blog nauseam » Interoperability

Cloud concerns – tie-in

Steve Johnson — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 04:44:18 +0000

One of the major attractions of the Cloud for vendors is that it ties in customers, providing a reasonably consistent revenue stream. It is an effective anti-competitive strategy. There are various technical and other methods that can be used to ensure that it’s difficult or even impossible for customers to jump ship. While that’s all very nice for vendors, it’s not such a wonderful thing for customers.

Let’s say you’re a CAD Manager who persuades your company to use a great new SaaS service and Cloud storage. Let’s assume it performs well, is secure, has 100% uptime and offers functionality that is not available with standalone software. Your company is pleased with all this and uses it increasingly over several years, eventually moving completely into the Cloud. A good news story, right?

Well, maybe. There are a few things that could go wrong. Very wrong. Wrong enough to get you fired. Most of these things have multiple precedents, some of them quite recent. They are realistic concerns and it’s not really plausible for anyone with any knowledge of the past to argue that they won’t happen in the future. I have grouped these concerns into five categories:

Impermanence. The vendor stops providing the service. There are many possible reasons for this happening. Computing is full of product failures and withdrawals. Autodesk alone has such a long history of dead products and orphaned customers, that it would be a major undertaking just to document them all. If the product’s not making money, it’s unlikely to have a future. The vendor itself could go down the tubes. Computing history is littered with the corpses of once-dominant companies. Because there is a chain of dependencies in a typical Cloud solution, there are several potential points of corporate failure. Maybe Autodesk doesn’t go down, but Amazon does, or Citrix. One day, your software just isn’t there any more. What now?
Price ramping. Once you and enough of your fellow customers are tied in, there is nothing to prevent the vendor from racking up the prices. Autodesk has already done this kind of thing with upgrade pricing and Subscription, so it’s not as if it’s an unlikely scenario. If the boil-a-frog-slowly approach is used and you’re the frog being boiled, you’re better off not being tied down when you decide it’s time to get out of the water.
Unwelcome terms and conditions. The terms and conditions under which you operate are often in the Cloud themselves and can be changed by the vendor without you having any say in the matter. What if one day your company lawyer spots a clause has been added that is totally outrageous (even more than normal, I mean) and there is no way your company can possibly continue to operate under those conditions? Good luck trying to negotiate your way out of that one from a position of weakness.
Unwelcome technical changes. I intend to cover the issue of as-you-go upgrades more fully later, but let’s say the vendor introduces a new feature that seriously impacts your ability to use the software productively. No off switch is provided. Sound familiar? It happens to standalone software. It will happen to your SaaS choice, too.
Ignoreware. Your once-fashionable product stops being The New Black. The vendor decides to concentrate its resources in other areas to attract new customers rather than the ones it has already tied up. While your SaaS product continues to be provided, it is put into maintenance mode and nothing useful is added to it. As the rest of the computing world moves on, your SaaS product does not. Holes start to appear that make your life difficult or impossible. Again, Autodesk history is replete with examples of this kind of thing.

If you’re using standalone software and any of the above occurs, it’s probably a pretty big deal, but you can work around it in the short term by simply continuing to use the product that works. You can keep doing this into the medium term, perhaps for several years. Sure, if Autodesk goes down you’ll find that you can no longer authorise new installations or transfer software from one computer to another. But you’ll have some breathing space. You’ll still have all your data, bang up to date. You’ll be able to continue working productively while you look around for an alternative.

If you’ve deeply committed your company to a Cloud solution and the SaaS hits the fan, it’s more than a big deal. It’s a disaster. It could kill your company. It could kill your career. As a computer once asked me, “Do you really want to do this?”

AutoCAD 2012 – Autodesk adds an uninstallation analgesic

Steve Johnson — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 04:27:58 +0000

One of the more painful aspects of dealing with installations of recent releases of AutoCAD and related products is that although you might run a single setup routine to install what you think is a single application, the end result is a mass of different components being installed. Each of these components is considered a separate program by Windows, and needs uninstalling separately. Frankly, this is manifestly antisocial behaviour.

I have complained to Autodesk about this ever since it started happening, but the number of sub-installations has been getting greater rather than smaller. Now Autodesk has provided an uninstallation tool, which you can find here. If you download and run psebuninstalltool.exe, you will be provided with a list of applications to uninstall.

This is a move in the right direction, but it’s still far from ideal. You still have to choose which applications to install and which to leave alone because they’re in use by some other application, and because of the possible complexities you’re not likely to know. Get it wrong and you can break other applications in a way that’s not immediately obvious. Also, it uninstalls English language products only and is provided “as-is” as an unsupported tool.

This is a welcome kludge to help with a problem that shouldn’t exist. Users simply shouldn’t have to deal with this nonsense. If you install one application, you should be able to just uninstall one application and it should be gone, without breaking anything else. Autodesk, thanks for this interim assistance, but I look forward to the problem being removed in future releases, rather than partially patched over.

