Category: <span>Nostalgia</span>

Category: Nostalgia

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2017, Autodesk, CAD Management, Customer Service, Development, Fail, Nostalgia, Other Blogs, Rant

AutoCAD 2017 Service Pack 1 is out but you probably don’t want to install it

 , , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"0

As reported by Jimmy Bergmark, AutoCAD 2017 SP1 will break add-ins that use Autodesk’s built-in autoloader mechanism. It looks like it’s a problem caused by third party applications, but it’s not. It’s entirely Autodesk’s fault. The only fix at this stage is to uninstall SP1. It’s astonishing that Autodesk would release a service pack like this, introducing a nasty bug that will break customers’ existing functionality. This reminds me of the comedy of errors that was AutoCAD Release 13 with its multitude of updates, many of which introduced new bugs as well as fixing others. AutoCAD 2017c4a, anyone? If you needed …

Announcement, Comments, Navel Gazing, Nostalgia

Is there anybody out there?

 , itemprop="discussionURL"20

I wonder if anyone still reads this blog? Would there be any point in reactivating it? I have stuff to say, but would anybody notice? Please let me know. Note that currently, I need to approve comments before they appear. I may change this setting later, but if you comment and nothing appears instantly, don’t panic.

Autodesk, Cloud, Customer Service, Nostalgia, Other Autodesk Products, Other Sites, Polls, Spin

MDT users and other Autodesk orphans, let’s have your good news stories!

 , itemprop="discussionURL"6

I was going to ignore this subject, but I’ve changed my mind because it allows me to post something positive about Autodesk. After all, I do try to post positive things; it’s hardly my fault that Autodesk has a habit of making it difficult. In upFront eZine #756, Autodesk’s Andrew Anagnost (or was it Clay Helm?) had the following to say, and must say I agree totally with the first sentence: The best evidence is how we have behaved historically. When we included Mechanical Desktop with Inventor, the media complained that we were killing Mechanical Desktop; you were probably one of …

Autodesk, Cloud, Fun, Navel Gazing, Nostalgia

Dilbert and the Cloud

 , itemprop="discussionURL"2

I have an Autodesk-related Dilbert story to share. Back in the late 90s, I was visiting Autodesk’s San Rafael offices (at Autodesk’s expense) and had an appointment to see a product manager. There was some confusion when I arrived at Reception, but after a few phone calls I was shown into a meeting room containing the manager and a lot of other Autodesk people. However, the open mouths told me that they were discussing very confidential stuff. They were clearly shocked and horrified that an outsider had been allowed into that particular room at that particular time, even though I had …

Autodesk, Customer Service, Nostalgia, Rant, Spin, Subscription

Autodesk confirms outrageous upgrade price increase

 , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"6

As I indicated in May, Autodesk will be increasing the cost of upgrades to 70% of the full retail cost of a new license. This renders it totally pointless upgrading Autodesk software at all, which is obviously Autodesk’s intention. This change probably won’t affect many people, as those who have chosen to stick with Autodesk despite everything have already been effectively forced onto Subscription. Anyway, here’s the confirmation from Autodesk: In early 2013 Autodesk will simplify the current upgrade pricing model, which may affect pricing and/or eligibility for upgrades.  Autodesk is providing advance notice to help ease the transition and …

Autodesk, Comments, Customer Service, Nostalgia, Polls

How good is Autodesk’s customer focus?

 , itemprop="discussionURL"4

Autodesk has grown and prospered by always, as much as possible, placing the customer’s needs foremost. John Walker, 1990, The Autodesk File That was the dominant philosophy back in Autodesk’s ancient history, to the benefit of all. However, is that still the case today? I’m not going to offer an view one way or the other in this post. Instead, I will leave it open to the floor. Good or bad, please comment below using specific examples if you can. If you’re short of time, you can still use the poll on the right to express your opinion.

