MasterGraphics Weblog
Archive for the ‘General’ Category
AutoCAD 2009 Subscription Tools
Monday, July 28th, 2008
Autodesk has released a Bonus Pack filled with goodies from the AUGI wishlist. These enhancements and goodies are available to current subscription customers using base AutoCAD 2009.
So what’s in it?
- Consolidated Inquiry tools. With one command, MEASUREGEOM, you can get distance, area, volume, angle or radius.
- Additional tools in PEDIT and SPLINEDIT. You now can convert a spline to a polyline and reverse the direction of a polyline with this tool.
- Rotate a Viewport and View together. There is a new system variable, VPROTATEASSOC. When the variable is set to 1, rotating the viewport brings the view with it.
- Updates to PURGE command. You can use the new tool to purge empty text boxes and zero-length geometry.
Download them from the Autodesk Subscription Center. Login is required. If you are not sure how to log in, contact your CAD manager or I.T. contact to see if a subscription account has been set up for you.
AutoCAD 2009 Service Pack 1.0 is Out
Monday, July 28th, 2008
Autodesk has released the first product update (service pack) for the AutoCAD 2009 and AutoCAD LT 2009 products. Updates have been made in the following feature areas:
- 3D Visual Styles
- Annotation Scaling
- External References (xref) palette
- Raster Images
- Partial Open
- Plot
- Properties Palette
- Hatch
- Remote text (rtext)
This update includes a wide range of general updates, including fixes to Attributes, Blocks, Hatch Boundaries, and many other functional areas. In total, more than 100 improvements are included in this product update.
Anyone can download this update from Autodesk’s website.
Civil 3D User Group Wednesday, June 4th 2008
Monday, June 2nd, 2008
Topic: Louisa Holland will speak on new features in Civil 3D 2009.
Location: Quality Inn
2969 Cahill Main Madison WI 53711
Wednesday June 4th, 11:30am-1:00pm
Lunch will be provided by MasterGraphics.
Autodesk Impression
Thursday, May 15th, 2008
Subscription customers can download Autodesk Impression for free from their Autodesk Subscription website.
Impress your colleagues and clients with compelling presentation-ready graphics created directly from your DWG™ and DWF™ files. Autodesk Impression software is easy to use, saves you time, and recognizes data from your CAD files. Autodesk Impression 2 software is available to AutoCAD®, AutoCAD® Architecture, AutoCAD® Civil 3D®, AutoCAD® Map 3D, AutoCAD® MEP and AutoCAD® Revit Architecture Suite software products’ subscription customers.
Benefits of Impression include:
- Generate Great-Looking Images—Fast. Presentation graphics are about winning business. Your images have to sell your projects. With Impression you can easily apply graphical styles to your CAD files using prebuilt styles or customized styles that you create—from pencil styles to watercolor fills.
- CAD Compatible - Because Impression understands CAD data, the illustration process is much faster than with general-purpose graphics applications. Open any DWG or DWF file in Impression. Impression recognizes blocks, layers, hatches and other CAD-specific data.
- Easy to Learn and Use - Impression is designed so that anyone in the office can learn the application in minutes and can get great results right away.
- Quickly Create Multiple Design Iterations - Quickly update your presentation graphics when designs change or apply your signature style to all the drawings that you produce.
- Integrate Into Existing Workflow - Impression fits easily into your existing workflow and is interoperable with many popular graphics applications.
Posted by Scott Brisk
Flex License Manager and Vista
Thursday, May 15th, 2008
If you have a network version of an Autodesk product and you want to run it on Vista, you MUST turn OFF the User Access Control feature.
The FLEX license manager attempts to write a file to the local drive. If the UAC is on, it fails. You don’t get prompted to allow it to write nor does it matter if you are a local system administrator (we were).
The Electrical product would display a flex error message and then start the program. But all the projects were locked and you couldn’t save anything.
To change the settings, go to Control Panel, User Control and click on the User Access Control On/Off option. Uncheck the box to use the UAC. This will force a reboot, so have any other work saved.
Posted by Scott Brisk
Raster Design Object Enabler Ready for Download
Friday, May 2nd, 2008
AutoCAD Raster Design 2009 Object Enabler You’ll need this in order to import MrSID format files. This is especially important for users of Civil 3D 2009 or Map 2009.
Make sure you download the version appropriate for your Autodesk program. Civil 3D and Map are both technically still 32-bit applications, so you’d need the 32-bit version in this case. (The download site implies it is the OS that determines the download - but I tried on my 64-bit Vista and the 64-bit install did not work.)
Before Installing Raster Design 2009 Object Enabler:
After Installing Raster Design 2009 Object Enabler:
That’s all for now!
Play It, Sam
Tuesday, March 25th, 2008
Many of you already know (and love?) FLEXLM utilities that are needed for network licensing of Autodesk products. Did you also know that there is a utility that comes free with most Autodesk products and can be used for more in-depth license reporting? The utility I’m talking about is SamReport-Lite, by Macrovision.
With this tool you can get a very clear picture of how many licenses are being used and by whom throughout the day. It can help you make decisions as to whether or not you need more licences.
The only trouble is that the documentation that comes on the DVD is not Autodesk-specific and is confusing. People commonly get Java error messages installing off the DVD and just give up.
The following instructions will get you past all the confusion. As long as you know how to install FlexLM, you can get through the document.
Good luck and happy reporting!
Hydraflow is Now Available
Thursday, December 13th, 2007
If you’ve been waiting for a hydraulic calculating tool that works with Civil 3D - its out! The Hydraflow Extension for Civil 3D can be downloaded from the Autodesk Subscription website. That is, of course, to assume that you’re a subscription customer. If you aren’t on subscription I highly recommend it, for a host of reasons.
If you want to hear or see a little more about the Hydraflow tool, Autodesk had a Civil 3D webcast last week where it made an appearance.
Memorize These Key-ins
Tuesday, December 11th, 2007
If your AutoCAD based product is acting weird, knowing a few common troubleshooting tricks can mean the difference between hours of work and hours of frustration.
The following tricks will work for any AutoCAD based product such as AutoCAD Architecture, Civil 3D, AutoCAD LT, AutoCAD Mechanical and AutoCAD Electrical.
Trick 1: FILEDIA
Filedia should be set to 1 for dialog boxes to appear. Say you go to File > Open and are prompted for the file path along the command line. This especially is the case after a recent crash. Type FILEDIA at the command line and you’ll be back in business in no time.
Trick 2: ALT Spacebar M
For some reason your layer manager is not appearing. Autocad is not crashing - but it appears frozen until you hit the ESC key. What really happening is that your layer manager dialog box is off in “lala land”. To get it back, hit ALT and Spacebar at the same time. Let go then type M. You are now in a mode where you can relocate the dialog box with the arrow keys.
Trick 3: AUDIT
This is another command line entry that basically tells Autocad “heal thyself!” Follow the prompts and type Y to fix any detectable errors.
I’ll post more tricks like these in the near future. In the meantime, ENJOY!
Adding Us as a Feed
Thursday, October 18th, 2007
Do you like the tips and advice you get from the MasterGraphics Blog? Why not get updates sent to your inbox by signing up for our RSS feed?
To do so, click on the following link, then click “Subscribe to this feed”