AutoCAD 2012 – Autoloader mechanism for plug-ins

Steve Johnson — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 09:29:38 +0000

One of the less obvious features introduced by AutoCAD 2012 is the Autoloader mechanism that has been provided to make installation of plug-ins (current standard Autodeskspeak for add-ons, apps, utilities, routines, etc.) easier for both developers and users. It may not be immediately obvious, but it’s a useful and important addition.

This mechanism has nothing to do with the AppLoad command, the Startup Suite, acad*.lsp, the (autoload) function or anything else that existed in earlier releases. This is completely new, it has not replaced or broken any of the existing loading mechanisms, and is, in short, A Good Thing. Developers don’t have to use it, but those who do, and their customers, will have certain advantages. I have used it for the ClassicArray loading mechanism, and I expect to see it used by more and more plug-ins over time. It works fine with all of the usual AutoCAD add-on APIs, including LISP.

User perspective
As a user, what this means is that for AutoCAD and related applications from 2012 on, there is a standard loading mechanism for plug-ins. The installation should be straightforward, with no multi-step processes to go through for different AutoCAD variants and releases. The result of the installation should automatically present itself in a standard way, with a short-lived welcome bubble, an extra panel in the new Plug-ins Ribbon tab, plus any other interface additions the developer wants to provide. If you subsequently install another AutoCAD variant or release, the plug-in will automatically appear in that variant with no further user action required, as long as that AutoCAD variant is supported by the plug-in.

Developer perspective
What this means for me as a developer is that I have much less to worry about in terms of installation. All that needs to be done to make the loading happen is for a folder full of ‘stuff’ to be copied into a certain location. (There are actually two possible locations, but more on that later).

In Betas of ClassicArray, I just provided the folder, plus instructions that asked the user to copy that folder into place. I could have simplified that further by providing batch files that did the copying. In the end, I created setup executables using the free Inno Setup utility, but that was a much easier job that it would have been if this Autoloader mechanism didn’t exist. I didn’t have to worry about discovering what releases were installed, deciphering Registry entries, creating user installaton scripts, or issuing instructions to users to edit files or mess with the AppLoad command. I don’t have to worry about what happens if the user subsequently installs another AutoCAD variant.

Of course, for developers who support releases prior to 2012, there is no less work to do than before, and some time needs to be spent to learn and implement the new mechanism. In the case of ClassicArray, that was not an issue because it’s only needed and supported in 2012. I expect this is one of those problems that will resolve itself over time as developers adopt the new mechanism.

The bundle folder
So what is this ‘stuff’ that needs copying into place? It’s called a bundle folder. It’s just a folder with a name that ends in .bundle (e.g. ClassicArray.bundle), and it typically contains the usual files needed to run your add-in, often tidied up within other folders. The only new thing that it needs to contain is a file called PackageContents.xml. That XML file is the key to the Autoloader mechanism. AutoCAD finds the file, reads it, and acts accordingly in terms of version support, loading program files, partial cuix files and so on.

Bundle folder location
So where does this folder with its XML file have to go? There are two possible locations. If you want the plug-in to be available to all users on the computer, you place it in the Autodesk\ApplicationPlugins folder underneath the system’s ProgramFiles folder. For example, ClassicArray usually gets put here:

C:\Program Files\Autodesk\ApplicationPlugins\ClassicArray.bundle

If you only want the plug-in to be loaded for the current user, it goes in the Autodesk\ApplicationPlugins folder underneath the system’s AppData folder instead, for example:

C:\Documents and Settings\[login]\Application Data\Roaming\Autodesk\ApplicationPlugins\ClassicArray.bundle

in XP or

C:\Users\[login]\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\ApplicationPlugins\ClassicArray.bundle

in Windows 7.

Describing the contents of that all-important XML file is beyond the scope of this post, but I may do a follow-up post if there is enough interest. In either case, the reference material is available in the AutoCAD Help, under Help > Customization Guide > Introduction to Programming Interfaces > Install and Uninstall Plug-In Applications > PackageContents.xml Format.

Dealing with blacked-out leader plots in older AutoCAD

Steve Johnson — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 11:13:50 +0000

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, they might appear to be fine on the screen. But when plotting, the text part of each leader will come out as a filled black rectangle. That sort of thing has a long history of happening with wipeouts in some cases, depending on the output device and driver. This problem is different because it happens every time, and with all output devices.

What can be done if you are the recipient of such drawings? The -ExportToAutoCAD command, which can be used to create a version of the drawing with most proxy objects converted to standard AutoCAD objects, does not work with Multileaders. So I can see three options, in descending order of desirability:

Upgrade to a more recent release of AutoCAD. Depending on your circumstances, this may not be a practicable solution.
Forbid the use of Multileaders among your users and all parties producing drawings for you. This also may not be a practicable solution.
Explode the leaders. This results in them becoming dumb text and lines, with no background masking. However, the masking can be easily re-established using the Textmask command that is part of the Express Tools.

