There are areas of Autodesk’s treatment of customers that leaves much to be desired, and I will most likely continue to be critical of that until a) I die; b) Autodesk dies; or c) the bad stuff stops happening. One thing for which Autodesk deserves praise is the distribution of bug fixes to its [...]
 30 April 2010, 2:03 pm |  6 comments | Tags: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2010, Customer Service, Service Pack, Update | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2010, Autodesk, Bug, Customer Service, Win I spotted this on the AutoCAD Research Twitter feed: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/AutoCAD_Internet Autodesk wants to know your views on web content and how it relates to AutoCAD and your work. It’s a fairly big survey, but I encourage you to take part. You can also sign up to participate in user research sessions here. This is [...] My poll on this subject is still running (see right), but so far about 2/3 of respondents rate AutoCAD 2011′s new browser-based Help system as 0, 1 or 2 stars out of 5 (total fail, very poor or poor). Frankly, I’m surprised it’s doing as well as that. Have a look at this discussion [...] 23 April 2010, 3:48 pm | 9 comments | Tags: 12-Month Release Cycle, AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2011, Cluelessness, Comments, Fail, Help, Newsgroups, Rant | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2011, Cloud, Comments, Fail, Rant, Web Stuff I know that some of you out there (unlike me) are pretty cynical about anything that Autodesk says on any subject. So when Autodesk makes a big thing about being environmentally responsible, such as its new Autodesk Sustainable Design Center site, it would be tempting to say “Yeah, right” and assume it’s just more [...] 23 April 2010, 2:39 pm | 7 comments | Tags: Autodesk, Carl Bass, Environment, Green, Marketing, Spin | Category: Autodesk, Spin, Thoughts I’m curious. What do you think I think about the Ribbon, particularly in AutoCAD? Do you think I’m a hater, a lover, indifferent, or what? Now, on what evidence do you base that view? Feel free to quote back to me anything I’ve written on this blog or any other public place to support [...] 19 April 2010, 1:26 pm | 9 comments | Tags: Navel Gazing, Ribbon, User Interface | Category: AutoCAD, Navel Gazing I’m still looking for your questions about Autodesk Subscription and upgrade policies and pricing. No matter what you think about that, you have to admit that Autodesk’s current policies are less anti-customer than those inflicted on SolidWorks users. Disallowing bug fixes for non-subscription customers is reprehensible, no matter what kind of spin is put [...] 18 April 2010, 9:26 pm | 12 comments | Tags: Customer Service, SolidWorks, Spin, Subscription | Category: Autodesk, Customer Service, Fail, Other Blogs, Other Products, Spin, Subscription Credit where credit is due. Following my rant about the uselessness of using a 16-minute YouTube video as the AutoCAD 2011 system requirements resource, the relevant people at Autodesk quickly fixed it and let me know. Now we just need the other releases covered and we’ll be all set. Autodesk is still officially supporting [...] 16 April 2010, 1:46 pm |  One comment | Tags: Communication, Documentation, Feedback, Knowledge Base, Positive feedback, Rant, Win | Category: AutoCAD 2011, Autodesk, Customer Service, Web Stuff, Win Autodesk, in common with other multi-billion-dollar corporations, periodically spends large sums on redeveloping and then consistently presenting its corporate image. It then spends even larger sums making itself look silly in court by claiming exclusive rights to such things as empty orange rectangles. Strange, then, that Autodesk should slip up online when it comes [...] 15 April 2010, 2:43 pm | 7 comments | Tags: Autodesk, Corporate Image, Fun, Image manipulation, Logo | Category: Autodesk, Fail, Fun, Image manipulation, Other Autodesk Products, Thoughts, Web Stuff This evening, I needed to know exactly which operating systems were supported by all AutoCAD releases from 2004 to 2011 inclusive. I have a pretty good idea, but I needed to confirm that my mental picture is completely correct. So I hopped over to the Autodesk Knowledge Base and entered “system requirements” in the [...] 14 April 2010, 10:35 pm | 7 comments | Tags: Documentation, Fail, Knowledge Base, Rant | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2011, Autodesk, Customer Service, Fail, Other Sites, Rant, Video, Web Stuff My post on Autodesk’s new upgrade pricing regime attracted a fair amount of comment, much of it critical of Autodesk. So, let’s follow this up. Let’s say, just hypothetically, that you had an Autodesk high-up in front of you who was willing to answer questions about Subscription and upgrade policy. What would you ask? [...] 14 April 2010, 1:51 pm | 4 comments | Tags: AutoCAD, Autodesk, Comments, Questions, Upgrades | Category: Autodesk, Comments, Customer Service, Subscription Despite it being A Bad Idea, it look like Autodesk is going ahead with making some kind of OS X variant of AutoCAD, as has been hinted at for a while now. Owen Wengerd has pointed out a few dead giveaways in the AutoCAD API. Another giveaway is the move to the browser-based Help [...] 13 April 2010, 2:55 pm | 5 comments | Tags: API, AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2011, AutoCAD for Mac, Owen Wengerd | Category: Apple, AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2011, Other Blogs Congratulations to Brian Benton from CAD-a-Blog. His alternative name for AutoCAD 2011, R.E.A.L. (Real Expensive AutoCAD License) was clearly the most popular among those who voted in the pin the name on the product competition. Brian is now the proud (or otherwise) owner of a virtual album, uniVers by Voyager: I’m not sure [...] 12 April 2010, 10:08 pm | 2 comments | Tags: AutoCAD 2011, Competition, Metal, Music, Voyager | Category: Announcement, Fun, Music, Other Blogs, Polls One of the things my blog’s WordPress dashboard shows me is a list of incoming links, i.e. who is pointing to this blog. One line intrigued me: unknown linked here saying, “318 random votes.. http://www.blog.cadnauseam.com/ …” Clicking on the link took me to the Autodesk Discussion Groups, but only as far as this message: [...] 6 April 2010, 10:08 am | 4 comments | Tags: Autodesk, Navel Gazing, Newsgroups | Category: Autodesk, Navel Gazing, Other Sites, Web Stuff Twitter throws up a gem every now and then. I just saw this in a retweet by Melanie Perry of a tweet from Autodesk’s Elena Fadeeva: AutoCAD Toolbars and Menus Survey I strongly encourage you to participate in this survey. 6 April 2010, 9:41 am | One comment | Tags: AutoCAD, Twitter, User Interface | Category: Announcement, AutoCAD, Autodesk Personally, I find most April fool jokes to be pretty lame. I considered doing one myself, and had what I thought was a pretty convincing idea, but finally decided against it. Maybe next year. This year, there was one definite exception to the lameness rule. It was well set up, clever and funny. Siemens [...] 2 April 2010, 12:57 pm | 3 comments | Tags: Autodesk, Cluelessness, Siemens | Category: 3D, Autodesk, Cloud, Fail, Fun, Other Blogs, Other Sites, Rant, Web Stuff |
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Autodesk provides CHM-based Help for AutoCAD 2011
In a comment in response to my AutoCAD 2011 Help system is not popular post, Autodesk’s Diane Serda acknowledged the problems, offered apologies and posted a link to a CHM version of the Help. From Diane’s comment:
We have posted the zip file for download here: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?id=15068206&siteID=123112&linkID=9240618
Instructions: 1. Download the AutoCAD2011CHMHelp.zip to your [...]