Category: <span>AutoCAD</span>

Category: AutoCAD

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2007, Bug, Tip, TrueView

Older AutoCAD loses (part of) the plot

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I know there are plenty of people still using AutoCAD 2007 and earlier, so this bug warning may save some of you some grief. I have no idea how widespread or isolated this problem is, but under some circumstances I haven’t worked out yet, AutoCAD 2007 fails to plot all of certain dynamic blocks. Some attributes have a habit of being plot-shy. Even if you don’t use dynamic blocks yourself, you could receive a set of drawings, check them on-screen, approve them, plot them and send out paper drawings without all of their parts. Unless you’re carefully manually checking the …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2009, AutoCAD 2010, Customisation, Polls, Tip

AutoCAD 2010 – Will you miss the Menu Browser?

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I’ve closed the poll that asked AutoCAD 2009 users about their MENUBAR setting. It’s very clear that pull-down menus are still very much in use in the Ribboned world of post-2008 AutoCAD. In AutoCAD 2009, an attempt was made to provide access to pull-down menus without sacrificing that strip of screen real estate. That attempt was called the Menu Browser, it was one of the thing you could find under the Big Red A, and it really didn’t work very well. In AutoCAD 2010, the Menu Browser has gone away. The A hasn’t gone away, just the ability to access …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2010, Autodesk, Navel Gazing, Other Blogs

AutoCAD 2010 release date

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After my recent attendance at the AutoCAD 2010 launch, I have a few dozen subjects I’d like to blog about, lots of video editing to do, and not enough free time in which to do it. Many of my fellow launch-attending bloggers have beaten me to it with many of the meaty bits, but I’ll be covering much of that stuff in my own way and from my own perspective over the next few weeks. One thing I can do with minimum effort is to pass on an important piece of information I haven’t seen mentioned elsewhere yet: the date …

AutoCAD 2010, Autodesk, Customer Service, Interview, Video

Autodesk not listening? The response, part 1.

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While attending the AutoCAD 2010 launch today, I took the opportunity to interview three Autodesk people: Eric Stover, Jon Page and Shaan Hurley. I raised the issue of Autodesk being seen as not listening to its customers, and was given a very comprehensive response. Here is the first of two parts of that interview. YouTube link. Disclosure: Transport, accommodation and some meals were provided by Autodesk.

AutoCAD, Autodesk, Comments, Development, Interview

(Don’t) Ask Autodesk a question

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If you had a real live Autodesk development person standing in front of you right now (an AutoCAD Product Manager, for example) and were allowed to ask one question, what would it be? Please add a comment here with your question. I would ask that you keep your question civil and reasonably concise (one or two sentences), and bear in mind that the development person in front of you isn’t going to have a useful answer to policy questions about pricing, license agreements, customer service and so on. Other than that, anything goes, so let’s have ’em. I can’t promise …

AutoCAD, Autodesk, Customer Service, Other Blogs, Tip, Web Stuff

Adding Heidi

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Although I want to keep my list of links reasonably compact, it should not have taken until now to add the AutoCAD Insider blog of Autodesk’s Heidi Hewett to the list. Heidi’s idea of going through the AutoCAD alphabet is a great one, and I wish I had thought of it. blog nauseam has been light on for AutoCAD tips and information lately. Although that’s going to change for the better soon, there’s plenty of that kind of stuff on Heidi’s blog to keep you amused in the meantime. It’s useful stuff for all AutoCAD users, explained well. Oh, and …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2009, Comments, Polls

AutoCAD 2009 – Do you use the menu bar?

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You may have noticed that I’ve added a poll to find out if the AutoCAD 2009 users among you are using the menu bar (i.e. MENUBAR = 1). I’m also interested in hearing your comments about your usage and the reasons behind it. If your menu bar turned on, why? Do you use it all the time or do you just need it for those less-frequently-used commands that you don’t have handy at your fingertips, on toolbars, palettes or the Ribbon? Do you need it because your own custom routines are on menus, or third-party commands? Does the vertical AutoCAD variant …

AutoCAD, Autodesk

How well cooked is the average major new AutoCAD feature these days?

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I’ve now closed the poll that asks this question, and the results show a typical bell-curve shape with the peak clearly on “Half-baked”. There is a slight bias to the bottom end, but not a significant one. This result doesn’t surprise me, as I’ve seen and heard a lot of user comments to that effect, and I’ve made such comments myself.  I’m not saying that this poll is definitive proof of anything, but it sits pretty well with my perception of what AutoCAD users generally think. Now I’d like you to consider a related question. If we accept for the …

AutoCAD, Autodesk, Other Products

Leech marketing by IMSI – Part 2 – A/CAD

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The IMSI free CAD product that it is putting up against AutoCAD LT has a very interesting name: A/CAD LT*. Does A/CAD sound familiar to anyone? I vaguely seem to remember some other CAD product with a very similar name. Hmm, let me think, it has a main program file called acad.exe and many other support files called acad.something, it has had its name abbreviated to ACAD by its users for decades… No, sorry, the name somehow eludes me. I’m not a trademark lawyer (or any other sort), but here’s what I can tell from a quick glance at the …