It fills me with horror to suggest something as awful as exploding anything even remotely dimension-like, but if you have one of these drawings and you’re forced by circumstances to use AutoCAD 2007 or earlier, what alternative do you have?

This, along with various other Multileader design issues (such as non-integration with dimension styles), appears to be a natural by-product of Autodesk’s decision to add these objects part-way through the lifetime of a DWG version. The 2007 DWG format is shared by AutoCAD 2007, 2008 and 2009, but this interoperability issue affects even users of those releases that supposedly share the same format. Users of vertical AutoCAD variants are, unfortunately, accustomed to this sort of thing happening every year.

iPad, iPhone app – good and bad news

Steve Johnson — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 09:28:01 +0000

Good news! Autodesk has announced an app that will link iPads and iPhones to Project Butterfly. This provides viewing, markup and limited editing facilities.

Bad news! Autodesk has decide to call it AutoCAD WS, which is bordering on the fraudulent. It’s not AutoCAD, is nothing like it, and is unlikely to ever be anything like it. I can call my dog Prince, but that doesn’t make him royalty. Unfortunately, much of the mainstream media appears to be blissfully unaware of this. This is gaining Autodesk some short-term column inches, but at the longer-term expense of furthering the myth that “AutoCAD” is going to run on iPhone and iPads. People will start using Butterfly, think it’s AutoCAD, and then, if they need CAD for their Macs, wonder why they should spend thousands on something so basic and limited.

Good news! It will be available Real Soon Now, and you can sign up for it at http://butterfly.autodesk.com/mobile/.

Bad news! You can’t sign up for it using your iPhone or iPad (unless it’s jailbroken). Apple may be convinced you don’t need Flash, but Autodesk disagrees. The Butterfly signup page requires Flash, you see. It wants to send you off to adobe.com.

Ouch! You have to admit, that’s pretty funny. Cluelessness? There’s an app for that. I guess iUsers will just have to use their Macbook Pros to sign up.

Civil 3D 2011 ANZ comes complete with “virus”

Steve Johnson — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 08:06:11 +0000

If you install Civil 3D 2011 using the ANZ (Australia/New Zealand) profile, when you start it up for the first time, you will see a large warning indicating that the drawing requires an Asian language pack to be installed. It also warns that this is a symptom of the acad.vlx virus:

Now I know that in this case it’s not an actual virus causing the problem, but rather the ANZ template drawing being “infected” with this Language Pack requirement. I have had to deal with quite a few incoming drawings in this state, and that’s painful enough without Autodesk also infecting every Australasian Civil 3D drawing with the problem. Other profiles may be similarly infected, but at the moment I don’t know. Edit: Matt Anderson reports that the problem occurs on US systems too.

Autodesk, I suggest that as a matter of great urgency you create a clean ANZ template file, post it as a hotfix and warn all your Civil 3D customers of the SNAFU. Neither “install the language pack” nor “turn off the warning” are adequate workarounds. Your customers do not want to send out or receive any drawings in this state.

Beyond the immediate issue of Autodesk shipping software that on first use warns the user that they may have a virus (and encourages the creation of drawings that spread that warning far and wide), I would appreciate some assistance in dealing with “infected” drawings, whether in Civil 3D or plain AutoCAD.

First, I need to be able to detect such drawings using LISP so I ensure they are rejected rather than allowed into our drawing management system, and this detection will need to work in releases at least as far back as AutoCAD 2004.

Second, I need a mechanism of cleaning up such drawings. The only thing I have discovered that works so far is the manual, time-consuming and dangerous process of recreating the drawings by starting from scratch and Copy/Paste in each layout. With big jobs using nested xrefs, this is fraught. I need to be able to provide a LISP-based cleanup mechanism that I can set up to work in batch mode on a set of drawings.

I would be grateful for any clues anyone might have about the above detect & cleanup needs.

Edit: see the comments for further important information.

AutoCAD for Mac in Beta

Steve Johnson — Mon, 24 May 2010 04:25:53 +0000

Disclaimer: I have absolutely no access to inside information about this Beta. Even if I had, I would not reveal anything that I had learned as a result of such access. This post discusses only information that is already public knowledge.

The native Mac OS X AutoCAD port that Autodesk has been foreshadowing for some time is now in Beta, it seems. The Italian Mac community is getting particularly excited about the leak, but it’s also a popular subject of discussion on at least one English-speaking forum. The Autodesk codename is Sledgehammer, and it’s currently 64-bit only. If this is a subject that interests you, with a bit of sniffing around you can easily find screenshots, a video and you can apparently even download it via torrent if you’re feeling particularly brave/stupid.

