reOrdination

What I meant to say was changing your ordinates (dimension that is). I was looking how to change an ordinate dimension's origin in VB but I found that there is no property for that. Rats. I came up with a side track to do it and I figured I would post it if you needed to reordinate also.

Private Sub SetOrdinateZeroPoint(ByVal sHandle As String, ByVal vPt As Variant)
'------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'Changes an ordinate dims origin
'Arguments: sHandle - handle of dim entity
' vPt - variant point of new origin
'Example: Call SetOrdinateZeroPoint(acEnt.Handle, vPt1)
'------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ThisDrawing.SendCommand "(setq dimEnt (entget (handent """ & sHandle & """)))" & vbCr
ThisDrawing.SendCommand "(entmod (subst '(10 " & vPt(0) & " " & vPt(1) & " 0.0) (assoc 10 dimEnt) dimEnt))" & vbCr
End Sub

Exploding Mechanical Objects

I know that those who work with Mechanical can appreciate the Mechanical objects that it creates and how it makes life easier. But what if another client wants the drawings and does not want these proxy entities in the drawing. The method usually suggested is to tell them to get the object enabler or to manually explode those objects (which Mechanical does fairly well). I have created a macro to explode the Mechanical objects to their AutoCAD equivalents and I wanted to know if anyone had any interest on a posting of a compiled version. Let me know if there is any interest. Thanks.

Notes are not up to scale.

So your mechanical leader and notes are behaving badly and not scaling to the viewport scale. Bad notes, bad... You either need the notes whisperer or set a couple of variables to neuter these issues. AMSYMSCALE sets symbols (ie Notes) back on track and AMRESCALE gets your existing notes to behave. Whew.. good notes, good.

Isn't that special.

Or should I say "that isn't special". The special characters in the dimensioning mode show incorrectly. The diameter symbol for instance looks like some weird text. Well this is a Window Font issue. Look for the AMGDT*.ttf fonts in the Windows\Font folder. If they are not there, copy them from a working computer or do a repair install of AutoCAD Mechanical and you should get them back. Congratulations, you are special again.

Your contours aren't showing

What happens when you can not enclose your figure. When using the contour command (whether it be outside or inside), the contour only appears as broken lines. What's up with that? A little research and I find that if any part of the contour is an ellipse, you are hosed. A little editing magic and tada, you are full figured uhmmm contoured again.

I need details!

Ok, so you forgot the details. No, I am not talking about your anniversary. The details in Mechanical disappeared again. But wait you say, did we not fix this. Well almost, I found that detailing blocks not on layer 0 or AM_0 kept the Detail command from showing all. Move blocks to an non offending layer and the details of life become clear again. Whew, close one.

It's all in the details...

But my details are not detailed enough. A user was using the Detail command and the detail showed up with items missing. Nothing we tried worked. I asked a user who had the problem previously and he reminded me of the fix. It was service pack 2 to the rescue. We checked which version the user was running (AMVER at the command line), and when we saw he was still at SP1a, we upgraded to SP2 and tada, the details of his life shown through. WE are back.

I need some dialog ASSISTance...

Oh where oh where have my dialogs gone. A user here was working and his dialog box for the Rename command vanished. He typed in his REN shortcut and it appeared to execute correctly but nothing appeared. I tried a variety of things but nothing worked. I did a search on the Autodesk forum and I found a message that said to type in the ASSIST command. When the dialog appears, cancel the command. The missing dialogs should appear. Seemed strange, but we gave it a try and ... they were back. Hmmmm. Are you listening Autodesk. Bug. Thanks for listening.