Sure, AutoCAD for Mac has its limitations, but there are a few things that make it more interesting than the Windows version. Here are some of the things I found that you won't find in the Windows version:
1. Press Tab to show and hide all palettes instantly.
2. Hold down the spacebar, along with the left mouse button, to pan the drawing.
3. Creating tables is now interactive: instead of a Windows dialog box asking you for the number of rows and columns, you just drag the mouse to show AutoCAD. As you drag the mouse, the number of rows and columns increases, depending on your drag direction.
4. When it comes to fields, creating custom date and time formats is now interactive. Drag and drop date and time elements, and then edit them as necessary.
5. Similarly, field elements are customizable inside the AttDef dialog box. When you add field text, it appears with a blue background and sports a white arrow. Click the white arrow for options, such as Convert to Text.
Bonus tip. One of the drawbacks to Acad/Mac is that CUI does not customize keystrokes. I found that the work-around is to use OS X's own keystroke customization facility. But there are a couple of twists to do thing: You may had to add autocad.app to its list, and you have to enter the menu name (no the command name) to associate with the keystroke.
1. Sounds like a more useful function to assign to the Tab key than the traditional Enter, but there's a Cleanscreen button in bottom right corner of the AutoCAD Windows UI, and Ctrl+0 will do the same thing. You can assign alternative keystrokes in CUI (in Windows, not OS X), but not Tab for some reason.
2. And this is an improvement over middle-button pan because...? I don't like "normal" keys being used like Shift or Ctrl in Windows AutoCAD, and I don't think I'd like it on a Mac either.
3-5. Genuine improvements, it would seem. I expect they're embedded in the AutoCAD common code stream so they should appear in AcadWin 2012, or maybe earlier in a Subscription Super Duper Productivity Enhancement Mega Pack.
Posted by: Steve Johnson | Oct 20, 2010 at 12:07 AM