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2009, Cloud, Development, Fail, Nostalgia, Polls, Rant

The worst feature ever added to AutoCAD is…

 , , , itemprop="discussionURL"14

…the Ribbon, according to your selections in the What are the worst features ever added to AutoCAD? poll. As in the best ever poll, the winner (loser?) in this race had no serious competition. I’ve listed eleven top (bottom?) features here rather than ten, partly because the popular (unpopular?) choice Memory Overuse isn’t exactly a feature. But it’s mainly because I’d hate to see Action Recorder unfairly miss out on a well-deserved mention. Ribbon (30%) CUI (20%) Help (on line / 2012) (18%) Memory Overuse (17%) AutoCAD Today (2000i/2002) (16%) White / Cream Drawing Background (16%) Unreconciled Layers (16%) Nudge (10%) Blipmode (9%) …

AutoCAD, LISP, Nostalgia, Polls, Thoughts, Win

The best feature ever added to AutoCAD is…

 , , , itemprop="discussionURL"4

…LISP. I have now closed the What are the best features ever added to AutoCAD? poll, and the winner is AutoLISP/Visual LISP, by a long, long way. I don’t always agree with the majority view expressed in the polls here, but in this case I wholeheartedly agree. Adding LISP was the biggest and best thing that ever happened to AutoCAD. Autodesk owes an enormous debt of gratitude to John Walker for incorporating the work of David Betz, who was of course standing on the shoulders of John McCarthy. It’s a crying shame that Autodesk has been so terribly neglectful of …

Announcement, AutoCAD, Autodesk, Cloud, Development, LISP, Nostalgia, Thoughts, Web Stuff, Win

(so (long (and (thanks (for (all (the (parentheses))))))))

 , itemprop="discussionURL"1

A few days ago, John McCarthy died at the age of 84. He didn’t make a fortune selling gadgets, he just profoundly affected the world of computing. He will be remembered mainly as the father of LISP, without which it is quite possible that AutoCAD and Autodesk would not have survived beyond the 80s. However, his original thinking went well beyond the development of a language. For example, 50 years ago he came up with an idea that is very relevant to what we are actively discussing today: In 1961, he was the first to publicly suggest (in a speech …

AutoCAD, Comments, Fail, Fun, Nostalgia, Polls, Win

Best and worst AutoCAD features ever – polls

 , , , itemprop="discussionURL"3

Using your suggestions and a few of my own, I have added two polls for you to select what are, in your opinion, the best and worst features ever added to AutoCAD. To help us find The Answer, there are 42 items in each poll, from which you can choose up to three. A few items (e.g. Action Recorder) made it into both lists, while several items in the ‘worst’ list (e.g. 2012 Array, Ribbon, Annotative Scaling) were suggested multiple times. It will be interesting to see how the poll results pan out.

AutoCAD, Comments, Fail, Fun, Nostalgia, Polls, Win

What are the best and worst features ever added to AutoCAD?

 , , , itemprop="discussionURL"26

Audience participation time, I think. A comment on one of AutoCAD 2012’s new features recently set me thinking about what were the worst features ever introduced to AutoCAD. That in turn got me thinking about what were the best. I’ll keep my opinions to myself for a while, as I’d like your input and don’t want to influence it. Please add a comment with your list of what you consider the best three features ever added to AutoCAD and the worst three. If you can’t think of three of each, you can submit less, but please don’t submit more. By …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2012, Autodesk, Autodesk University, ClassicArray, Customer Service, Navel Gazing, Nostalgia, Other Products, Thoughts

Will Autodesk have to explain itself to the SEC?

 , , , , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"5

The observant among you may have noticed that for many years, Autodesk’s free patches, service packs and updates haven’t added any new functionality. Bugs may get fixed, severe performance issues may be addressed, but design errors generally have to wait for the next release (at the earliest), and new features definitely don’t get added. The last time new functionality was added to AutoCAD in a free maintenance release was Release 13’s c4 update which shipped on 12 February 1996. (There was a public beta available some months earlier; I picked up a copy at Autodesk University 1995). That free update contained …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2012, Customisation, Nostalgia, Tip

How to make Ctrl+C perform a Cancel

 , , , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"2

In a recent comment, I was asked how to make Ctrl+C perform a Cancel. Before I get onto that, here’s a bit of history. Back in the Dark Ages of DOS, the way to cancel a command was by holding down Ctrl and pressing C. The last release to work like this by default was Release 13 for DOS, released in 1994. I remember the bother it caused my users who were faced with the Windows version in which Esc was used to cancel things and Ctrl+C copied objects to the clipboard. It took me at least a year before …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2012, ClassicArray, Nostalgia, Other Autodesk Products, Performance, Tip

