Bug Archives - Page 2 of 4

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 …

Autodesk, BricsCAD, Bricsys, Bug, Customer Service, Customisation, Development, LISP, Win

BricsCAD startup LISP bug fixed

By Steve Johnson 19 December 2016, 5:17 pm 19 December 2016 itemprop="discussionURL"0

In my previous post I have a real problem with BricsCAD, I related my then-latest interaction with the Bricsys support system: Steve Johnson 05-12-2016 05:30 UTC I don’t know if this is a BricsCAD problem or a DOSLib one, so I am reporting it to both Bricsys and Dale at McNeel. I’m also not sure if this was happening in earlier versions. If I load DOSLib during an S::STARTUP call and then use the (dos_msgbox) function later in that call, this fails the first time round because BricsCAD things the function is not defined. Opening a second drawing results in …

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 …

BricsCAD, Bricsys, Bug, Customer Service, LISP, Nostalgia, Win

So what’s actually new in BricsCAD V17?

By Steve Johnson 7 November 2016, 12:01 am 7 November 2016 itemprop="discussionURL"4

A big problem I have in communicating the improvements to BricsCAD in V17 is that there are such a huge number of them. This isn’t an AutoCAD 201x-style touch-up masquerading as serious progress, this is a real upgrade. You know, an AutoCAD V12-style upgrade that veteran AutoCAD users will remember from the good old days before Autodesk got bored and distracted. Dozens upon dozens of new features, improvements to existing features, performance improvements and bug fixes. Lots of stuff that’s genuinely useful. I could write three posts a week on the changes and not be finished by this time next …

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 …

Autodesk, Bug, Cloud, Fail, Other Autodesk Products, Web Stuff

Dear Autodesk Recap 360 team…

By Steve Johnson 25 October 2016, 4:47 pm 25 October 2016 itemprop="discussionURL"2

…your software (3.0.0.52, came with AutoCAD 2017) fails to allow sign-in (a prerequisite to connection to the cloud) in a secure proxy server environment. This happens (see picture): I am online. I did try to inform you about this problem using the feedback mechanism in the product. This allowed me to type my problem report, but on hitting the send feedback button, I got this (see picture): I am connected. In fact, I’m so connected I’m typing this post online while reproducing the problem. While this is going on, I’m able to sign in to Autodesk Account, A360 Drive, AutoCAD …

AutoCAD 2017, Bug, CAD Management, Customer Service, Customisation, Development, Fail, Other Autodesk Products, Other Blogs

Hotfix for AutoCAD 2017 SP1 Autoloader bug

By Steve Johnson 28 July 2016, 12:10 pm 28 July 2016 itemprop="discussionURL"2

As reported earlier, AutoCAD 2017 SP1 breaks third-party add-ins that use the officially approved Autoloader mechanism. Autodesk is to be commended for acting quickly to produce a hotfix for this. In order to make this hotfix available quickly, Autodesk has taken the very unusual step of allowing a third party to distribute it. See this post from Jimmy Bergmark, who pointed out the bug in the first place. Kudos to whoever at Autodesk made the call to think outside the box to do this. It’s a very un-Autodesk Corporate thing to do, and particularly commendable for that very reason. It’s …

Bug, Civil 3D

How to break Civil 3D 2013

By Steve Johnson 14 November 2012, 12:59 pm 14 November 2012 itemprop="discussionURL"6

In Civil 3D 2013 (with or without hotfix 2.1), use the PLOT command and use the Window option. While being prompted for the window corners, use the middle button mouse wheel to zoom to locate the exact point you want. Civil 3D then enters a loop in which it displays: Document “drawing name” has a command in progress. Hit enter to cancel or [Retry]: At this point, the user can do nothing with the program. Hitting Enter, Esc, R, etc. or doing more all do nothing except cause the message to be redisplayed. Picking a point or further wheel zooming …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2013, Autodesk, Bug, Cloud, Customer Service, Fail, Other Autodesk Products, Other Blogs, Rant, Spin, Thoughts, Tip, Web Stuff

