Category: <span>Bug</span>

Category: Bug

Autodesk, Bug, Customer Service, Rant, Web Stuff

The Autodesk discussion groups are awful

 , , , , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"3

Yes, the Autodesk discussion groups are still awful. In other breaking news, the Pacific Ocean continues to be wet. I seldom visit them any more, but I just hopped on to the Autodesk discussion groups to see what progress had been made in fixing the many problems that have been pointed out here, on the groups themselves, in official problem reports, and elsewhere. Little or none, it seems. Search? There are still apparently only 188 uses of the word “autocad” in the tens of thousands of posts in the AutoCAD groups, ever. Editor? It not only still vacuums, when I …

Bug, Customer Service, Hardware, Other Products, Rant, Review, Tip

Why I won’t buy another Canon all-in-one printer

 , , , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"7

Last year, I bought a Canon MP830 printer/scanner/copier/fax/tea maker/whatever for my home office. I chose this particular device because it had all the features I was after, including CD printing, duplex printing, printing to the edge of the sheet, decent photo printing quality, and great document handling including automatic dual-sided copying. It also had theoretical high speed operation and ink economy with 5 separate tanks. It also looked like a sturdy piece of kit that wasn’t going to wobble all over the place in use, and which might stand a chance of lasting a long time. It was at the …

Autodesk, Bug, Customer Service, Polls, Web Stuff

My autodesk.com site survey experience

 , , , , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"3

I just tried out the new discussion groups to see if anything has been fixed. After entering my password (yet again), instead of placing me back in the discussion groups with my 100-topics-per-page settings, I was transported to the main Autodesk page and given the chance to provide feedback. I was informed that a new browser window would be opened, and then… nothing. I waited a while, but still nothing. Or so it seemed. Actually, the new browser window appeared behind my existing browser window, so I found it eventually. I clicked on it, it opened another, bigger window and …

Autodesk, Bug, Customer Service, Rant, Web Stuff

Slight improvement in discussion group search

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

While almost all of the problems with the Autodesk discussion groups remain, there are some signs of movement in one area at least. The search facility, which until recently refused to find anything from before the update, now finds some earlier posts. It would appear that some kind of search index is very slowly being built, but it’s a long way short of being finished. For example, if I do the standard default search for “autocad” in all the AutoCAD groups, there are 83 found in the last 90 days. This seems plausible, but I don’t trust it. Changing the time option …

Autodesk, Bug, Customer Service, Polls, Rant, Web Stuff

Here’s a couple I didn’t mention earlier

 , , , , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"0

The Autodesk discussion group editor inserts spaces into URLs longer than a certain size (about 70 characters, it seems). It will insert spaces in one place for the URL that it says is displayed on the screen, in another place for the URL that’s actually invoked when clicked, and sometimes in even more places on the URL that really is displayed on the screen. Sometimes the space appears as a space and sometimes it appears as %20. The editor will cunningly allow you to apparently fix up these errors in the places they occur, and then the fun-loving little sprite …

Autodesk, Bug, Customer Service, Rant, Web Stuff

Discussion group search – partial workaround

 , , , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"3

The Autodesk discussion group search facility is still impersonating an industrial suction pump in a puddle. It sucks very hard and produces little useful output. In addition to the problems already mentioned ad nauseam (apparently there have never been any posts made containing the word “AutoCAD”, but 34 have been made in the past 90 days), here’s another one I spotted today: picking on Search Tips will give you a 404 error. However bad the discussion groups are, at least the Subscription site is working (for me anyway, I know there are still people with login ID problems) and my …

Autodesk, Autodesk University, Bug, Customer Service, Performance, Rant, Tip, Web Stuff

How not to do a web update

 , , , , , , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"4

If you’re a major company and your various web-based services have evolved over time, you may have a proliferation of user IDs and some other issues to tidy up. You may be tempted to have a major overhaul. If you think your reputation among your customers isn’t low enough and you desperately want this update to be an unmitigated disaster, what should you do? If you’re dropping subtle hints about moving towards a Software as a Service model, how can you remind people about the excellent reasons that exist for avoiding dependence on on-line services in general, and on yours in particular? …

Autodesk, Bug, Customer Service, Rant, Tip, Web Stuff

Autodesk discussion group links – feedback and bookmarks

 , , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"1

The Autodesk discussion groups are currently working. They are also still irresponsibly displaying people’s email addresses as visible user names. If you’ve posted to the discussion groups in the past, I suggest you check to see if your email address is out there for the spambots to pick up. There is now a feedback form for the discussion group and Community sites, so if you’re having problems you could try that. Hopefully, Autodesk won’t need a thousand feedback reports to work out that it’s running as slow as a wet week, the search is broken and that people’s privacy has been violated. …

Autodesk, Bug, Customer Service, Web Stuff

Autodesk, please turn the discussion groups off NOW

 , , , itemprop="discussionURL"3

You’re exposing some people’s email addresses as user names. Not mine, as far as I can tell, but it’s hard to say for sure because the search is broken. Anyway, this is very obviously A Bad Thing and you should not be allowing the site to be publicly visible that state.

