Send AutoCAD Hatch Patterns to the back of the Display Order

If you have a complex drawing with multiple layers of geometry and Hatch Patterns, it can be difficult to pick the right item with so many things on top of each other. So to make things simpler you can send Hatch Patterns to the back in the Display Order. Simply type hatchtoback to send all Hatch Patterns to the back of the Display Order.

Linked or Embedded Files Inside Inventor Files

From time to time we come across issues with files that are linked or embedded in an Inventor model or drawing. This could be an image, Excel spreadsheet or perhaps a simulation file. You may want to find out where these files are linked from, or perhaps when you open a file in Inventor it warns about a missing file and you want to break the Link.

Using the Link command in Inventor we can do both of the above:

• Open your Inventor file
• Then go to the Tools TAB > Links

• Once in the Links and Embeddings dialogue you will see a list of any associated files to the file you have open. Selecting one of the Links will show you where Inventor is looking for the file, what type of file it is and the option to Break Link if required.

View AutoCAD Layers Individually

All geometry and information on AutoCAD drawings will be on a layer, this may be just one, but in most cases this will be several. It may be useful to find out, or look at what information is on each layer to isolate the information.

This could be done via the Layer Properties Manager dialogue, turning the visibility of layers on or off as required.

However, there may be an easier way of doing this, by using the LAYWALK command.

• Open your drawing in AutoCAD, notice that the different colours and line types are represented by geometry being on different Layers in the drawing.

Use Wildcard to Stop Electrical pre filtering Manufacturers

The new Catalog Lookup in AutoCAD Electrical 2011 allows you to filter and search by any field, Manufacturer, Type, Style etc. However there is a large performance overhead with this, so the Catalog Lookup is pre-filtered on opening to prevent all the records having to be loaded (the pushbutton component table has just under 100000 records for example). If you are editing the component and it already has Catalog information applied then it will filter using this information. It will filter on the Manufacturer and the fourth and fifth fields in the table (which are different for each component type).