If you’re interested in trying it out, it would be much better to apply to join the Beta program. That way, you will stay legal, you won’t download a trojan and you will contribute towards improving the product. Autodesk will probably need such contributions, because the early Beta allegedly runs like “a sewer” with huge performance issues. That should not be a surprise at this stage, but it should give you some idea of how much work Autodesk has ahead of it before it has a product that is fit for human consumption.

Oh, if you do join Autodesk’s Beta program, please be a bit more careful with the software than the guy who thought it would be a cool thing to hand out to his friends.

Edit: Ralph thinks it’s fake. I really don’t think it is, but must acknowledge the possibility that I’m wrong.

Edit 2: More discussion and screenshots at SolidSmack.

CAD International interview on drcauto and other subjects

Steve Johnson — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:33:02 +0000

This morning I spoke with CAD International‘s Nigel Varley. Here is a paraphrased summary of the interview.

SJ: When did CAD International buy the drcauto intellectual property rights?
NV: About two weeks ago.

SJ: You are currently helping drcauto customers with authorisation codes, is that correct?
NV: Yes, masses of them. It’s taking up a lot of our peoples’ time.

SJ: Are you charging for this service?
NV: Not at present.

SJ: Do you intend to charge for this service in the future?
NV: Maybe. We may need to, both to pay for our time and to recoup our investment. I don’t particularly like the idea of annual renewals for software, so we may do something different in future.

SJ: If somebody wanted to buy drcauto products such as LT Toolkit now, could they do so?
NV: No, we’re still processing the materials we were given when we bought the rights. It wasn’t left in a well-organised state. I’m not sure if that was done deliberately or if it was just like that.

SJ: Do you have any plans to continue development of LT Toolkit or the other drcauto products?
NV: It’s too early to say at this time. I understand it doesn’t work right now with AutoCAD LT 2010 with Update 2 applied, or on 64-bit Windows, or on Windows 7. It’s not clear at this stage how much work is involved in making it work. It should be doable, but we can’t make any commitments at this stage.

SJ: So do you have a timeframe for doing any of this stuff?
NV: No, it’s too early. We’re still processing it.

SJ: What about former drcauto employees helping people out with authorisation codes?
NV: They have no rights to do that. They don’t own the intellectual property, we do. People need to be very careful.

SJ: Are you contemplating legal action?
NV: I think I’ll keep that under my hat for now.

SJ: Do you foresee any problems with Autodesk if you go ahead with LT Toolkit?
NV: I don’t think so. Autodesk would be pretty naive, with competing products around at a lower price than LT and with LISP built in, to think that they would gain any sales by blocking LT Toolkit. They would just be shooting themselves in the foot.

SJ: Autodesk has always been strongly opposed to products like LT Toolkit. Are you concerned about legal action from Autodesk?
NV: Well, people say that Autodesk has been against it, but I haven’t seen any evidence of that. When I spoke to the late Gary D’Arcy he told me that Autodesk had never once even contacted him to try to get him to stop developing it.

On Deelip’s blog there has been some discussion about resellers and what they should be allowed to do, so I asked some questions along those lines.

SJ: What is the relationship between CAD International in the USA and Australia?
NV: We’re an Austalian company, moving into the US marketplace for those people in the USA who want to buy our products. We don’t have offices in the USA, but we do have people on the ground.

SJ: Is CAD International an authorised AutoCAD reseller?
NV: No. We’ve been selling Autodesk products for 15 years without a direct relationship. We buy from Scholastic like everybody else in the same position. It’s not worth becoming a dealer; the obligations are too great and the margins are not worthwhile. We’ve been asked on several ocasions over the years and always said no.

[Note: I've since read (in something written well before this issue was raised here) that Autodesk Australia intends to tighten up the reseller situation in the very near future. These things go in cycles, and have for the last 25 years.]

SJ: Does Autodesk have a problem with you promoting competing products such as Bricscad?
NV: They have never spoken to us about it in the past, but as we don’t have a direct relationship with them it’s not surprising.

SJ: I see from your web site that you are selling DWG TrueView for $195. Isn’t that a free product?
NV: That fee is for supply services; research services if you prefer. People can download it from Autodesk if they like or get it from us. We just put it on the site as a trial to see if anybody wanted to buy it. Nobody has, yet.

SJ: I can’t say I’m greatly surprised by that. Has Autodesk contacted you about this issue?
NV: No, we’ve heard nothing from Autodesk. They don’t really care about us, we’re a pretty small player in the market.

[Edit: the $195 price tag has since vanished from the site.]

Trusting Autodesk? Contemplating a new product

Steve Johnson — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 06:36:49 +0000

Last week, in my capacity as a de facto CAD manager for a large public utility company, I was having a chat with an Autodesk Australia person (he’s a nice guy and very honest, by the way). The topic of conversation moved to the new AutoCAD-based vertical, Plant 3D 2010. At that stage, I had not even installed the 30-day trial, but I still raised some of the issues that potentially stood in the way of the company adopting this apparently highly suitable product.

