You searched for AutoCAD 17.1

AutoCAD 2017, Autodesk, CAD Management, Fail, Tip, Web Stuff

Huge PDFs? AutoCAD 2017.1.1 could be to blame

By Steve Johnson 10 January 2017, 12:31 pm 10 January 2017 itemprop="discussionURL"3

Autodesk has yet again demonstrated why continuous automatic updating is no panacea for avoiding CAD update disruption. On the contrary… If you have noticed some of your PDFs exported from AutoCAD getting huge and unwieldy lately, AutoCAD 2017.1.1 could be to blame. Try uninstalling it using Programs and Features > View Installed Updates and see if the problem goes away. It may also be possible to work around this by going into PDF options and turning on Include Hyperlinks. Source: The Swamp. Here’s one possible* install history: You install AutoCAD 2017. This defaults to also installing Autodesk desktop app. If …

AutoCAD 2017, Bug, Customer Service, Fail, Subscription, Tip

AutoCAD 2017.1.1 Update

By Steve Johnson 23 December 2016, 2:29 pm 23 December 2016 itemprop="discussionURL"9

Thanks to Jimmy Bergmark, I now know that the controversial subscription-only* AutoCAD 2017.1 Update has itself been updated. Jimmy was brave enough to install and run the execrable Autodesk desktop app and discovered the update update. Rather you than me, Jimmy! Here’s the readme. You’ll need to get at it using Autodesk Account. I note that a bunch of crashes are fixed by this update update. Perhaps that is related to the magical missing AutoCAD 2017.1 crash information? Who knows? The update was apparently released over a month ago on 17 November 2016. Autodesk needs to work out an alternative …

AutoCAD 2017, Nostalgia, Tip, Win

The best thing about AutoCAD 2017.1 is…

By Steve Johnson 2 November 2016, 1:00 am 2 November 2016 itemprop="discussionURL"0

…the fact that one of the Express Tools finally got an update. Not just a minor maintenance tickle or mere absorption into the core code, either. A real update, resulting in not only bug fixes but genuinely useful improvements in functionality. A little background on Express Tools might help put this into context. The history goes back to 1992 and AutoCAD Release 12. In addition to an impressively full set of paper manuals, people with Release 12 (great value at US$500 to upgrade from any earlier release) obtained a Bonus CD containing 2605 files of free add-on goodness. Fonts, LISP, DOS …

AutoCAD 2017, Bug, Customer Service, Other Sites, Web Stuff

Magical disappearing AutoCAD 2017.1 crash information

By Steve Johnson 1 November 2016, 10:10 am 1 November 2016 itemprop="discussionURL"1

In preparing to write something about the AutoCAD 2017.1 non-subscription-only update, I came across something slightly strange. Google AutoCAD 2017.1 crashes and you will probably see something like this: What happens if you click that link? Nothing useful. You’re just taken to the landing page for the Autodesk Knowledge Network. The Google cached version of the link takes me to 404 land. Searching within the Autodesk Knowledge Network doesn’t produce relating to the crash in the original link, which seems to be language-pack related. The search wasn’t entirely fruitless, because I did discover that 2017.1 breaks linetype preview images for …

AutoCAD 2017, Autodesk, Customer Service, Rant, Rental, Subscription

Autodesk excludes maintenance customers from AutoCAD 2017.1 update (Edit: actually, it doesn’t)

By Steve Johnson 10 October 2016, 8:57 pm 10 October 2016 itemprop="discussionURL"11

Edit: it turns out that when Autodesk said this was subscription-only, that wasn’t true. See my later post for details. A mid-term update containing a bunch of useful stuff, AutoCAD 2017.1 is the first update made available exclusively to subscription customers (renters). I’d love to tell you about how great this update is, but I can’t because I’m not allowed to use it. If you’ve been a loyal customer of Autodesk for 30 years and have paid countless thousands for your software, upgrades and Subscription (now called maintenance) over those years, even if you are right now still paying maintenance …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2017, AutoCAD 2018, Autodesk, Other Blogs, Other Sites, Spin

AutoCAD 2018 – bear this in mind

By Steve Johnson 22 March 2017, 10:59 am 22 March 2017 itemprop="discussionURL"20

Given the dearth of new functionality in AutoCAD in recent years, it’s understandable that Autodesk has taken to claiming credit for the same thing twice. The same features have been touted once for the 2017.1 mid-term update and again as 2018 new features. Even I fell for it, listing linetype gap selection as a 2018 feature in my original review. For the purposes of reviewing the earlier AutoCAD releases and AutoCAD 2018 as upgrades, I have included the 2017.1 features in 2018, not 2017. Some of those features are praiseworthy, and there have been some minor improvements to some of …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2018, Autodesk, Interoperability