AU2009, AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2010, Comments, Other Blogs

I haven’t seen AutoCAD 2010…

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…yet. That means I’m free to speculate about it in public. There have already been a few hints dropped here and there. Stronger 3D, parametric 3D? Does that just mean adding the missing 3rd dimension to dynamic blocks, or more? What else? If you’re in the right spot at the right time at Autodesk University, you will probably find out a lot more. In the meantime, I’d be interested to hear your speculation about what’s going to be in 2010, and find out what you’d like to be in it. Also, what don’t you want to see? Please add your …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2009, Interoperability

AutoCAD 2009 Subscription Pack 2 – PDF Enhancements

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Subscription customers of plain AutoCAD 2009 can log on to the Subscription Center and download Subscription Pack 2. This pack improves PDF output (long overdue and very welcome) and adds the ability to attach PDF files. That’s welcome too, but is of largely academic interest right now because of a total lack of interoperability. Unless you only ever provide your drawing files to people who also have plain AutoCAD 2009 with Subscription Pack 2, they won’t see the PDF underlay. However, round tripping is supported, so when you get the drawing back the PDF underlay will reappear. Here is a …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2009, Microsoft, Other Blogs

AutoCAD 2009 – An outsider’s look at the Ribbon

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Kirill Grouchnikov is a developer who has a blog called Pushing Pixels. This wouldn’t normally be of particular interest to AutoCAD users, but he recently wrote a piece describing the AutoCAD 2009 Ribbon. It is always interesting to things described from a different perspective, in this case the Ribbon from a non-user’s point of view. He pays particular attention to the ways in which the AutoCAD Ribbon differs from Microsoft’s standards. As a non-user, he has skipped lightly over several aspects of AutoCAD Ribbon use, including some drawbacks of the current implementation, but it is still a worthwhile read, as …

AutoCAD, Fun, Other Blogs

A true AutoCAD teaching story

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Reading Ralph’s post about going back to teaching reminded me of a time some years ago when I taught some AutoCAD evening classes at a technical college. As Ralph points out, students have a wide range of abilities. Although they were all supposed to have completed a prerequisite introductory Windows course, it became apparent that during that course at least some of them must have been absent in mind if not in body. Here’s an example, where I was explaining to the class how it was possible to modify toolbars. Steve: “Move your mouse pointer over any toolbar button and …

AutoCAD, Development, LISP

Happy Birthday, LISP

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Here in Australia it is well into the 21st and I raised my own glass last night, but for John McCarthy and most of my readers, it is the 20th of October right now. So this is the appropriate time to say Happy Birthday to LISP. Here’s to another 50 years of simple, compact, maintainable, efficient and elegant coding.

AutoCAD, Autodesk, LISP, Other Blogs

50 years of LISP

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It is difficult to find an exact date for LISP’s birthday. It wasn’t so much born in an instant as it was gradually dragged out of the primordial slime during the heady days of late 50s computer research. What is known is that John McCarthy, LISP’s “father”, published a report in October 1958 about his new programming language aimed at providing artificial intelligence capabilities on the IBM 704 mainframe computer. That report, one of a series, was the first one to use the name LISP. OOPSLA, a major annual conference on object-oriented programming, has decided to celebrate LISP’s 50th birthday …

AutoCAD, Autodesk, Polls

How complete are most new AutoCAD features?

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You may have noticed the poll on the right asking “How well cooked is the average major new AutoCAD feature these days?” Despite the rather frivolous nature of the question and choices, there is a serious side to the question so please let me know what you think. Note that this doesn’t address the question of how well cooked new features should be, just how well cooked they are. There’s an argument that can be made in support of releasing features before they are honed to perfection, and I will be covering that issue in later posts.

AutoCAD, Autodesk, Performance, Polls, Thoughts

AutoCAD performance and productivity

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I have closed the performance and productivity polls as described in my posts here and here, and the results can be seen in the Polls Archive. As with most of the other polls I’ve run here, the distribution of votes has not changed greatly after the first few days. It is clear from the very different voting patterns in the two polls that blog nauseam readers are smart enough understand the difference between the two questions. The performance poll has a very clear skew to the “slower” side. This supports the empirical evidence I’ve seen elsewhere that people perceive AutoCAD as getting slower. This is …

AutoCAD, Autodesk, Other Blogs

Autodesk on-line survey

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As posted on Between the Lines, there is an Autodesk survey you may wish to complete in an attempt to have some kind of influence over AutoCAD’s future direction. Among other things, you will be asked specific questions about these issues: Interoperability Batch Processing in AutoCAD Custom Linetype Creator Custom Hatch Creator Transparent Fills You will also be asked to rank 10 possible future features: Batch process drawings in AutoCAD Draw order by layer Enhanced visual styles Visual compare two drawings 3D Dynamic Blocks Transparent hatch fills Convert PDF to DWG 3D enhancements Hatch Pattern Generator Linetype Creator Without knowing …