Inventor Display Appearance

Display Appearance settings inside Inventor include the elements that compose the scene in the graphics area, such as visual style, ground plane, ground reflection, lighting style and shadows. By default this is set to Use Document Settings, which means that however the Display Appearance settings are configured in the file is how they will appear next time you open it, or how a file will appear from a colleage.

New Inventor 2013 Rectangle Sketch Tools

Inventor 2013 brings two new Rectangle Sketch tools, Two and Three Point Center Rectangle, to speed up creation of these shapes. To acces these new tools, start a sketch, then click the down arrow below the standard Rectangle tool to see a list of the new tools.

AutoCAD Dimension Rotate

There may come a time when you want to add a Rotated (Angled) Dimension, for instance you might draw an ISO Projected View or perhaps staggered geometry.

To create Rotated Dimension follow the steps below:

• Create your geometry in a drawing, then type dimrotated at the command line
• You will be prompted for an Angle to display the dimension, i.e. 45 degrees

• Then simply pick the Start and End point of the Dimension, then drag and click to position

Locate and Clear Overridden AutoCAD Dimensions

There are times in AutoCAD where we come across a dimension that has been Overridden, there may be a real reason behind this. But more often than not, it has been done for speed, which is not helpful when you want to make something from this drawing.

To find and correct Overridden Dimensions in a drawing follow the steps below:

• Firstly this is an AutoCAD Express Tool, which are free, but do require you to tick the option during install. Open your drawing, then type dimreassoc at the command line, you will be prompted to Select Objects, drag a selection box over all Dimensions on the drawing.

Colourise Showcase Environment to Allow Model to Standout

In Showcase it is great that you can put your model into a 360 degree HDRI Environment to view from any angle and these Environments can look very good, carrying a lot of detail. However, this might start to distract from the design you are trying to portray.

Vault 2013 Re-Index File Property Improvements

Several controls have been added to the Re-Index File Property tool in the 2013 Autodesk Data Management Server (ADMS) console, enabling Administrators to filter by extension, provider and date range to help reduce the number of files affected by a Re-index operation.

To run a Re-Index File Property, log in to ADMS 2013 console on your server, then expand the Vaults folder to reveal your Vault (name may vary depending on configuration). Select your Vault to highlight it, then go to the Actions menu > Re-Index File Properties.

Fatal Error Applying Service Pack 1 for AutoCAD/LT 2013

You are encountering this issue due to a problem with Service Pack 1 for AutoCAD 2013 and AutoCAD LT 2013. We are actively working on resolving this issue. It is recommended that you uninstall Service Pack 1 until further notice.

Check In Related Items from Inventor to Vault

New functionality on the Vault Addin for Inventor, allows users to scan the current project or model folder for related documentation, including IDW, DWG, and IPN files. This feature offers a major productivity enhancement for users who do not regularly Check In their design documentation as they create it.

• In previous versions of Vault when you ran a Check In from Inventor, it would check in the immediately related files. So in the example below we have a Drawing which contains views of a small Assembly and its Parts.