AutoCAD EXERCISE NO. 10

AutoCAD EXERCISE

A slide show presentation -- montage -- of a master architect's oeuvre

Copy from a book or books the drawings or buildings done by a well-known architect. At least three separate buildings must be depicted.
Zoom in or out of these drawings and look at certain details to best exhibit the work, and make at least thirty slides of these drawings. Color should be applied liberally, by using layers during drawing/tracing process or by CHANGEing various pieces of the drawings to different colored layers afterwards. Polylines of different widths should also be used to help enhance the visual image of the drawings. Remember, you are not only trying to capture an aura of the architect you are exhibiting, but you are also attempting to create a work of art in its own right.
Add one or more slides of text of different sizes and colors, perhaps mixed with text, small drawings or illustrations captured from the Internet, explaining who the person is or was, and the name and location and date of the work being exhibited. Delay viewing of each slide long enough to be able to read it.
One drawing you do of the master architect's work should be especially representative of him. This drawing may be a plan, elevation, or detail. It should be plotted on a 24" x 36" sheet for display as part of the presentation of this exercise.

To copy an illustration from the Internet, follow this procedure:

Search for a web site which has information on the architect you are researching.
Type yahoo in the URL slot in your browser (some browsers make you type the whole thing: "www.yahoo.com") then pick the Search button, or hit a <RET> key.
Type the name of the architect you are looking for. In some cases, like Frank Gehry, you can simply type the last name, because it is unique. However, if it is fairly common last name, you should type the full name. For instance, in the case of Frank Lloyd Wright, type all three names.
Select (double click on) one of the sites and search for nice picturtes.
When you find a picture you want to copy, place the cursor over it and right click. A menu will appear at the cursor which has a selection (second from bottom) which says "Save Image As·" Pick this selection with the left button. This will bring up a dialogue box prompting you for the name and location that you want to give to this image. Save it in your own folder and give it a short (no more than 8 letters) name. You do not need to give it a filename extension, because the Internet will already choose one for you. It will be either ".jpg" (called a "JPEG" file), or ".gif" (called a "GIF" file), or a ".bmp" (called a "BITMAP" or "BUMP" file). If the network is busy and you cannot save to your own personal folder on the network, simply save the image locally on your own hard drive (in the "C:/student" folder).
Open Autocad.
Select Insert from the pull-down menu, then Raster Image· This will bring up the "Image" dialogue box. Select the Attach button. This will then bring up the "Attach Image File" dialogue box. Find your file by changing the "Look in:" box to the folder where you saved it, and then double click on the image name when it appears in the list of image files. Pick the OK button. The crosshairs will appear on the screen holding a ghost image of the file in the form of a smallish white rectangle. You will now be prompted for an Insertion Point. Pick any point on the visible area of the screen by clicking the left button of the mouse. You will now be prompted for a scale factor. Hit a <RET> to accept the default of 1, or stretch the upper right corner of the rectangle to fit the area you have allotted for the image. Note that if you make the image size very large, you will lose some resolution (the image will get blurry).

To copy text from the Internet, follow this procedure:

Search for a web site which has information on the architect you are researching.
Type yahoo in the URL slot in your browser (some browsers make you type the whole thing: "www.yahoo.com") then pick the Search button, or hit a <RET> key.
Type the name of the architect you are looking for. In some cases, like Frank Gehry, you can simply type the last name, because it is unique. However, if it is fairly common last name, you should type the full name. For instance, in the case of Frank Lloyd Wright, type all three names.
Select (double click on) one of the sites and search for information you want to include in your slide show.
When you find text you want to copy, hold the left button down at the beginning of the text, and drag it to the right and down to highlight the area you want.
Type <Ctrl>C (that is, hold the <Ctrl> key down and type the letter "C" at the same time) to copy the highlighted text to the Windows clipboard.
Open Autocad.
From the pull-down menu, select "Edit" then "Paste"
The text will appear on the screen in the upper right corner, highlighted and with grips at the four corners. You may stretch it by selecting a grip and pulling it to the right or left, or you may move it by moving the cursor to the point you want it placed, or you may leave it alone, and get rid of the grips by hitting <ESC> key twice. Note that the text will be inserted using the current text style and it will be on the current layer. It will become an actual MTEXT entity, which means that you can edit it just like any other text in your drawing.

To make an AutoCAD "slide" of a drawing or illustration, do the following:

Bring up the drawing you want to make a slide of.
Zoom into the area you want to record.
Hide or Shade the drawing
Type mslide <RET>
Type the name of the slide ö I suggest using your initials with the number 1, 2, 3, etc. after it such as "FEH1". AutoCAD will automatically save it in the same folder as your drawing, and give it the filename extension of ".SLD"

To make a script file to show a slide show:

Select the Start button on the lower left corner of the desktop
Select >Programs, then >Accessories, then >Notepad. This will bring up the Microsoft Notepad program, which is a simple word processor which allows you to save a wordprocessing file in "ASCII text" format, that is without the fancy imbedded formatting commands in a full-featured word processing program like Word or Wordperfect.
Type in the following, using the names of your own slides after the word vslide:

vslide FEH1

delay 4000

vslide FEH2

delay 20000

vslide FEH3

delay 1000

vslide FEH4

delay 5000

vslide FEH5

delay 5000

vslide FEH6

delay 30000

rscript

The vslide command is the "view slide" command, which will show one slide on the screen.

The "delay 5000" or similar command, means that the showing of the slide will be for 5000 "milliseconds" (five seconds). Small numbers could be used here, but AutoCAD still will need to paint the slide file to the screen which will take at least one to several seconds, depending on the complexity of the slide.

The "rscript" command at the end of the script file will continuously repeat the showing of the slides from the beginning (this is optional).

To save the script file after you have finished typing in all the vslide commands, select "File" from the pull-down menu in Notepad, then "Save." You will be prompted for a file name and location. Select the same location as your drawing and slide files (your folder). Type in a full name, such as FEH.SCR. Be sure and give the name of the file the filename extension of .SCR. AutoCAD will only play script files with this extension.
To get the script file to play in AutoCAD, open an AutoCAD drawing file, then type SCRIPT <RET>. The "Select Script File" dialogue box will appear on the screen. Go to the folder where you saved your script file and double-click on the name of your script file. This will cause it to play and if you added the word "rscript" at the end will cause it to play continuously, as long as the AutoCAD program is running. To terminate a repeating slide show, type a <backspace> key or <Esc>
When the script file is finished running you will be returned to the Command: prompt.

END OF EXERCISE NO. 10