In a word, it comes down to trust. Each drawing used or issued by this utility is a legal document with a potentially very long life ahead of it. I showed the Autodesk person a drawing issued in 1901. The assets documented by that drawing are still in use today; indeed, many thousands of people daily depend heavily on them. Before we invest our money, time and training in Plant 3D, we need to know that the electronic drawings produced with it are going to be fully functional in the long term.

In terms of a new product like Plant 3D, can we trust Autodesk to do the following?

Still be around and providing CAD software for many years?
Go on supporting this new product for many years?
In the event that the product is discontinued, provide an alternative, together with a migration path that retains full drawing intelligence?
In the event that the product is discontinued, continue to provide ongoing support at least to the level of allowing the product to run and be transferred from one computer to another?
Provide a product that works as well in real life as it does in demos?
Provide a product that, from first release, works without crippling restrictions or bugs that render the product unusable?
Include adequate support for national standards?
Sell the product for a reasonable price on an ongoing basis?
Provide Subscription for a reasonable price on an ongoing basis?
Provide the product in such a way that we have flexibility in our use of network and standalone licensing long-term?
Continue to allow the licensed use of earlier releases and use at home?
Provide full API access to the custom objects, including ActiveX?
Provide adequate object enablers for all recent AutoCAD releases and variants?
Support the ongoing use of DWG files by other releases of this product freely up and down within a 3-release DWG version bracket?
Provide full visual integrity, editability of proxy objects and round-tripping of intelligence, when saving to plain AutoCAD, including earlier releases?
Provide mechanisms that allow any company-based custom work to be distributed easily to internal and external users and carried forward to new releases reliably?
Avoid introducing problems and restrictions that would interfere with customisation and other aspects of CAD management?

Feel free to add to my list in your comments. If you go down the list giving a Yes, No or Maybe, how well does Autodesk do? Before looking at the product, I’ve got one Yes, a few Maybes and a very large number of Nos. That’s not based on paranoia or hatred, just on past history, including very recent history.

For example, can Autodesk be trusted to still be selling Plant 3D in a few years’ time? Ask the users of Autodesk FMDesktop. The same can be said of any of the other products in a long list of Autodesk abandonments that goes back to the dark ages. Generic CADD, anyone? What do I do with all my old Graphic Impact files?

Is it likely that Plant 3D will work properly in the real world in the first release or two? Ask the users of Civil 3D who tried to get any grading done for the first few releases. Very major and obvious problems in new products can go on for years before being addressed.

I’d be interested to hear how well you think Autodesk rates for new-product trustworthiness. There are other aspects to trusting Autodesk, and I will cover these in a future post. Please wait for that one before launching into any generic tirades; for now I just want to know about your level of Autodesk trust, purely in relation to new products and continued support for existing ones.

Hotfix available for Raster Design licensing issue

Steve Johnson — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 03:09:02 +0000

Thanks to Brian and Rick for pointing out the availability of a hotfix for Raster Design 2010′s standalone/network license incompatibility. As a bonus, it also fixes some Raster Design / Civil 3D stability issues.

The hotfix is available here, and as always with patches, fixes, service packs and updates, read the readme first.

Note that although this fixes the most common scenario where a network Raster Design needs to work on a standalone AutoCAD, it does not fix the opposite scenario. So if you have a bunch of network licensed AutoCAD variants available to you and you have a standalone license of Raster Design because you’re the only person in the office who needs it, you’re still out of luck. If you’re in such a position, I think you have a very strong case for a no-cost change from standalone to network licensing for Raster Design. If you ask for this and are refused, let me know and I’ll let everyone else know.

Network/standalone clash is confined to Raster Design

Steve Johnson — Fri, 01 May 2009 00:09:21 +0000

Autodesk has been in touch to confirm that the failure to allow a mixed network/standalone environment is confined to Raster Design. I haven’t yet tested this myself, but I’ve been told unequivocally that you can mix standalone and network license models for the major products.

Here is the official Autodesk response to the issue:

We are very aware of the issue currently relating to the co-existence of an AutoCAD SLM (stand-alone license) and AutoCAD Raster Design NLM (network license) configuration. This was not an intentional “change of licensing policy” as expressed in some blog posts this week, but an unfortunate side effect of updating our licensing technology for SLM (stand-alone) seats to be in sync with our NLM seats for all AutoCAD-based products. We can only apologize for this new behavior experienced by customers upgrade to 2010 version products.

We are currently pursuing a couple of options to rectify this situation. We do intend to provide a solution in the very near term and I hope you will join me in helping mitigate the frustrations expressed in various blogs this week.

We have also heard of speculations that this issue also impacts side-by-side installations of different AutoCAD desktops. This is not the case. Both software development and QA have successfully installed many different AutoCAD-based 2010 desktops side-by-side in mixed SLM and NLM configurations without any issues.

