What Autodesk Doesn't Tell You About AutoCAD

Further on last month's post about poor documentation of CAD software, the docs Autodesk puts out is pretty good compared to some others. But even there, significant stuff is missing.

I had mentioned the lack of communication between programmers and documentionists. I watched a live Webcast of AutoCAD 2010 for authors, and there was a moment where demo masterix Heidi Hewett got thrown. 

She right-clicked the Quick Access toolbar, and found that the quick access to all other toolbars had been removed in AutoCAD 2010. She expressed her puzzlement at the removal, because now there is no easy way to turn on specific toolbars. (The alternatives are the elephantine CUI dialog box and the unhelpful -Toolbar command.)

Me, I was surprised that she was taken by surprise.

In a similar vein, Autodesk still fails to document the half-dozen or so system variables related to gradient hatching. It's been years since they were added.

Here are a few undocumented items in AutoCAD 2010:

• Try the -Export command with its options for setting the default translation format: PDF, DWF, or DWFx.
• The TextEditor sysvar reports whether the text editor is open.
• GripSizeMesh specifies the size of grips on selected 3D mesh objects. (Removed from the beta.)
• CBarTransparency adjusts the translucency of constraint bars (a new toolbar that hold individual constraint icons).

In the earlier posting, I mentioned the hazards of documenting software still in beta. The ExportSettings command had three different names during the "Gator" beta process: -QuickPub (beta 2), QPublishSet (beta 3), and then ExportSettings (beta 4). The "quick" heritage is revealed by the "-qpub" alias for the -Export command.

Comments

[Jimmy Bergmark - JTB World]

How do you access GripSizeMesh?