AutoCAD 2018 – 2/10, would not rent

By Steve Johnson 21 March 2017, 9:01 pm 21 March 2017 itemprop="discussionURL"26

It must be March, because another AutoCAD has just been launched. Despite this one being codenamed Omega, I’ve been assured it’s not the final AutoCAD release. The good news is that AutoCAD 2018 is twice the upgrade that 2017 was. But hold your excitement, because the bad news is that 2017 was only a 1/10 upgrade. Autodesk has continued the well-established tradition of acting like a low-quality sausage machine, reliably popping out consistently unexciting products at regular intervals. Here’s what’s in this year’s underwhelming sausage: Xrefs now default to relative path attachment and there are a few associated tweaks including …

AutoCAD, Nostalgia, Review

33 years of AutoCAD upgrades rated – part 4

By Steve Johnson 24 January 2017, 10:04 pm 24 January 2017 itemprop="discussionURL"4

In this series of posts, I am looking back on all the AutoCAD upgrades I’ve experienced over the years and rate each of them out of 10. See post 1 for information about what the ratings mean. In part 4, I rate AutoCAD 2011 to AutoCAD 2017. AutoCAD 2011 (March 2010): 5 – Object transparency was a very important enhancement for some. The X-Ray and other visual styles made 3D editing more efficient. Object visibility (independent of layers) was handy but has confused some DWG recipients ever since. Selection Cycling, Add selected and Select Similar (which had been in AutoCAD-based …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2018, BricsCAD, Bricsys, Customer Service, Performance, Win

Bricsys shows Autodesk how to do mid-term updates

By Steve Johnson 4 April 2017, 12:09 am 4 April 2017 itemprop="discussionURL"2

BricsCAD V17.2 is out. Although there’s nowhere near as much new and useful in this mid-term update as in the full upgrade from V16 to V17, there’s more here than in Autodesk’s last mid-term update, AutoCAD 17.1. There’s even arguably more than in the uninspired AutoCAD 2018 upgrade, including those 17.1 features. But that’s not the main reason I say Bricsys is schooling Autodesk in how to do mid-term updates. While Autodesk is restricting such updates (including the bug fixes and security updates included in those updates) to subscription and maintenance customers, Bricsys is doing no such thing. BricsCAD V17 …

BricsCAD, Bricsys, Bug, CAD Management, Customer Service, Win

I have a real problem with BricsCAD

By Steve Johnson 6 December 2016, 12:08 pm 6 December 2016 itemprop="discussionURL"3

To be precise, I have a real problem with writing about BricsCAD. I’ve written some pretty complimentary things about BricsCAD lately. In the interests of balance, I’ve been intending to write about some of the issues people can expect to deal with when moving from AutoCAD to BricsCAD. Such issues certainly exist. The problem I have with that is that the issues keep going away! Here’s how it usually goes. I find a problem in BricsCAD. I submit a support request. Within hours, I get a meaningful response from a person who understands the issue. Within days, I’m informed it’s …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2017, Autodesk, Customer Service, Fail, Rental, Subscription

When is a subscription-only update not a subscription-only update?

By Steve Johnson 11 October 2016, 12:28 pm 11 October 2016 itemprop="discussionURL"2

Before I get started, I want to clarify the meaning of the word ‘subscription’. For about 15 years, the word Subscription (note the initial capital) meant something specific for Autodesk customers. It meant you had bought a perpetual license and instead of paying for periodical updates, you paid for a year’s Subscription in advance. In allowed access to any new release that appeared during that year plus various other benefits. That thing that was once called ‘Subscription’ has now been renamed ‘maintenance’ (no initial capital) in Autodeskspeak. So what does ‘subscription’ (no initial capital) mean? Rental. You pay in advance …

Fencing, Thoughts, Video

Olympic Fencing – Mythbusting the Shin v Heidemann Controversy

By Steve Johnson 22 August 2012, 7:39 pm 22 August 2012 itemprop="discussionURL"39

This is a departure from the usual subject matter of this blog, but one of the advantages of running my own blog is that I can write what I like on it. This post does have a mention of AutoCAD, but it’s so minor and marginal it’s probably not going to interest many of my usual readers. Introduction Now the Olympics are over and a video has been made globally available, I’m going to discuss what happened in the Women’s Epee semi-final between South Korea’s Shin A-Lam and Germany’s Britta Heidemann. The image of Shin sitting disconsolate and alone on the piste, …

Hardware, Navel Gazing, Thoughts, Tip

Buying 24″ monitors – is now the right time?

By Steve Johnson 15 April 2009, 2:27 pm 15 April 2009 itemprop="discussionURL"8

I’m doing my bit to reduce the impact of the global financial crisis. Yesterday, I went out and bought a couple of new 24″ monitors to replace my perfectly functional pair of 19″ LCDs. It now looks like I’m facing a huge wall of pixels and I don’t quite know where to look, but I felt like that after moving from my old 19″ CRT to the pair of 19″ LCDs, so I’m sure I will get used to it soon enough. The 19″ LCDs haven’t gone to waste, they are now adorning an older PC which was previously attached …