AutoCAD Help suckage to continue – confirmed

By Steve Johnson 20 September 2012, 5:00 pm 20 September 2012 itemprop="discussionURL"5

In a recent post on Between the Lines, Shaan passed on the following response from the AutoCAD Team: There has been some recent discussions about the built-in help system in AutoCAD 2013, both positive and some criticism. As our longtime users know, AutoCAD help has been through many evolutions. We are particularly proud of the new AutoCAD 2013 online learning environment we recently released (AutoCAD Online Help Mid-Year Updates.) This update addressed several user requested fixes and changes, and we will continue to take our direction from our user’s feedback. We do recognize that the online learning environment may not …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2013, Bug, Development, Fail, Performance

AutoCAD 2013 – Using Help in anger

By Steve Johnson 5 April 2012, 1:00 am 5 April 2012 itemprop="discussionURL"3

Trying to be fair, I decided to put aside my initial hostility to the AutoCAD 2013 Help system and use it for real. I used it in a realistic situation, to find out how to work with something new or changed (model documentation) as I was working through it with my own example drawing. Try as I might to give it a fair go, I could only get so far before I got irritated. Using it in anger might not be an entirely appropriate phrase for it, but it’s not that far off. Using it in annoyance, perhaps? Here’s how it went. I …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2013, Bug, Development, Win

AutoCAD 2013 – Help improved in one area

By Steve Johnson 4 April 2012, 10:53 am 4 April 2012 itemprop="discussionURL"2

There’s one important area in which AutoCAD 2013’s Help shines when compared with its immediate predecessors. If you’re a Visual LISP user, you’ll be pleased to know that if you select a function name in the editor (e.g. (vla-get-ActiveDocument)) and hit Ctrl+F1, this now takes you to the appropriate page in the ActiveX and VBA Reference, as it should. In AutoCAD 2011 you just got a cryptic message or a 404 error, depending on the context. In AutoCAD 2012, you were just taken to the front page of Help and expected to find it yourself. Props to Autodesk for fixing …

Apple, AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2012, Bug, Tip

Really nasty and destructive AutoCAD 2012 for Mac bug

By Steve Johnson 13 October 2011, 3:05 pm 13 October 2011 itemprop="discussionURL"0

Using AutoCAD 2012 for Mac? Don’t use special characters such as # in your folder names, because AutoCAD will, under certain circumstances, delete whole folders worth of files when you open a drawing. See here and here for more detailed information.

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2012, Bug

AutoCAD 2012 drawing mangler hotfix

By Steve Johnson 27 June 2011, 11:28 am 27 June 2011 itemprop="discussionURL"2

In AutoCAD 2012 and products based on it, saving the drawing while in the block editor can result in your whole drawing being replaced by the block you’re editing. As this can be somewhat inconvenient, it’s probably a good idea to download and install Autodesk’s hotfix for this problem. As always, read the readme first.

Apple, AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2011, Bug, Other Blogs

AutoCAD for Mac Update 2

By Steve Johnson 1 April 2011, 10:50 am 1 April 2011 itemprop="discussionURL"1

As reported on Without a Net, there is a second update for AutoCAD 2011 for Mac. This will be welcome news to those of you who have discovered that AutoCAD crashes when using Copy/Paste after installing the 10.6.7 OS X update. If you haven’t applied Update 1 yet, you will need to do that first. As always, read the readme before applying the update itself.

