Expert: Bill DeShawn - 1/4/2008

Question
Hello Bill,
Wondering if you could offer some insight as to my present issue.  I am working in AutoCAD 2002 LT and want to copy part of the drawing into a Power Pt slide.  I"ve done this numerous times successfully however in the current file I"m using there seems to be a problem.  Here is what has occurred:

- I select Copy (or Cntrl+C) or type copyclip...any one of these

- Prompts me to select items and I do

- On the command line it does acknowledge the number of items selected.. however itmediatly the next "command" is select objects (as though nothing was selected).

- I do try to "paste" into PPt and sometimes I'm successful and this time I"m not.

* Do you think it takes time for the drawing to show up in PowerPT clipboard??  Presently even that is not occurring.

Very much appreciate your suggestion/insight.  Thank you.

Answer

Susan:
When someone saves a drawing down from AutoCAD 2007 DWG format to AutoCAD 2000 DWG format, it prevents you from being able to do the clipboard functions.  You need to convince the people you get the drawings from to apply a hotfix from Autodesk.  Because Autodesk doesn't support AutoCAD 2002 anymore, they are not concerned about providing a hotfix for you (Aren't they nice?). However a fix was also applied to DWG TrueView so that the provider of the drawing won't have to save it down to 2000 DWG format.  People can download DWG trueview and properly convert the drawing to 2000 DWG format and have no trouble with Copy and Paste, and ARX Errors, and NotThatKindOfClass errors.  Autodesk DWG Trueview can be downloaded here:
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?id=6703438&siteID=123112

The fix for the AutoCAD 2007 user so he can save back to 2000 DWG format without causing errors for the 2000-2002 user is here:
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=7450124&linkID=...

It's better to have them give you the 2007 DWG format file and for you to convert it with DWG Trueview.  That way you don't have to change anybody else's world.  Just one world.  Only yours.  Much easier than trying to make everybody conform to your world.  I've tried that before.  It takes way too much time.

Another thing that works is to WBLOCK out all the drawing objects to a new DWG file.  The problem with that is that you will probably have to recreate your layouts.  But at least it should fix the Copy Cut and Paste problem.


Keep in touch
Bill DeShawn
http://my.sterling.net/~bdeshawn