AutoCAD’s magic vanishing attachments

Steve Johnson — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 13:36:59 +0000

There are now quite a few file types that you can attach to an AutoCAD drawing as a reference, in the same way that you can attach other drawings as xrefs. We’ve been able to attach other drawings since Release 11 (1990) and images since Release 14 (1997), but every release since 2007 has introduced a new kind of attachment. In AutoCAD 2010, you can now also attach PDFs, MicroStation DGNs (v7 and v8), DWF and DWFx files.

But should you? Maybe not. It depends who is going to use those drawings after you. If you know for certain that every user of that drawing is going to be using 2010 and later, that’s no problem. But if there is the possibility of earlier releases being used, your fine-looking attachments could vanish silently in the night. Attach a PDF to your drawing in 2010, give it to a user of last year’s AutoCAD 2009 (you’ll need to save it as a 2007 DWG) and what will he see? Nothing. There is no text-screen warning, no bounding box, no piece of text indicating the file name, nothing. Just a blank space where there should be useful drawing content.

This problem isn’t new to 2010, because there are similar problems with the other recent attachment types. Let’s examine them one by one:

PDF – visible only in 2010 and later (except for the special case of 2009 with the Subscription-only Bonus Pack 2).
DWFx – visible only in 2009 and later.
DGN v7 – visible only in 2009 and later.
DGN v8 – visible only in 2008 and later.
DWF – visible only in 2007 and later.

It’s important to note that the attachments don’t actually disappear from the drawing. They are still stored there, even if you save to an earlier DWG format like 2000 or 2004. The attachments survive the round trip to an earlier DWG format intact; they will reappear just fine if reopened in 2010. (Round-tripping of new object types is something that Autodesk has done extremely well over the years).

In most cases, the objects are stored invisibly as proxy objects (object name ACAD_PROXY_ENTITY, known in the early days as zombies). In some cases, they are listed as special Underlay objects (e.g. DGNUnderlay, DWFUnderlay). In 2000 to 2006, they all list as proxies. How can you list these objects in earlier releases when you can’t see them? With a bit of LISP, or old tricks like LIST ALL Remove Crossing.

The moral of the story for drawing creators is to look before you leap whan attaching new object types. For drawing recipients, it’s something to carefully watch out for. If you’re the customer and you use an earlier release, you may even wish to include a don’t-use-this-attachment-type clause in your specifications.

Autodesk plans to fix Raster Design licensing SNAFU

Steve Johnson — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 15:00:29 +0000

I have been in touch with various people at Autodesk about Raster Design 2010′s failure to work in a mixed standalone/network environment. These people have all been suitably apologetic, they assure me it wasn’t a deliberate move on Autodesk’s part, and that moves are afoot to provide a solution fairly soon. For example:

Our intention was never to cause such inconvenience for our Raster customers with the licensing change. We are currently working on a solution and hope to have more information in the coming weeks.

And:

…we are very aware of the issue currently relating to the co-existence of an AutoCAD SLM and Raster Design NLM. This was not an intentional “change of licensing policy”, but an unfortunate side effect of updating our licensing technology for SLM (stand-alone) seats to be in sync with our NLM seats for all AutoCAD-based products. I can only apologize for this new behavior experienced by customers upgrade to 2010 version products.

We are currently pursuing a couple of options to rectify this situation. We do intend to provide a solution (fix if you will) in the very near term…

The jury is still out about whether this problem affects only Raster Design or is a general problem that prevents a mixed standalone/network environment of AutoCAD and vertical products. If it’s a general problem, it would be an unmitigated disaster for the 2010 product range. I’m getting mixed messages about this from the Autodesk people, but I don’t want to make an issue of that because the people involved are trying to help by providing what information they have as quickly as possible. As soon as I have accurate information available to me I will pass it on.

I know of at least one person who is unable to get a mixed AutoCAD and Revit MEP environment working. If you have tried to get AutoCAD 2010 and another 2010 vertical product working side by side where one is standalone and the other network, please add your experiences to the comments here.

Autodesk messes up Raster Design 2010 licensing

Steve Johnson — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 07:40:55 +0000

I was horrified to learn (in this Autodesk Discussion Group thread) that Autodesk has changed the rules as far as the way Raster Design licenses are handled. It’s quite possible that Autodesk has also done this with other products that I’m not yet aware of. If so, please comment and let me know.

If you’re not familiar with Raster Design, it’s an Autodesk add-on that adds raster handling capabilities to AutoCAD and AutoCAD-based products. The change that has been introduced is that the licensing method of AutoCAD and Raster Design now has to match. That is, if your AutoCAD is standalone, the network version of Raster Design won’t run on it, and vice versa.