Autodesk, Bug, Customer Service, Development, LISP, Tip, Web Stuff

Autodesk discussion group alternatives

 , , , , , , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"3

As I’m typing this, the Autodesk discussion groups are down for maintenance again. Let’s hope that when they come back up, some of the problems are fixed. In the meantime, if you’re an AutoCAD user and have something to ask or say, where can you go? Here are a few suggestions. I like the AUGI forums. It’s an even more modern, more graphical and less space-efficient web interface than the new Autodesk one, but there’s a good community there and, hey, the search feature works. Mike Perry and colleagues run a tight ship, so please read the rules and be …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2009, Bug

Has AutoCAD 2009 eaten your registry lately?

 , , , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"0

I’ve had a one-off report from a user of AutoCAD 2009 (actually, it was MDT as part of the Inventor suite pretending to be AutoCAD 2009, which isn’t exactly the same thing) and I’d like to know if anyone else has seen the same thing. His AutoCAD self-destructed and a little investigation showed that the section of the Registry that contains all the settings for that particular release had vanished without trace. This happened again later, but this time he had a backup of the Registry section handy and was able to avoid a second reinstall.  No Registry cleaners were …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2009, Bug

AutoCAD 2009 – Do your old drawings need recovery?

 , , itemprop="discussionURL"3

I’ve seen quite a few complaints that AutoCAD 2009 refuses to open some drawings saved in 2000 or 2004 format unless the Recover command has been used on them. Autodesk has now issued a Knowledge Base item about this issue. There’s no real fix in AutoCAD 2009 yet, just an external workaround. You will have to fix up the drawings in AutoCAD 2008 or TrueView. Either save the drawings in 2007 format or set the system variable 3DCONVERSIONMODE to 0 and then save them in the old format.

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2009, Bug, Tip

AutoCAD 2009 – Drawing integrity tip – urgent!

 , , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"0

AutoCAD 2009 users, I strongly suggest you go and set the new system variable OPENPARTIAL to 0. Now. Why? Because if it’s set to the default value of 1, purging can be harmful to your drawings. I’ll fill in the details in a future Bug Watch column, but for now I suggest you just go and fix up that variable. It’s stored in the Registry, so you should only need to do it once unless you use multiple profiles, in which case you should do it once per profile.

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2008, AutoCAD 2009, Bug, Other Blogs, Tip

The _XREF_XREF killer

 , , , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"0

If you’re an AutoCAD 2008 user you probably already know what the title refers to. If not, you probably don’t need to know. If your drawings are afflicted, I suggest you hop over to Between the Lines, grab the scale list cleanup utility and start cleaning up. Although I’ve found that this utility works very well, paranoia is usually wise in computing so make sure you back up everything before you start! The utility is installed into the AutoCAD 2008 or 2009 main installation folder, and you can make a shortcut to the CleanupScales.exe file on your desktop if you …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2009, Bug, Rant, Tip

AutoCAD 2009 – Tooltips are bad for my sanity

 , , itemprop="discussionURL"14

In the general scheme of things, this is a relatively trivial issue, but it’s sometimes the little things that get under my skin. Winner of this year’s prize for most annoying new feature just has to be the new tooltips. They are really not good for my mental health. If I have tooltips turned on, I find it hard to use AutoCAD 2009 for more than a few minutes without wanting to smash my fist through the screen. I would like to leave tooltips on just a little bit so they will let me get used to AutoCAD’s modified button …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2009, Bug

AutoCAD 2009 – ViewCube problems?

 , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"4

Having been very effusive in my praise of AutoCAD 2009’s ViewCube feature, stating among other things that “the ViewCube looks like a finished, polished tool”, I may need to backpedal. Those views, along with all of my 2009 Prequel posts, were based on my experience with the Release Candidate.  Although ViewCube was very stable for me in pre-release versions of 2009, I’ve seen severe ViewCube stability problems in the shipping software. I’ve seen the following problems in just a few minutes use of the ViewCube, on two different PCs: Picking the WCS button under the ViewCube and then picking a …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2009, Bug, Performance, Tip

AutoCAD 2009 – Layer Palette and performance

 , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"5

If you’ve noticed some normal drafting operations are much slower in AutoCAD 2009 than in earlier releases, try turning off the new Layer Palette and see if the problem goes away. For example, editing viewports with the Layer Palette visible can be completely unworkable. Don’t just auto-hide it, close it altogether. Another problem presented by the Layer Palette is that any layer changes you make are applied as you make them. This sounds great in theory, but if each operation takes a while to perform then that’s much less efficient than the old method where all changes are made at …

Announcement, Bug, Web Stuff

This blog is ugly…

 , , , itemprop="discussionURL"1

…if you’re using Internet Explorer 7. Thanks to Rick for pointing this out. It looks fine in other browsers, including IE6 and my own preferred browser, Firefox 2. Now I have to try to work around the IE7 bugs (which include splitting and misplacing images) to get the blog looking reasonable for everybody. Sigh. Thanks, Microsoft. Anyway, this means you’ll probably see the layout change around a bit more over the next few days. Do not be alarmed.