Author: <span>Steve Johnson</span>
Navel Gazing, Thoughts

If you admire somebody, please let them know

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This post has nothing to do with CAD or the other subjects I occasionally cover. Last month, I unexpectedly lost two of my colleagues to cancer. Wayne was a loud, larger-than life character, full of life. Paal (pronounced like Paul) was a quieter, more reserved man, but very friendly, funny and positive. Wayne occasionally rubbed people up the wrong way with his robust manner, but everybody who knew Paal liked him. I thought he was a great guy, but I never told him that. Now I wish I had. I never even knew he was ill, so when I read …

AutoCAD LT, Autodesk, Development, Interoperability, Interview, Legal, LISP, Other Blogs, Other Products, TrueView

CAD International interview on drcauto and other subjects

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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. …

Autodesk, LISP, Other Blogs, Other Products, Other Sites

More on drcauto, LT Toolkit and CAD International

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Things have moved on since my first post on this subject in which I passed on the information that Leonard Liang (a former drcauto employee) could help with codes for LT Toolkit orphans. In recent developments In a comment in a WorldCAD Access post, Nigel Varley from Australian company CAD International stated that they had bought the intellectual property rights to the drcauto software, and that drcauto codes and software obtained from former employees are illegal. Another comment on the same post from former drcauto employee Kevin J Secomb lamented the demise of Gary D’Arcy’s dream and criticised CAD International …

Autodesk, Cloud, Other Autodesk Products, Other Blogs, Review, Video, Web Stuff

Autodesk’s cloudy drawing offering

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Autodesk’s Project Butterfly is its latest offering in the Cloud (Software as a Service, SaaS, web-based software, whatever) area. This is a Labs technology preview (i.e. it ain’t cooked yet) of browser-based drawing system based on Autodesk’s purchase of Visual Tao. The idea is that no software other than a browser is required to create, edit or just view drawings. To try it out, head to http://butterfly.autodesk.com/ and pick on Try Now. If you’re interested in going further with it, you will need to create an account, which is a quick and painless process. This account is separate from your …

AU2009, Fun, Image manipulation, Navel Gazing, Other Blogs, Photography, Pictures

Shorn Shaan – you saw it here first

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I was amused to see Shaan Hurley losing his locks at AU. Some of you may recall me suggesting this course of action a couple of years ago. How close do you think I got with my artist’s impression? Original images © 2008 and 2009 Shaan Hurley.

Autodesk, Customer Service, Other Autodesk Products, Other Products

Hope for Autodesk FM Desktop orphans

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For those of us who have been following Autodesk for decades, it’s a familiar story. Autodesk buys a company or its technology, makes an Autodesk product out of it, and initially promotes it as the best thing since sliced bread. Autodesk subsequently ignores it to death, before finally killing it off and leaving customers in the lurch. Autodesk FM Desktop suffered this fate, and if you go looking for information about the product on the Autodesk site you’ll find only a few dregs left over from the days when this was a viable product. At least in this case Autodesk …

AutoCAD, Customer Service, Development, LISP, Other Blogs, Tip

Hope for drcauto LT Toolkit orphans

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LT Toolkit from the now-defunct drcauto was an add-on for AutoCAD LT that provided LISP and other capabilities that Autodesk disabled. Autodesk hated this, of course, but the late Gary D’Arcy made sure everything was done legally so it couldn’t be stopped even by Autodesk’s hyperactive legal team. If you are a user of LT Toolkit and you want to keep using the software now the company has closed down, you may find this information from Evan Yares useful: I’ve gotten in contact with Leonard Liang, the former key developer at DRCauto. He’s asked me to send any Toolkit Max …

Announcement

I’m Still Alive

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It’s an understatement to say that things have been a little quiet around here lately. I have just returned from some international travels and expect to start ramping thing up again soon. Thanks to the person who enquired about my wellbeing; I value your concern. I replied, but it bounced.

Advertising, Fail, Fun, Image manipulation, Legal, Other Blogs, Photography, Pictures, Rant, Thoughts

Ralph Lauren – genuinely dumb or trying to be clever?

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One of the blogs I read regularly is Photoshop Disasters, which recently posted a picture of a Ralph Lauren ad. In common with many fashion photos, this showed a skinny model that appeared to have been further skinnified on somebody’s computer to the point that the poor waif was ridiculously deformed. Like this: Nothing out of the ordinary there, then. Under normal circumstances it would have received a few dozen comments and scrolled off the front page in a week or so, because there is no shortage of bad image manipulation out there for the blog to snigger at. The …

Autodesk, Legal, Other Blogs, Thoughts

Vernor wins (for now), customers don’t

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Don’t get too excited, because I’m sure Autodesk will appeal, but as reported at Owen Wengerd’s CAD/Court, Vernor has won the right to resell his used copies of AutoCAD. While this is seen by some as a victory for customers, it isn’t. This doesn’t open up a brave new world in which we are allowed to sell the software we buy once we’re finished with it. If it had, I would be rejoicing as loud as anybody, because Autodesk’s ban on software transfers is an unconscionable restriction and deserves to die. But that’s not what this decision means. There are …

AutoCAD, Bug, Comments, Performance

Does your AutoCAD get its wrods worng?

