Following on from the earlier poll to find out what you were doing with the Ribbon (mostly turning it off, apparently), I’ve added a poll for those of you who are using AutoCAD 2009 Ribbonless. I hope I’ve covered all the bases with my 23 possible reasons! You can pick as many or as few [...]

Judging from the results of the Ribbon usage poll (and the usual poll caveats apply), you are turning off AutoCAD 2009’s Ribbon in droves. I’m surprised. I thought there would be a significant minority of 2009 users who turned it off, but it looks I was wrong and it’s a large majority. The non-Ribbon numbers [...]

Looking at the comments, it seems not everyone is happy with the Matt Stein interview. If so, I’m sorry you feel that way about the piece. In my own defence, I would point out the following:

I like to think my work at Cadalyst represents a balanced viewpoint. I pride myself on being fair. Whether Autodesk [...]

One of the many unfinished aspects of the AutoCAD 2009 Ribbon is the lack of Express Tools content. One enterprising user has put the effort into correcting this, and has posted an Express Tools CUI replacement in this Autodesk newsgroup thread. I have not tested this myself. As usual with CUI, be paranoid. Back up [...]

The second and final part of my interview of Matt Stein has now been published on the Cadalyst site. There were some other questions I would have liked Matt to answer, but some unfortunate logistical problems prevented that from happening. Never mind, I guess it ended up plenty long enough anyway!

Over on the Cadalyst site you will find the first part of a two-part interview I did with Autodesk’s Matt Stein, the man responsible for making the Ribbon interface work in AutoCAD 2009. I hope you find it interesting.

I’ve seen quite a few complaints that AutoCAD 2009 refuses to open some drawings saved in 2000 or 2004 format unless the Recover command has been used on them. Autodesk has now issued a Knowledge Base item about this issue.
There’s no real fix in AutoCAD 2009 yet, just an external workaround. You will have to [...]

It would appear from comments made on the Autodesk newsgroups that a lot of AutoCAD 2009 users have their Ribbons turned off. That’s actually one of eight possible states for the Ribbon to be in. Is it really the most popular configuration? Does it apply to 12.5% of you or is it more than that? [...]

I’ve closed the poll asking for your initial reactions to the shipping release of AutoCAD 2009. It’s interesting to compare it with your reactions when asked to speculate prior to the release date. It seems your collective opinion of AutoCAD 2009 has taken a sharp drop now you’ve actually had a chance to use it.
In [...]

AutoCAD 2009 users, I strongly suggest you go and set the new system variable OPENPARTIAL to 0. Now.
Why? Because if it’s set to the default value of 1, purging can be harmful to your drawings. I’ll fill in the details in a future Bug Watch column, but for now I suggest you just go and [...]

I see Lynn Allen has written a post explaining how to restore the “classic” interface. I commend Lynn for doing this in response to the requests she’s been receiving. It must be pretty painful for some people at Autodesk to see their Technical Evangelist showing people how to turn off AutoCAD 2009’s Big New Feature, [...]

I won’t beat about the bush, AutoCAD 2009 is getting a pretty hostile reaction out there. Have a look at Autodesk’s AutoCAD 2009 newsgroup, for example. It’s true that many releases receive a hostile welcome, but this year it looks particularly bleak. Frankly, AutoCAD 2009 is taking a hammering.
I think it’s possible to gauge the [...]

This year, the Autodesk University people are allowing you to vote on the various sessions (classes). Here’s the link:
AU 2008: Help Us Select the Sessions
If I can sort out a few practical details, I am hoping to attend this year as a speaker. I have submitted four session proposals. These are:
Customization and Programming
Be unfashionable in [...]

If you saw my post or Shaan Hurley’s post about this utility and grabbed it on or before 27 April, please go and grab it again. It’s been updated to fix a couple of bugs.

If you’re an AutoCAD 2008 user you probably already know what the title refers to. If not, you probably don’t need to know. If your drawings are afflicted, I suggest you hop over to Between the Lines, grab the scale list cleanup utility and start cleaning up. Although I’ve found that this utility works very [...]

Yes, that includes hacking about (or producing beautifully elegant code) in LISP. If so, you may wish to go here and fill in the appropriate API survey, which is probably the AutoCAD one.
This year, Autodesk is opening up this survey, which used to be confined to Autodesk Developer Network members. I approve. ADN represents a tiny (but important) [...]

Greg Robinson, who I had the pleasure of meeting at Autodesk some 11 years ago in the run-up to Release 14, has started a Wiki for AutoLISP and other AutoCAD-based source code. I’m a big fan of LISP in AutoCAD, so I’m happy to see this resource available for users.
It’s in its infancy right now, [...]

I have added two more polls (see right) about this subject making a total of four. I have an inkling that the people most dissatisfied with Migration are those with many users to support, and I’m interested to know how accurate that impression is.
If you voted that you were totally or generally dissatisfied with Migration, [...]

After a month and 204 votes, I have now closed the poll that asks the above question, but it can still be found in the polls archive.
There were 20 choices, so you might expect an “average” release to attract 5% of the votes. You might also expect there to be relatively few votes for the [...]

For a few years now, AutoCAD has allowed you to migrate your settings forward from an old release to a new one. Since AutoCAD 2006, this has included your custom CUI stuff.
How well is this mechanism working for you? I will keep my opinions to myself for now, but I’m interested in yours. I have [...]