AutoCAD 2011 Archives - Page 2 of 2

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2011, Autodesk, Comments, Customer Service, Web Stuff

Autodesk provides CHM-based Help for AutoCAD 2011

By Steve Johnson 28 April 2010, 2:27 pm 28 April 2010 itemprop="discussionURL"7

In a comment in response to my AutoCAD 2011 Help system is not popular post, Autodesk’s Diane Serda acknowledged the problems, offered apologies and posted a link to a CHM version of the Help. From Diane’s comment: We have posted the zip file for download here: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?id=15068206&siteID=123112&linkID=9240618 Instructions: 1. Download the AutoCAD2011CHMHelp.zip to your local drive (such as My Documents\AutoCAD2011Help). 2. Extract the zip file to this same folder. 3. To access the CHM Help, you’ll need to click on acad181.chm or create a desktop shortcut. You can also point to the locally installed HTML help by turning on the …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2011, Cloud, Comments, Fail, Rant, Web Stuff

AutoCAD 2011 Help system is not popular

By Steve Johnson 23 April 2010, 3:48 pm 23 April 2010 itemprop="discussionURL"9

My poll on this subject is still running (see right), but so far about 2/3 of respondents rate AutoCAD 2011’s new browser-based Help system as 0, 1 or 2 stars out of 5 (total fail, very poor or poor). Frankly, I’m surprised it’s doing as well as that. Have a look at this discussion group thread to get an idea of the sort of reaction I was expecting it to receive. (Kudos to Autodesk’s moderators for allowing the discussion to continue with relatively little obvious censorship, at least so far). There are many good new things in AutoCAD 2011, but …

AutoCAD 2011, Autodesk, Customer Service, Web Stuff, Win

Autodesk Knowledge Base – rapid response converts fail to win

By Steve Johnson 16 April 2010, 1:46 pm 16 April 2010 itemprop="discussionURL"1

Credit where credit is due. Following my rant about the uselessness of using a 16-minute YouTube video as the AutoCAD 2011 system requirements resource, the relevant people at Autodesk quickly fixed it and let me know. Now we just need the other releases covered and we’ll be all set. Autodesk is still officially supporting AutoCAD releases back to 2008, and those people who parted with a big slab of cash a decade ago are Autodesk customers, too. I’m sure Autodesk would like potential new buyers of its current products to know that they will be at least minimally looked after …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2011, Autodesk, Customer Service, Fail, Other Sites, Rant, Video, Web Stuff

Autodesk Knowledge Base – who thought this was a good idea?

By Steve Johnson 14 April 2010, 10:35 pm 14 April 2010 itemprop="discussionURL"7

This evening, I needed to know exactly which operating systems were supported by all AutoCAD releases from 2004 to 2011 inclusive. I have a pretty good idea, but I needed to confirm that my mental picture is completely correct. So I hopped over to the Autodesk Knowledge Base and entered “system requirements” in the search engine. Only one of the first 50 results was relevant, and that was for AutoCAD 2011. So I clicked on that. Did I get an easily digestible list of system requirements, including a list of exactly which operating systems were supported by AutoCAD 2011? No, …

Apple, AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2011, Other Blogs

AutoCAD for Mac under construction

By Steve Johnson 13 April 2010, 2:55 pm 13 April 2010 itemprop="discussionURL"5

Despite it being A Bad Idea, it look like Autodesk is going ahead with making some kind of OS X variant of AutoCAD, as has been hinted at for a while now. Owen Wengerd has pointed out a few dead giveaways in the AutoCAD API. Another giveaway is the move to the browser-based Help system. OK, it may perform hopelessly and have terrible functionality, but hey, it’s platform-independent! If you still doubt my assertion that the development of AutoCAD for Mac would be a bad thing for AutoCAD, just go and search for a few things in the new AutoCAD …

Announcement, AutoCAD 2011, Polls

Competition poll now open

By Steve Johnson 29 March 2010, 9:07 pm 29 March 2010 itemprop="discussionURL"0

In a shock move, Autodesk’s general design product for this year was named AutoCAD 2011. I thought AutoCAD Banana or Generic CADD 7 stood a chance, but it was not to be. Maybe next year? Over on the right is a poll to allow you to choose who of the 14 entrants wins the prize in the pin the name on the product competition to come up with an alternative name. I’ll leave the poll open for about a week. Entrants can vote for themselves, but only once. Please vote for the entry you like the best!

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2011, Cloud, Comments, Performance, Polls

AutoCAD 2011’s new Help system – what do you think?

