AutoCAD® 2010 Can Constrain You…Part 1 of 2
With the introduction of the 2010 version of AutoCAD®, Autodesk decided to take some tools from their flagship 3D mechanical design package, Autodesk Inventor, and bless AutoCAD with some of those same tools.  The two tools that I’ll be covering are geometric constraints & parametric dimensions.  In this edition, we’ll cover the geometric constraint tools.  As this article will be a two-part article, we will cover the parametric controls in the next newsletter edition.

  The ADSK Format -- A Superior Communication Tool
The Information Age has been a great boon to the manufacturing world.  These days we all have access to nearly limitless information about any topic imaginable.  With the right information, we can achieve goals that 20 years ago seemed forever out of reach.  With the wrong information, however, we can enable mistakes that make those of the past pale in comparison.

   Can I run plain AutoCAD® even if I installed AutoCAD® Mechanical?
This seems to be a question that comes up quite often when talking to different manufacturing companies.  Of course the answer is yes.  Once given that answer, there is almost an immediate second question of, ...

  Autodesk® Revit® Wood Framing Extension
I have had customers ask if Autodesk Revit Structure can stud out walls. Before this extension I would say “no,” but now I can finally say “yes.” There are other extensions that you can buy separately from Revit, but this one comes free for subscription customers.

  Autodesk® Revit® MEP Content
In my last article we discussed Revit Families and how to create and change them to suit your needs. Family content is the backbone of a project, and provides the information that can be extracted from all parties involved to make BIM work to its fullest potential.

  Exporting Engineering Data to GIS
AutoCAD® Civil 3D® has made it easy for us this year when we want to take our engineering data and transform it into something we can use in our Geographic Information Systems. What used to take a lot of time or some form of third party software can now be handled inside of Autodesk's civil solution very easily and with no time at all. We will take a look at this function and see how the data is sent from a Civil 3D atmosphere into its GIS form.

  AutoCAD® P&ID 2010 – Creating a Custom Dynamic Component
One of the first things AutoCAD® P&ID users want to address once they are “up and running” is implementing their own custom blocks or symbols into one of the “out-of-the-box” standard libraries.