Why does this matter? Let’s say you’re a CAD Manager in this scenario:

You have a hundred AutoCAD users, half of which are full-time users with standalone licenses and the other half who are mainly part-time users with network licenses. Let’s say that some of those users (of both types) have a very occasional need to use the features in Raster Design. You bought one network license of the product a few releases ago and have everything on Subscription, just the way Autodesk wants it. So far, you’ve been able to provide the Raster Design option to all of your users. Only one user at a time can use it, but as use of the product is pretty rare, this hasn’t been a problem to date. If demand increased, other licenses could be added as needed.

Now, with Raster Design 2010, this is no longer possible. Your network license will not be available to your standalone users. You have the following options:

Buy 50 standalone licenses of Raster Design 2010 for your standalone AutoCAD 2010 users, i.e. spend a huge amount of money on software that will go unused more than 99% of the time. Oh, and commit more money to maintaining that software with Subscription.
Convert all your AutoCAD licenses from standalone to network. This is not a free service. Last time I looked, it cost about 20% of the retail price of a new seat. That means you will need to waste a huge amount of money changing your AutoCAD licenses to work in a way that is an inferior match with the way you do business. If you’ve already provided AutoCAD 2010 to your standalone users, you’ll need to uninstall them all and reinstall them as network versions. Won’t that be fun?
Upgrade neither AutoCAD or Raster Design to 2010 and stick with the release you’ve got, i.e. waste a large amount of pre-paid Subscription money.
Do without Raster Design altogether, i.e. waste the money you’ve spent on the product purchase and Subscription. In this case, you’ll probably need to put some time, effort and further expenditure into investigating and buying third-party alternatives that have a sane network licensing policy. Who said Autodesk is hard on its third-party developers? Look, it’s actively drumming up business for them!

Wow. This, in an environment where people are looking to save money. It doesn’t matter what efforts the Raster Design developers have put into improving the product. Raster Design could do twice as much stuff, twice as well, in half the time, while looking prettier and playing a tune. For many customers, this licensing decision has rendered the product unusable, so none of that stuff will matter. Why did you bother, people?

It’s such a spectacularly stupid move that it’s hard to comprehend that anybody within Autodesk could even seriously contemplate the idea, let alone allow it to get through to the finished product. Here are my top ten reasons why this is dumb even from Autodesk’s point of view:

It adds another unnecessary pain point to CAD Managers. These are generally the people who are currently working out whether to upgrade, pay for Subscription, or stick with what they have and pay Autodesk nothing, so they are the people Autodesk should be most careful to avoid hurting.
It will discourage some people from using the current release of the products.
It will discourage other people from keeping their Subscription current.
It will encourage some customers to ask for their money back for Raster Design, Subscription or both. If this is refused, it could even lead to another bad-publicity court case.
It is a negative example people will use when deciding whether Autodesk can be trusted to do the right thing by its customers, once they are all tied into Subscription.
It will discourage people who may have been interested in Raster Design from buying it.
It will discourage people from investing in any other Autodesk add-on software in future.
It will increase the perception that Autodesk doesn’t care about its customers and is always looking out for sneaky cash grabs.
It will increase the perception that Autodesk is clueless about how its products are used in the real world.
It distracts from the generally positive news about the AutoCAD 2010 product family. I’ve got some nice things to say about AutoCAD 2010, but I’m writing this instead.

Autodesk, this is a particularly nasty anti-customer move, and that’s the polite way of putting it. I stongly advise you to reverse this decision. I don’t care if you’ve made it technically difficult for yourself to do so; just do it. Please.

Disclosure: the above scenario is not a million miles from the situation in which I find myself. So it’s something that directly affects me. But it’s something so dumb and annoying that I’d still be ranting about it, even if that were not the case.

More on ODA, Autodesk and click-through agreements

Steve Johnson — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 02:48:02 +0000

Evan Yares has provided more information on the incident I mentioned in my last post. Here it is:

It was years ago. My guess was that the person who did it was just trying to spider the website pages, for marketing research, and didn’t realize he got all the libraries too.

In any event, I said hey you did this, they said no we didn’t, I produced download logs, they said there was no agreement and even if there was we hereby cancel it, I said if you want to see our libraries I’ll send ‘em to you no strings, they said no thanks, then I just let it drop. Of course, I’m paraphrasing.

I wasn’t going to get in a fight with Autodesk. Trying to trick them into joining the ODA would have been both futile and dumb. I’d been trying for years to get them to join (I was an optimist, once upon a time), and it caused no damage for Autodesk to be able to see the ODA libraries. There wasn’t anything in them that they didn’t know better than we did.

Don’t read too much into Autodesk’s belief in the enforceability of click-through agreements based on this incident. I knew the guy who downloaded the files, and knew that he didn’t have the authority to bind Autodesk to an ODA membership agreement (it would have taken at least a VP to do that.)

This is interesting for more than just the amusement factor; it raises a serious point about the enforceability of click-through agreements. In this case it was a web-based membership agreement, but I’m more interested in software license agreements.