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A problem I’ve seen affecting keyboard users (particularly fast ones) in recent AutoCADs (since 2006) is that the characters entered into the command line are not always the ones you typed. Or rather, they are the ones you typed, just not in the right order. In particular, I’ve seen the first couple of characters get messed up, so you might get ILNE instead of LINE. In addition to the annoyance factor, this is something of a productivity killer. Has this happened to you? If so, please comment. Any comment is welcome, but it would be great if you could provide the …

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

Trusting Autodesk? Contemplating a new product

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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 …

AUGI, AutoCAD, Autodesk, Other Autodesk Products, Polls

Ribbon acceptance in AutoCAD and Revit

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AutoCAD Ribbon use (and non-use) may have been the hottest topic on this blog to date, but it’s a storm in a teacup compared with what has been going on between Revit users and Autodesk. More on that later, but for now I’d just like to pass on a statement made by Autodesk BIM Design Product Line Manager Anthony A. Hauck on the AUGI forums that: Recent data on other Autodesk applications having both the new and “classic” UI show about a 2 : 1 split in favor of the new UI. I would be interested to know the full …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2009, AutoCAD 2010, Comments, Polls, Thoughts

These messages are brought to you by AutoCAD

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Over the past few releases, and particularly in AutoCAD 2009 and 2010, I have noticed an increase in the number of information notices (bubbles, warnings, task dialogs, Communication Center notices, etc.) being displayed. Shaan Hurley has pointed out that 2010 Update 1 introduces a balloon notification that periodically makes you aware of how much time remains before your subscription expires. Is this a good thing? There’s a poll on the right that asks a specific question about the default state of AutoCAD 2009 and 2010, but I’d also like to see some comments on this. What do you think of …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2010

AutoCAD 2010 Update 1

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Update 1, the first of Autodesk’s Updates (formerly Service Packs) for AutoCAD 2010 is now out for AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT. Equivalent updates for various verticals will follow soon. The Readme contains information about what was fixed, so I won’t reproduce that here. As always, read the readme first and exercise the usual paranoia. However, my experience of the pre-release versions of this Update has been positive.

AutoCAD, Autodesk, Bug, LISP, Tip

AutoCAD virus protection update

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As I mentioned in my last post, I had some reservations about the code provided by Autodesk to deal with suspect acad.vlx and logo.gif files. Based on a suggestion from Jimmy Bergmark, I have written my own, safer version which you can download here: clean_virus_safe.lsp. The comments at the top of the clean_virus_safe.lsp file explain what to do with it, but I will reproduce some of the relevant points here. Purpose: Checks for existence of acad.vlx and logo.gif files, which are associated with virus AL/Logo-A, also known as ACAD/Unexplode, ACAD/Agent.A or ACM_UNEXPLODE.B. Written as a safer alternative to Autodesk’s code …

AutoCAD, Autodesk, Bug, LISP, Other Blogs, Tip

Another AutoCAD malware warning

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Shaan Hurley has posted some useful information about another AutoCAD-based virus that is doing the rounds, and I strongly suggest you read it. However, I have some reservations about the solution that is posted there and in the Autodesk knowledgebase. The LISP code suggested will delete any files called acad.vlx or logo.gif that are located in the current user’s current AutoCAD search path. There are a couple of problems with that. The search path will change depending on the user, the profile, the startup folder and the drawing folder. That means you can’t just use the code once and expect …

AutoCAD, Other Blogs, Tip

AutoCAD malware warning

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There is a piece of malware out there written as an ObjectARX application, i.e. it will only affect AutoCAD users. It’s a China-based adware client, which Andrew Brandt at the Webroot threat blog has named Trojan-Pigrig. For full details, see here. Also, see here for AutoCAD-specific advice from the AutoCAD support team at the Without a Net blog.

AutoCAD

The biggest DWG file I’ve ever seen

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Today, I tried to investigate a DWG file that one of my users couldn’t open. It wouldn’t open for me on an old 1 GB PC. Trying a PC with 4 GB didn’t help, and neither did experimenting with various releases of AutoCAD. Depending on the release, AutoCAD would either try to open the drawing and eventually die with an out of memory error, or would instantly inform me that the drawing was too big to open. I don’t have access to a 64-bit version of AutoCAD (which might possibly be able to open this monster on a PC with …

AUGI

AUGI Special Election – voting opens

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The AUGI Special Election voting page is now live, and will be open until 12 July 2009. I encourage all AUGI members to carefully consider the candidates and participate in the electoral process. I do not like some of the restrictions that have been placed on this election, but it is the first real election (i.e. with a choice of candidates) that AUGI has had for several years, so please make it a success by taking part.