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My first day on AutoCAD LT 2013 for Mac.

9 REPLIES 9
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Message 1 of 10
K00da
5097 Views, 9 Replies

My first day on AutoCAD LT 2013 for Mac.

After 20+ years of using AutoCAD on Windows I have taken the plunge and bought my first Mac on Saturday (a week ago).

 

I've worked out how to use the OS which strangely reminds of SUSE linux I used to play with years back - Ahem.

 

I've installed LT and spent a little time playing around with the user interface and getting a feel for where things are. The UI is pretty much another step down the path that Autodesk seem to be on of making a pretty yet disfunctional interface. At least on Windows we can change back to "classic" workspace, but no such luch here. There seems to be a similar tool for customising toolbars etc (no I'm not going to call them tool palette - they are different and the Mac doesn't seem to have them). So, it looks like I need to sit down and sort that out at some stage.

 

Save for a few palettes I rely heavily on the Design Centre and have structured my work flow and content (3000 odd blocks) for use with the Design Centre. Suffice to say this is going to require a bit of re-working as the the "content Palette" on the Mac seems to be rather lacking functionality. I say "seems" because it isn't relly working. I was playing around with it last night and thought " great, I'll just point it at my block library and start using it". Well it seem, rather than to "look at" a folder structure - "Import" it!!!. 3 hours of rainbow spinney thing later it's imported the library. There seems to be no way of stopping it importing. While force quiting LT will stop LT, upon restart I'm greated with more rainbow spinney as it seems to pick up on where it left off.

 

I'm now in the process attemping to remove the library I added and have had another 2 hours of rainbow spinney. Its now almost mid day an I've yet to draw a line. Well, that's not strictly true as I'm working on the windows machine.

 

Every time I touch the Content palette I'm greated with more rainbow spinney.

 

Does anyone know how I get in the back door and remove the library it has imported? Is it an external file somewhere?

 

I've downloaded Macintosh Explorer (because Finder is &^%$) and had a hunt around the hidden files but can't seem to make sense of the AutoCAD file structure.

 

Any tips would be most welcome.

 

Cheers,

Finn. 

9 REPLIES 9
Message 2 of 10
info
in reply to: K00da

Hi, i am sorry to say but Autocad for Mac is far from good. With 3 experienced (AC) engineers we struggle now for some month trying to get Autocad to work properly but we are near deciding to ditch it. It is a shame that Autodesk sells this piece of crab. As a consequence we are looking for better software. It will turn out that we will stop using any Autodesk software on all workstations, also the Windows-machines.

 

I don't agree Apple Finder is bad. You have to get used to it. Your library is here: go to 'Go' and press Alt. You will see Library appear in the dropdown.

Message 3 of 10
K00da
in reply to: K00da

To be fair, Finder is not that bad it just doesn't have a tree view which was doing my head in, esp. on a 13" screen.

 

Well, LT seemed to have spat the dummy big time - taking over 8 mins to open a file that opened in under 2 sec on the PC! So i've reinstalled it & things are looking promising(ish).

 

It is kind of sad that Autodesk have done such a poor job of the Mac version (I've decided its not AutoCAD Light, but AutoCAD Ultra Light).

 

Alas, I have an elevation to draw....

Message 4 of 10
info
in reply to: K00da

As a last resort we have installed Parallels Desktops on the Macs and installed LT Windows. This works better. Probably usefull for your project.

Message 5 of 10
Leaf.chai
in reply to: K00da

Hi Finn,

 

For content explorer, as it will really background open the drawings which contains the blocks. The workflow is different from Design Center in AutoCAD for Windows.(Design Center will only fully load the file when you click the drawing.)

For you issue, my suggestion is not to import too many files one time. And every library doesn't have too many blocks inside. (Too many blocks will cause the refresh for the library too slow.)

To remove the libraries, without deleting it in Content Library, you can also Reset Application:

OP-- Go to 'Applications' tab-- Click 'Reset Application' button.

 

Hope this will be helpful to you.