In most cases, the person doing a software installation is unlikely to be a Vice President or higher. It’s quite possible that the installer doesn’t even work directly for the company that is supposedly agreeing to whatever terms may be hidden behind the “I Agree” button. In fact, that’s the situation I’m regularly faced with when I install software for a client. The client certainly doesn’t view the “agreement” and may not even know that it exists. The client hasn’t authorised me to negotiate a contract with anyone, only to get some software working. There’s no “meeting of the minds”. The software vendor may think that the client is bound up tight by the terms of the EULA; the client hasn’t agreed to anything and either doesn’t know the EULA exists or doesn’t consider it to have any validity.

Does it matter? Maybe not. It only really matters when one party or the other doesn’t do the right thing. Fortunately, I have honest clients and I’m confident that they will act in an ethical way on an ongoing basis. But will the software vendors do likewise? I don’t know.

Evan Yares, ODA, Autodesk and click-through agreements

Steve Johnson — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 07:44:15 +0000

I’ve always found it entertaining when the lawyers of CAD companies do their best to make their clients look like total jerks. The opening shots as presented by Evan Yares in his proposed ODA class-action lawsuit indicate that there is another rich source of recreational reading on its way. I’m sure it’s no fun for the lawyer-paying people involved, though.

You would think that Autodesk would be rubbing its corporate hands together at the prospect of the ODA being distracted like this. Or maybe not, if the bunfight throws up more little gems like this:

Autodesk had at least once gone to the ODA website, agreed to the click-through membership agreement, received their access password via email, downloaded each and every library on the ODA’s website, then denied they did it. (The ensuing conversation about this, between the ODA and Autodesk, was pretty interesting, to say the least.)

If that’s true (and I would welcome evidence from either party) it certainly puts an interesting slant on what Autodesk thinks about the enforceability of click-through agreements.

On a related subject, see the polls on the right. There has been one running for a while about whether you even read such “agreements”, and I’ve added two more. They ask if you feel morally and legally bound by the terms that lie under that “let me get on with the installation” button.

AutoCAD 2009 Subscription Pack 2 – PDF Enhancements

Steve Johnson — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 02:01:29 +0000

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 brief summary of the features, taken direct from the download page:

PDF Underlays
Now you can import PDF files, attaching them as PDF underlays. Once you attach a PDF underlay, you can use a variety of tools to snap to lines and objects, control the display of layers, move, scale, rotate, and clip the PDF underlay.

PDF Output
Key improvements have been made for publishing PDF files. File sizes have been reduced, making it easier to share designs. TrueType font support has been added, giving you control over precisely how your fonts are displayed.

This bonus pack is only available in English for AutoCAD® 2009, although, if desired, it can be installed on localized versions of AutoCAD 2009. If installed on a localized version of AutoCAD 2009, all new and related commands display in English only.

As usual, read the readme first, which contains much fuller descriptions of the new features.

How much do you exchange data with non-Windows users?

Steve Johnson — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:59:46 +0000

A discussion I’ve been having elsewhere has prompted me to add two new polls (see right). I know that most of you, being AutoCAD users, are also Windows users. I’m interested to know how often you exchange data (e.g. DWG, DXF, DWF, PDF, etc) with users of other operating systems, specifically Linux and Mac users. If you don’t exchange data with anyone then please leave the polls alone, but if you do exchange data but never with non-Windows users, please join in and say so!

Autodesk and Bentley – kiss, kiss!

Steve Johnson — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 13:29:37 +0000

OK, so I’m a long way from being the first to comment on this, but maybe I’ll be the last? Don’t count on it. In the unlikely event that this is the only CAD blog you ever read, you may be unaware that Autodesk and Bentley have decided to swap code so their respective products can make a better job of writing each other’s drawing formats.

The MicroStation DWG interface has traditionally been imperfect. (I remember raising the ire of one of the Bentley brothers in person many years ago on the CompuServe ACAD forum when I described Bentley’s DWG/DXF interface developers as incompetent (accurately, I may add). The brother in question was one of the said developers…) The AutoCAD DGN interface (which was available in Map for many years before making it into AutoCAD) has been rather less perfect than that, so this move should lead to benefits for customers of both products in future releases. Whether or not it actually will improve matters remains to be seen. That relies on the future competence of both parties in using ‘foreign’ code. The first versions could be, er, interesting. Or maybe they’ll be great.

Assuming the best, who should we thank for this development? Autodesk? Bentley? Maybe not. I think we should thank the Open Design Alliance (ODA). If Autodesk hadn’t been so keen to do damage to the ODA in its belated but increasingly urgent battle to win complete control over DWG, do you think this would have ever happened? I don’t think so. It hadn’t happened in the preceding couple of decades.

Thank you, ODA, for making this happen. May you live long and prosper, and continue to apply pressure to improve interoperability for all. But in the interests of fairness, don’t you think you should at least mention this development in your newsroom?