Announcement, AutoCAD 2012, Bug, ClassicArray, Development

ClassicArray Beta 2 (0.5.0)

By Steve Johnson 28 March 2011, 10:30 pm 28 March 2011

I have just posted the second public Beta of ClassicArray™ (version number 0.5.0). There are some documentation updates (still no Help, though), and the main changes are: Bugs fixed with rectangular arrays where single-row and/or column arrays confused AutoCAD. The command now remembers its settings from one invocation to the next, within a single drawing session. Timebomb has been moved on 7 days to 21 April. The ReadMe.txt file in the zip explains how to uninstall the old version. Simply delete the old ClassicArray.bundle folder from the place you put it. Replace it with the new ClassicArray.bundle folder from the …

Announcement, AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2012, Bug, ClassicArray, Development

AutoCAD 2012 – ClassicArray Beta

By Steve Johnson 25 March 2011, 12:26 pm 25 March 2011 itemprop="discussionURL"27

People have already started to notice that AutoCAD 2012 has killed the dialog box interface for the Array command, and not everybody is happy about it. So I guess it’s time to launch ClassicArray™ Beta. ClassicArray is an add-on for AutoCAD 2012 for Windows that allows the creation of arrays using a dialog box interface similar to that provided in AutoCAD from 2000 to 2011, but enhanced to include new AutoCAD 2012 functionality. I will create another post later have created a Help page that describes ClassicArray more fully, but for now here are the commands ClassicArray adds to AutoCAD: ClassicArray (short form CA) …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2012, Autodesk, Bug, ClassicArray

AutoCAD 2012 – Array has good and bad points

By Steve Johnson 22 March 2011, 11:35 pm 22 March 2011 itemprop="discussionURL"19

For many users, the most useful new feature in AutoCAD 2012 is going to be the updated Array command. It adds a great deal of very welcome new functionality that will provide a potential productivity boost for 2D and 3D users. But it’s from an Autodesk wedded to its infernal 12-month product cycle, so of course it’s half-baked. The Good So what’s good about the Array command in AutoCAD 2012? Associativity. By default, arrays are now associative objects. This means that if you want to, say, modify the distance between columns a couple of days after you drew them, you …

AutoCAD, Bug, Comments, Other Autodesk Products

Is AutoCAD stability getting better or worse?

By Steve Johnson 24 September 2010, 10:57 am 24 September 2010 itemprop="discussionURL"42

The term “stability” is sometimes used as a euphemism to refer to how many bugs a program has. I don’t use the word in that way. To me, stability is a measure of a program’s basic ability to keep functioning without crashing or corrupting data. A program can have a thousand tiny irritating bugs and still be very stable. Another program might have only one bug, but if that causes it to crash a dozen times a day, taking down your data with it, then that is very unstable. So, given that definition, how stable is your AutoCAD, or vertical …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2007, AutoCAD 2008, Bug, Interoperability, Tip

Dealing with blacked-out leader plots in older AutoCAD

By Steve Johnson 20 September 2010, 7:13 pm 20 September 2010 itemprop="discussionURL"0

Any drawing created in AutoCAD 2008 and later which uses Multileaders will present problems to users of AutoCAD 2007 and earlier. The users of the earlier release will find that rather than having leaders to deal with, they have proxy objects. As a result, it is impossible to edit these leaders in any way other than erasing them. Also, depending on the setting of the PROXYSHOW system variable in the earlier release, the objects may not display at all, or could display only as rectangles. If the user of 2008 or later used the background mask feature when creating Multileaders, …

Announcement, AutoCAD 2011, Bug, Other Blogs, Tip

AutoCAD 2011 Update 1.1

By Steve Johnson 8 September 2010, 12:49 pm 8 September 2010 itemprop="discussionURL"0

As I described earlier, Autodesk recalled AutoCAD 2011 Update 1 because it killed AutoCAD under certain circumstances (e.g. plotting with the layer palette open). Now there’s a fixed version available for AutoCAD and LT. There is no news yet about Updates for vertical AutoCAD variants. If you have installed Update 1 and the hotfix, you don’t need to do anything. If you have not installed Update 1, you should install Update 1.1. If you have installed Update 1 but not the hotfix, you can either install the hotfix or uninstall Update 1 and then install Update 1.1. For the full story, …