 



Leaf Chai
AutoCAD QA Analyst

Message 6 of 10
K00da
in reply to: K00da

A bit more of the back story..................I have a small consultanty called Electric Pencil (www.elec-pencil.co.uk) providing AutoCAD & Sketchup training & customisation here in London. Many of my clients were using AutoCAD on their Mac's via paralles, VM ware or Bootcamp so I figured it would be worth my while gettting to the Mac market.While running the Windows version in Parallels is a good solution its doesn't really fit for this purpose. I have no plans to ditch Windows in favour of OSX exclusively.

 

Sure, AutoCAD for Mac is "different". There are a number of genre's of "different". Better and worse both being genre's of different. In this case we do need to use the Content palette differently from the Design Centre because it is not as functional. I've converted most of my content in to a block structure that now works better with the Content bowser but it's just not as slick.

 

There are a number of annotation commands that I run off the pallete on the PC so I can set the layer & style. I'll have to look a bit further at how to achieve this, but ATM its looking like I'll have to make up my own toolbar (sorry Pallete)  with some Diesel script.

 

It just astounds me how Autodesk have set about designing a different version of AutoCAD for Mac, when really what we want is the windows version running on the Mac,  verbatium.

 

Anyway, I got the elevation drawn and it was OK. I'm quite old school and tend to bang away at the keyboard rather than use toolbars so I just loaded up my PGP and was on familair terms. This however would not be the case if you relied heavily on the toolbars.

Message 7 of 10
David_Stacey
in reply to: K00da

I guess the important thing is, particularly those thinking of moving from Windows to Mac, AutoCAD for Mac is a different product to it's Windows cousin. Yes, they share a similar name and have common features but they are quite different.
For my purposes, AutoCAD for Mac has been great since 2012 - everything I need works great but a few extra features would be nice.
For those considering the Mac version of AutoCAD, check out the feature comparison on Autodesks website and also make use of the 30 day free trial before you buy.
Just my 2c worth
Message 8 of 10
K00da
in reply to: David_Stacey

So, it's technically day two on the Mac today as I've been working on the Windows machine for the last couple of days.

 

Interestingly I'm actually finding stuff I like about this version. I like the way that the when I select a hatch the properties Visor (who dreams up these names) pops up at the top. Setting the hatch origin on the context  menu actually works(it seems to be the only plpace to do it).

 

However, the layer states manager is rather elusive. There is no mention of it in the help so I have a funny feeling its not there at all. This is a bit of a faff. I could arrange switching from Exising to Proposed with layer groups but its pretty clumsy and I can't change layer properties from one state to another with a layer group. I mainly use the Layer states manager when working in model space so the properties are not a major as they are set in the VP of the Sheet file.  Given that the model is xrefed into the Sheet file I can't work on it through a maximised VP. 

 

 

Hmmmm...... 

 

 

Message 9 of 10
enquires
in reply to: David_Stacey

Adding my two pence into the discussion, I'm a long time AutoCAD LT user and have my own small company providing Building Services Design.

 

I moved over to the Mac and overall I find it a much more stable platform and with the 27" screen it provides a great working window.

 

I must agree K00da in that AutoDesk have missed a golden opportunity with the Mac version. I know that the MAC front end is different but why not just release a product that is common to both platforms in its interface, this way AutoCAD users have continutiy across the platforms and AutoDesk would more than likley become the biggest player.

 

I've tried each version for the MAC as it has been released on trail and have yet to be confidant that I have a stable enough platform to use with my mirco small business.

 

At present I have the LT 2013 trail on mountain lion, which seems stable, but Autodesk still offers not support, whihc is very frustrating as they have a rebate offer on whihc ends soon. Smiley Sad

Message 10 of 10
seysearles
in reply to: K00da

After 10+ years on AutoCAD PC I am literally losing my #### here trying to make the move onto AutoCAD MAC.

 

The frustration level is immense. half my commands are missing and a lot of my short cuts no longer function.

 

Then there is the printing/plotting interface which is killing me.

 

I dont know what to do because my last windows PC just blew up and I vowed that I would take the opoprtunity to make the final switch over to Mac (everything else i do is Apple and I love it) but I dont know if i can survive this.

 

😞

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