Tuesday, August 24, 2010

AutoCAD 2011 Free Trial


System Requirements
  • Microsoft® Windows® 7 Enterprise, Ultimate, Professional, or Home Premium (compare Windows 7 versions)
  • Microsoft® Windows Vista® Enterprise, Business, Ultimate, or Home Premium (SP1 or later) (compare Windows Vista versions)
  • Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional or Home edition (SP2 or later)
For Windows Vista or Windows 7:
Intel® Pentium® 4 or AMD Athlon® dual-core processor, 3.0 GHz or higher with SSE2 technology
For Windows XP:
Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon dual-core processor, 1.6 GHz or higher with SSE2 technology
2 GB RAM
1.8 GB free disk space for installation
1,024 x 768 display resolution with true color
Microsoft® Internet Explorer® 7.0 or late

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Materials


Materials Browser
Browse and search for materials from the Autodesk Materials Library of thousands of materials and user libraries, as well as from the current drawing




A list of the available libraries and their categories is available in the tree at the bottom left of the Materials Browser

Create Own Library
Create and open your own materials libraries directly in the Materials Browser




Create categories within the materials library to organize and manage specific types of materials
Can search on material characteristics, such as blue or ceramic
Add it to the current drawing via the Right-click menu or drag and drop
Materials in the current drawing are displayed in the upper pane of the Materials Browser

Material Editor



Lower-right corner of Material panel or
Lower-right of Material Browser


Offers many settings to modify properties of a material

Mesh Edit



Merge Face
Merge two or more adjacent faces into a single face


Close Hole

Close gaps in mesh objects by selecting the edges of the surrounding mesh edges

Collapse Face

Force vertices of surrounding mesh faces to converge at the center of a selected edge or face

Spin Triangle Face

Modifies the shapes of faces by rotating the edge that joins two triangular mesh faces


Saturday, July 31, 2010

Analysis Tools

Help to understand the continuity between different surfaces that make up a global shape


Zebra

Analyze surface continuity by projecting parallel lines onto the surface

Curvature

Displays a color gradient on the surface, enabling you to identify high and low areas of curvature

Draft Angle

Displays a color gradient on the surface, enabling to determine if a model has adequate draft between a part and its mold


Convert to NURBS

Surface tab - Control Vertices panel - Convert to NURBS

Convert from analytic 分解的 surfaces to NURBS surfaces

Show / Hide CV
Show CV and use the gizmo to move the control vertices, reshaping the surface
Additional tools enables to Rebuild, Add, Remove the control vertices

Project Geometry


Project geometry ontosurface creating a new line or spline on top of the surface

Unlike Imprint tool, the projected geometry is not consumed by the surface

AutoTrim

Surfaces are automatically trimmed when you project geometry

Surface Editing Tools

Fillet
Surface tab - Edit panel - Fillet


Create a fillet with a specified radius between two surface edges


Trim

Create complex edges and holes in surfaces
Can use the Untrim tool (UNTRIM command) to untrim a trimmed surface

Extend

Extend a surface by selecting an edge

Sculpt
Surface tab - Edit panel- Sculpt

Create a new solid object based on the enclosed volume of multiple intersecting surfaces


Offset Surface

Create a new surface by offsetting an existing surface
Surface Associativity

If surface associativity is enabled when create an offset surface and a blend between the two surfaces, all three surfaces are associative

If edit the offset distance, using the Properties palette or grips, the blend surface will update accordingly

Friday, July 30, 2010

Surface Modeling

2 different types of surfaces:


Procedural
Associative with history


NURBS (non‐uniform rational b‐spline)
Non-associative and without history

Control vertices that allow to sculpt 雕刻 shapes

Surface Creation Tools
Blend


Creates a smooth transition between existing surfaces

Patch



Close or “patch” an open, closed‐edge object

Generatesnew patch surface for any bounding edge that is a closed loop

Network


Create a surface through a set of curves in the U and V directions
It is similar to the LOFT command but more streamlined and flexible
Can even choose a selection of curves that are not connected to one another
If the edges of a networked surface from existing surfaces, the newly created

surface will have additional grips


Solid Modeling

The EXTRUDE, LOFT, REVOLVE, and SWEEP commands now allow to select an edge or subobject as a profile or curve to create a new surface

No longer limited to using planar curves
The Solid ribbon tab provides access to new Fillet Edge and Chamfer Edge solid editing tools

Both of these tools provide a preview

3D Object Snap

A new 3D Object Snap toggle is available on the status bar


Right‐clicking on status bar icon provides access to a menu of the 3D object snaps and the Settings option

3D Workspace

Includes two 3D‐related workspaces
3D Basics

A simple workspace with the most basic tools for creating and visualizing 3D solid models


3D Modeling

Access to the complete array of 3D tools in AutoCAD

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Dimensional Constraints - Parametric Constraints

Includes a new Convert option to convert associative dimensions to dimensional constraints
Edit In-place

Click on an existing dimensional constraint to insert the constraint name


When dynamic dimensional constraints reference another parameter, the parameter text is prepended 预置 with “fx:” to help prevent from accidentally assigning a constant value to a parameter that references other variables

Visibility



Show/Hide tool can select the specific dimensional constraints

Parameters Manager



  

Includes a new Filters pane where can define parameter groups that display a subset of the parameters

Geometric Constraint - Parametric Constraints

Object highlighting when roll over an icon on a constraint bar
Quickly display all constraint bars in their original position by Reset option


Geometric Constraints
Can infer 推断 geometric constraints as you create and modify geometry

A new Infer Constraint button on the status bar enables to toggle inferred constraints on and off

  • Draw a circle by snapping its center to the midpoint of a line
  • AutoCAD automatically applies a coincident constraint between the center of the circle and the midpoint of the line
  • If the circle move, the line goes with it





  • Copy the insertion of a block to the endpoint of a line
  • AutoCAD automatically applies a coincident constraint between those two points
  • When move the line, the block maintains its position at the endpoint of the line

Temporarily relax the constraint by Ctrl key


Ellipses and Text


Can now apply Parallel, Perpendicular, Collinear, Horizontal, and Vertical constraints between the major or minor axes of an ellipse and other objects


Apply Parallel, Perpendicular, Collinear, Horizontal, and Vertical constraints to the
rotation angle of text objects (Single Line & Multiline Text)

Geometric Constraint Settings

Show constraint bars when objects are selected even if those constraint bars are currently hidden

New Constraint Icon


Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Action Recorder

Delete or insert user messages for View Change operations

The macro list displays the most recently used macros above the separation bar and all available macros below it


Text Alignment in Linetypes

Maintain linetype readability in any orientation
The linetypes behave this way by default


OLD

*GAS_LINE,Gas line ----GAS----GAS----GAS----GAS----GAS----GAS--
A,.5,-.2,["GAS",STANDARD,S=.1,R=0.0,X=-0.1,Y=-.05],-.25

NEW

*GAS_LINE,Gas line ----GAS----GAS----GAS----GAS----GAS----GAS--
A,.5,-.2,["GAS",STANDARD,S=.1,U=0.0,X=-0.1,Y=-.05],-.25

Change the rotation option from R (Relative) to U (Upright) or A (Absolute)

Monday, July 26, 2010

Missing SHX & Font Files

Now have the option to ignore missing SHX files (shape or font files) when opening a drawing
Text styles with missing fonts are now identified by an icon in the Text Style Manager

Scale List

Can easily reset the scale list in the drawing to the default list of scales (metric or imperial) defined in the registry

Use the default scale list to definecustomized list of scales that automatically displays in all your drawings