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Some of the discussions in this area of CADTutor got me thinking back to the days when I taught AutoCAD and the drawings I used to run people through the paces. Give the attached image a look and think through how you might solve it. Can you draw the squares in three steps? Two steps?

@rkent are you going to be able to keep up with AutoCAD as well or is that going to be one of the 'work tools' that stays back at the office. I can't imagine life without my CAD it gets used for so many things, even my kids play with it from time to time.

"I remember when we did a presentation on AutoCAD in ~1991 using slides and creating a slide show" Way back when used to demo draw a full 3d spiral stair via lisp and then we had a fly through that followed the path through the front door and up the spiral stair all done with shade no render in those days.

You can put the following little line of code in your ACADDOC.LSP file. (DEFUN C:TR () (SETVAR "CMDECHO" 1)(COMMAND ".TRIM" "O" "Q" "")(PRIN1)) ;set trim mode to quick This will overwrite the acad.pgp and use this instead. I tried it here and works well and I think the way you want. TR <enter> use crossing window to trim.

@Dadgad, I figured you were being smart since I knew you are senior to me. Being referenced as a young gun definitely cracks me up. I thank you for the kind words. You were always the voice of reason and always treat the posters with professionalism and I learned from the best. I feel like I had an interesting career and tried to always learn and strive to do better. When I went from the board to AutoCAD I knew very little about the program, just what I could learn in a 2 month class at the community college. I was very worried about measuring up and consequently spent way too many hours away from work doing nothing much else but teaching myself more about AutoCAD. I remember when we did a presentation on AutoCAD in ~1991 using slides and creating a slide show. Everyone’s mind were blown and we were rock stars for a day or two. A few of us figured out how to create a virtual drive in the memory on our computers (~1990) and copy the AutoCAD.exe file there and then start the program. This was all done with a DOS file, I think it was called a batch file but my memory is not that great anymore. It was noticeably faster to do it that way and was possible back when the program was so small. Even though I learned on R9 the first company I worked for had bootleg copies of R8 (v2.6) and we used that for about a year. After that they bought R9 licenses and I was still able to copy the program and put it on my home computer, in fact my boss encouraged it. I have used Action Recorder a time or two but never really got into the habit of remembering it was there. It got better over the years and the few times I thought to use it I did like the result. In the bad old days of the early 90’s CADalyst magazine would publish a lisp file each month. I would copy those by typing what was printed and of course I would make at least two typos and the thing wouldn’t work. So off I went trouble shooting the lisp file and finally finding my mistakes. I did learn quite a bit about rudimentary lisp writing but I have forgotten most of that. These days if I need something I just look on Lee-Mac’s web site and can often find an awesome program that is light years ahead of what I could do. I have donated to his site a few times but certainly not near enough. The post of the ‘clipped’ viewports was not something I can claim credit for. I learned about that somewhere else and simplified what they had done and added step by step instructions. I will post the drawing since I do still have it. Digging up old posts of mine on the Ribbon: man I hated that when it first came out. I am often too quick to judge a new feature like that but with time and learning to customize it I definitely became a fan. I agree, there used to me more general questions from new users but I assume the number of new users of AutoCAD is going way down with the advent of BIM and 3D programs like Inventor. I can see myself still looking in and posting if I have something to offer. As you said, more questions on programming and fewer on actually using the program. Thanks again. viewport in viewport 2007.dwg

It could be as simple as turning DYNMODE off. Use the Icon at the bottom of the screen to toggle it off or type DYNMODE and set to off or O. Or perhaps you need help with the format for survey coordinates? Something like @12'-5<n35d41'30"E The @12'5 being the length, and < for angle with 35d41'30", d for degrees, ' for minutes, " for seconds.