When Associative Arrays were introduced in AutoCAD LT 2012, they had a great contextual ribbon tab that showed up when you selected a completed array…but didn’t have one during creation. There were still command-line options, of course, but sometimes it’s nicer to see all the options. So this year, we added an Array Creation tab to AutoCAD LT 2013. Here’s the one for rectangular arrays: There are variations for path & polar arrays too. You’ll notice that they contain pretty much the same items as the Array editing tab—really the only difference is that the Edit tab adds a panel with the Edit Source/Replace Item/Reset Array commands. Another tweak to the Array command you’ll notice is that, for rectangular and polar arrays, AutoCAD LT now automatically places the objects for you, as a sort of preview. For rectangular arrays, you get 3 rows and 4 columns: And for polar arrays, you get 6 items evenly spaced around the full 360 degrees: These objects are placed as soon as you finish selecting the object (for rectangular arrays) or as soon as you specify the center point (for polar arrays). And of course, you can change the count and spacing right away—with the grips, dynamic input, or the new ribbon tab—or after, again using grips/ribbons/etc. There’s been a neat upgrade to path arrays too, but it’s a little tricky to explain (it’s not hard not to understand, just to describe in words), so I’ll save that for next time.

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