468 Part IV: Advancing with AutoCAD

AutoCAD on the second machine looks and runs exactly the same as your personalized computer. The two machines stay synchronized. When you log out, you’re prompted to either keep the new settings on the second machine (perfect if you switch back and forth between your main computer and a laptop) or restore the original settings (Kindergarten 102:

Be polite. After all, after you finish playing with someone else’s toys you should always put them back where you found them.)

Choose Settings: ONLINESYNCSETTINGS is a command name that you probably don’t want to type in from the keyboard very often. This tool lets you specify which settings to synchronize and which to ignore. The list includes options (almost everything in the OPTIONS dialog box), customization files, printer support files, custom hatch patterns, custom fonts, shapes, and linetypes, tool palettes, and drawing templates. You may not want to synchronize everything. For example, different computers may have different printers.

Moving right along, we encounter Share & Collaborate. No, this isn’t a law firm.

Share Document: ONLINESHARE is used when you want to share the current drawing with other users. It signs you in to the cloud and copies the current drawing to the cloud if it isn’t already there. You can specify the e-mail addresses of specific individuals or you can declare it to be public, and you can control the access level of shared documents.

Collaborate Now: ONLINECOLNOW launches AutoCAD WS in your web browser and starts a collaboration session with another WS user. We describe AutoCAD WS earlier in this chapter.

Now all we need is a margin symbol for this book to apply to the SHARE command to indicate “New in 2012 but dead in 2013 and replaced by CLOUDCOLNOW.” The SHARE command has to be one of the shortestlived commands in AutoCAD history.

So you may well ask why Autodesk provides such obviously valuable services as AutoCAD WS and Autodesk Cloud for free. How can they make a profit from that? Well, the obvious MBA answer is that they’ll make it up in volume. The less-obvious answer is that Autodesk hopes that this service will encourage more people to run out and buy AutoCAD and/or other Autodesk products.

Tomorrow’s Forecast

At Autodesk University 2011, several Autodesk executives were quite adamant that they would not forcefully push anyone onto the cloud. “The cloud where appropriate, but not just for its own sake.”

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Part V

On a 3D Spree

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Your world isn’t flat, and your drawings don’t need to be either! It’s been nothing but Xs

and Ys up until now, but there’s a whole new axis out there, and you’re about to shinny up (or down) it in this part. In the chapters in this part of the book, you discover how your AutoCAD designs can escape the bounds of the X,Y plane and gain some height as well as length and breadth. You give your designs some volume

by specifying Z-coordinates along with X- and Y-values. You can do some rapid visualization by changing to one of AutoCAD 2013’s predefined visual styles.

The real world may be 3D, but it still uses a lot of 2D drawings. We show you how to rapidly generate 2D working drawings from your 3D models. All in all, AutoCAD has taken drafting a long way from the drawing board!

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21

It’s a 3D World After All

In This Chapter

Understanding the basics of 3D modeling

Accessing the modeling tools

Specifying coordinates in 3D

Managing user coordinate systems

Changing the current working plane

Navigating in three dimensions

Applying visual styles

The addition of a third coordinate — the Z coordinate — releases your design work in AutoCAD from the planar world of two dimensions

into a much more lifelike three-dimensional space. AutoCAD’s 3D capabilities have grown by leaps and bounds since AutoCAD 2007 appeared with a souped-up 3D engine. Not only

have its model creation and editing tools advanced, but AutoCAD is now also a dab hand at visualization and rendering. You can view your 3D models from any angle or slice through them to see what they look

like inside. And finally, because the world of technical drawing is still a two-dimensional one, you can use AutoCAD’s viewing options to create 2D views from 3D models.

If you’re an AutoCAD LT user, you’re going to have to sit out most of this and the next two chapters. One

of the major areas where AutoCAD LT differs from regular AutoCAD is in its extremely limited 3D functionality. Even viewing 3D models is much more difficult in AutoCAD

LT than it need be. LT users can acquire nearly all the 3D viewing capabilities of the full version of AutoCAD, but you need a separate — and free — program to do so. Just go to www.autodesk.com/trueview and download DWG Trueview.

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