NJ

There are others, but my two favorites are:

• Holding Shift while in a Draw or Modify command allows you to override your current ORTHO setting.

So, if you’re drawing a line and ORTHO is Off, holding Shift will temporarily turn ORTHO On. As soon as you let up on the Shift key, ORTHO will be Off again. Likewise, if ORTHO is On, holding Shift will temporarily turn it Off.

• Holding Shift while in the Fillet command allows you to override your current Radius setting and apply a Radius of 0.0 between the two selected entities.

So, if you’re drawing a parking lot and find yourself constantly changing your Fillet Radius between 0.0 and another value to create both sharp and rounded corners, leave the Radius set to something other than 0.0 and just hold Shift when you pick the two entities to apply a 0.0 Radius.

These Temporary Overrides are available in all “flavors” of AutoCAD as well as in IntelliCAD.

One of my clients has an immediate opening for a CAD/GIS Technician.

Click here for a full job description

If you are interested, please submit your resume plus a copy of this job description to [email protected] and I will forward it along.

Last week I presented a webinar sponsored by Carlson Software on the topic “Updates and Overview of IntelliCAD 7”. Unfortunately we had some technical difficulties and didn’t get a complete recording to post to the Movies collection on Carlson’s website.

For those who are interested, we will be re-doing the webinar on Thursday, March 29th. By that time we expect to have additional updates and improvements to announce.

Keep an eye on this site to register for the next IntelliCAD webinar

You can register for these future webinars by clicking the link below:

• Tips and Tricks for Setting Points
• Debunking the “Carlson Isn’t Dynamic” Myth
• Carlson Annotation and Labeling

Congratulations to Keith Garrison who won the software giveaway at the NC Surveyors Conference and to Xan Holland who won at the SC Education Conference and Trade Show.

We had a CAD Test with 25 questions for attendees to test their wits and the first person to get 100% or the high score won a free copy of Carlson Survey 2012 with IntelliCAD. Keith got a high score of 88% in Greensboro and Xan tied with Greg Flowe at 84% in Columbia. Xan and Greg went through two rounds of tie-breakers before Xan was declared the winner.

Look for our booth at the SC Engineering & Surveying Conference in June 2012 to test your CAD skills!

Carlson released a new build of their desktop software earlier this week. This includes updates to the IntelliCAD/for AutoCAD versions of Survey, Civil, Hydrology, GIS, Basic Mining, Geology, Underground Mining, Surface Mining, Natural Regrade, Field, Takeoff, Construction and Point Clouds.

To confirm your current build number, go to Help > About Carlson. You’ll see the build number on the top line of the text box.

You can download the latest full version or updates to your current installation here.

If you would like to try out any of the Carlson Software products for 30-days, email me here.

For those anxious to try out the very latest and greatest updates in the testing versions of IntelliCAD 7.1, you can also send me an email to gain access to a new blog, “The Little CAD Engine That Could”, administered by Leonid Entov of Carlson Software.

Participation in the testing and access to the blog is by invitation only, so email me and I’ll pass along your request.

It hasn’t been around forever, but this Object Snap is such a handy little tool you’ll wonder how you ever managed to live without it! The best news is that it’s available both in AutoCAD and IntelliCAD.

Whenever you’re prompted to “Specify a point:”, you can enter “M2P” at the Command: line or you can hold your shift key + right-mouse to display the pop up box and select “Mid Between 2 points” option. This allows you to snap to the MidPoint between two other points. The pop up box is shown below.

Next you’ll be prompted to specify two new points for which you can use additional OSnap settings. The example below shows a new line that starts at the Midpoint between the ENDpoints of the two existing lines.