Architectural Desktop Tips

Surface control variables in Architectural Desktop 2005

By assigning the appropriate values to the following variables you can effectively control the precision of yours model’s three dimensional representation. These variables control the appearance of curved objects and their rendering quality.

FACETRES

Adjusts the smoothness of shaded and rendered objects and objects with hidden lines removed (Not impacting ADT objects). Valid values are from 0.01 to 10.0.

                     


FACETRATIO

Controls the aspect ratio of faceting for cylindrical and conic ACIS solids. A setting of 1 increases the density of the mesh to improve the quality of rendered and shaded models.

0 Creates an N by 1 mesh for cylindrical and conic ACIS solids
1 Creates an N by M mesh for cylindrical and conic ACIS solids

                   

FACETDEV

Adjusts the surface deviation of ADT objects. Default value is 0.5” and the smaller this value is the greater accuracy of curved ADT object is.

                    


DISPSILH

Controls display of silhouette curves of solid objects in wire-frame mode. Also controls whether mesh is drawn or suppressed when a solid object is hidden.

0 Off
1 On

                      
 

submitted by Tomislav Zigo, Hagerman & Company Applications Engineer
July 2005

 

Welding Symbols

In order to maintain compatibility between weld symbols created in ADT 3.3 and ADT 2005 following has to be done:

In drawings that were created by using ADT 3.3 rename WELDSYM layer into A-ANNO-NOTE.

This will enable your ADT 2005 to edit legacy weld symbols.\

Submitted by Tomislav Zigo, Hagerman & Company Applications Engineer
February 2005

Accessing Property Data Associated with an Object

In order to access all of the property data that are associated with an object and its style, you can use AecPropertyDataExt command. This will allow you to list and edit all of the extended data that is associated with that object.

submitted by Tomislav Zigo, Hagerman & Company Applications Engineer
January 2005

Creating Schedule Tags in Autodesk Architectural Desktop 2005

Have you ever been challenged by the creation of ‘Schedule Tags’ in Autodesk Architectural Desktop 2005?  Paul F. Aubin, author and world renowned expert on Architectural Desktop shares his methods with you in this article.

Creating Schedule Tags

This is the tutorial referenced on page 607 of Mastering Autodesk Architectural Desktop 2005.

A Schedule Tag is an ADT Multi-View Block that is anchored to another object. The Anchor used is called a “Tag Anchor.” Unlike other Anchors in ADT, this Anchor links the data in the object’s Property Sets with the Attributes contained within the Tag. Several components are required to make the Tag Anchor relationship function properly.

• A Property Set Definition containing the desired Properties
• An AutoCAD Block containing one or more Attributes
• Attributes (within the Block) must be named in the correct format
• A Multi-View Block must be made containing the Attributed AutoCAD Blocks as View Blocks
• A Tag Anchor attachment

This is an extensive list to be sure. Building a custom Schedule Tag requires a systematic approach and a bit of patience. As with most ADT Content, it will be instructional to dissect some of the provided sample tags. You will find several examples in the AutoCAD DesignCenter.

You can open the AutoCAD Design Center from the Insert menu or by pressing ctrl+2. Once it is open, you can easily navigate to the other folders in the Documentation tree and use the tags located there. There are actually three sets of Tags provided with ADT: Imperial, Metric and Metric D A CH. You can use which ever set is appropriate to your choice of units.

Tags can also appear on Tool Palettes. The Document Tool Palette group contains a sampling of Tags on the Scheduling Tool Palette tab. You can add other tags from the DesignCenter to any Tool Palette by simply dragging them from the DesignCenter and dropping them onto the desired Tool Palette (See Figure 2).

For the rest of the tutorial, please click on the following link: http://www.paulaubin.com/pdf/Creating_Schedule_Tags.pdf