By Steve Johnson 28 March 2010, 9:20 am 28 March 2010 itemprop="discussionURL"15

With all this talk of clouds in the air, it is interesting to note that Autodesk has moved AutoCAD’s Help system to a browser-based format, with online access as the default. So, how has Autodesk done with this first dipping of its toes into the cloudy waters with its primary mainstream product? I’ve already had a couple of unsolicited comments on the subject, and I’d like to hear from you. How do you rate the following, compared with previous releases? Performance (online) Performance (offline) Search results Content completeness and accuracy Ease of manual browsing Efficiency of user interface Concept of …

AutoCAD 2011, Autodesk, Fail, Navel Gazing, Other Blogs, Spin, Thoughts

Some meaningless AutoCAD 2011 numbers

By Steve Johnson 26 March 2010, 5:41 pm 26 March 2010 itemprop="discussionURL"2

According to David Cohn, at yesterday’s blogger event in San Fransisco prior to the 2011 launch, Autodesk provided the following figures: 76,000 man hours spent on Q/A of the new release 6,000 total code reviews of new release 2,000 commands tested 4,600 Beta customers involved in AutoCAD 2011 1.4M lines of old code were removed Well, that’s all very nice, but those numbers are completely meaningless without context. Autodesk may as well have just published the equivalent numbers for Release 13; I’m sure they would have looked impressive in isolation. Did anybody in the blogger audience ask the obvious question? …

AutoCAD 2011, Other Blogs

Summary of AutoCAD 2011 features

By Steve Johnson 26 March 2010, 1:07 pm 26 March 2010 itemprop="discussionURL"3

No, I haven’t written a post containing a summary of AutoCAD 2011 features. I won’t be doing so, either. Instead, I’ll just point you at R.K. McSwain’s excellent AutoCAD 2011 in 3 minutes post on his CAD Panacea blog. I won’t be ignoring the new release; I will be covering selected AutoCAD 2011 features in more detail in future posts. I just don’t see much point in doing a “me too” post when somebody else has already done such a fine job of it.

AutoCAD 2011, Subscription

Downloading AutoCAD 2011

By Steve Johnson 26 March 2010, 11:04 am 26 March 2010 itemprop="discussionURL"19

Apparently, AutoCAD 2011 has been available for download for the best part of a day. Here’s my experience so far. As a Subscription customer, I can see a bright new Get Your Upgrade button, and if I click on that I get an AutoCAD 2011 English link to click on. So far so good. If I click on that link, I get only this: Error Message You are currently not authorized to download from this Account. I have contacted my reseller to try to work out what is going on. In the meantime, I’d be interested to know if any …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2011, Customisation, Nostalgia, Tip

AutoCAD 2011 – Putting things back to “normal”

By Steve Johnson 25 March 2010, 9:17 pm 25 March 2010 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 …

Announcement, AutoCAD 2011, Fun

Last chance to enter

By Steve Johnson 24 March 2010, 2:06 pm 24 March 2010 itemprop="discussionURL"0

My name the product competition has only a short time left to run, so please enter soon if you want to be in the running. With only 12 entries so far, new entrants still have a pretty decent chance of winning.

Announcement, AutoCAD 2011, Comments, Music

Pin the name on the product and win a prize!

By Steve Johnson 18 March 2010, 10:04 pm 18 March 2010 itemprop="discussionURL"17

This post is announcing a real competition with a real prize (well, nearly real). The prize will be the album uniVers by my favourite Australian band, Voyager. This will be provided to the winner in the form of a virtual download card which will be emailed to the winner, providing legal access to 320 kbps mp3 files of all the album tracks. In my previous post, I stated that Autodesk’s 25 March product launch is for AutoCAD 2011 (and other products that I’m not that interested in). I just want to make it clear that that’s a guess and not …

Announcement, AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2011, Autodesk, Other Blogs

AutoCAD 2011 launch on 25 March

By Steve Johnson 16 March 2010, 10:36 am 16 March 2010 itemprop="discussionURL"7

Just announced by Shaan Hurley via Twitter and Facebook: Busy on the final details for a special Autodesk event next week in San Francisco with some bloggers. http://www.autodesk.com/webcast Follow the link and you will find this: Autodesk Webcast Date: 3/25/10 Start Time: 9:00 SF/12:00 New York/16:00 UK/17:00 CET Register today to join Autodesk CEO Carl Bass and Senior Vice President Amar Hanspal for an exclusive live webcast to learn about updates to Autodesk’s portfolio of design software for the AEC, manufacturing and general design industries. In Autodeskspeak, “general design” means AutoCAD (AEC = Revit, manufacturing = Inventor), so you can …

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

AutoCAD does a Cheshire Cat

By Steve Johnson 19 February 2010, 3:06 pm 19 February 2010 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 …