AutoCAD 2012 – Putting things back to “normal”

 , , itemprop="discussionURL"161

Edit: If you’re running a more recent release of AutoCAD, have a look at the post AutoCAD 2017 – Putting things back to “normal” instead. The most popular post on this blog, in terms of both hits and comments, is AutoCAD 2009 – Putting things back to “normal”. This is followed by AutoCAD 2010 – Putting things back to “normal”, with AutoCAD 2011 – Putting things back to “normal” not too far behind. As it seems many people find these posts useful, here’s an updated version for the latest release. Much of this post is based on older versions, but …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2012, Customisation, Nostalgia

AutoCAD 2012 – Missing a few things?

 , , , itemprop="discussionURL"38

The Array dialog box isn’t the only thing you might notice by its absence in AutoCAD 2012. I’ll do a proper “Putting things back to normal” post later, but here’s a quick one for those of you wondering what happened to a few things that appear to be AWOL in 2012. Are you missing your aerial viewer, blips and/or screen menu? They’re still there, but the commands are undefined. To get them back, just redefine the commands: REDEFINE DSVIEWER DSVIEWER REDEFINE BLIPMODE BLIPMODE 1 REDEFINE SCREENMENU SCREENMENU 1 These features are deprecated. That means unless enough of you kick up …

Apple, AutoCAD, Autodesk, Nostalgia, Other Blogs

Apple – Autodesk history revisited

 , , itemprop="discussionURL"3

In a post on WorldCAD Access, Jay Vleeschhouwer makes some reasonable observations. However, the timing of the 1990s Autodesk / Mac history looks all wrong to me. Jay quotes himself from a 2008 note: …until about the mid-1990s Autodesk did have a reasonable presence on the Mac … commitment waned when Apple’s fortunes faded a dozen or so years ago The last of the original Mac AutoCADs was Release 12, a 1992 product. Apple market share continued to increase after that; indeed, 1994 was a bumper year. However, Autodesk’s commitment had already vanished by then, and its 1994 product, Release …

Autodesk, Nostalgia, Other Blogs, Other Sites, Thoughts, Writing

Why we keep upgrading

 , , itemprop="discussionURL"2

In a comment in response to a Deelip post yesterday, Brad Holtz pointed to an article he wrote in 1999. It’s interesting to note that while much of the computing world today bears little resemblance to the scene at the end of the last century, this article remains almost completely accurate and relevant. Indeed, it’s so right that you might even be tempted to think, “Duh, isn’t that obvious?” One section that stood out to me had this to say: Many software systems never even get beyond the acceptable stage …. vendors of these systems are continually coming out with …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2011, Customisation, Nostalgia, Tip

AutoCAD 2011 – Putting things back to “normal”

 , , itemprop="discussionURL"137

Edit: If you’re running a more recent release of AutoCAD, have a look at the post AutoCAD 2017 – Putting things back to “normal” instead. Easily the most popular post on this blog, in terms of both hits and comments, is AutoCAD 2009 – Putting things back to “normal”. Not too far behind it is AutoCAD 2010 – Putting things back to “normal”. Apparently, lots of people find these posts useful, so here’s an updated version for the latest release. Some of this post is based on the originals, but there are significant additions and differences in this year’s Luddite …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2011, Autodesk, Customer Service, Nostalgia, Other Autodesk Products, Spin, Subscription, Tip

AutoCAD does a Cheshire Cat

 , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"4

In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the Cheshire Cat gradually disappears until nothing is left but its smile. The AutoCAD packaging has done the same thing over the years until now nothing is left but the 0s and 1s. In Release 13, one box was not enough to keep all the materials, but Autodesk gradually slimmed it down until in recent years your slab of upgrade or Subscription cash gets you nothing but a DVD in a case (with or without a pack of cards). However, you can go cap in hand to Autodesk and ask for a real manual of …

Autodesk, Customisation, Interoperability, Nostalgia, Other Autodesk Products, Thoughts

Trusting Autodesk? Contemplating a new product

 , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"5

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 …