RobiNZ CAD Blog

Getting Autodesk 2014 apps; a few tips

The good news is a bunch of Autodesk 2014 applications and suites are now available for download. The bad news, based on my experience, is getting them may not be so easy. It must be said I do live in a country at the end of the world not famed for its Internet connectivity but still…

Subscription not quite ready for Windows 8

The 2014 applications have been built for Windows 8 but the site where you get them isn’t. With the IE10 browser in Windows 8 the instant you start typing in the User ID or Password sign in fields the entire panel, outlined in red below, disappears.

I found this is just a graphic problem and if you keep typing (use tab between fields) then hit enter the subscription site opens correctly. If you get your details wrong a new page loads with just the sign in panel and it works normally too! Once inside there everything appears to work normally.

The download manager which doesn’t manage

There is an option to install a download manager. I found this to be less reliable, if maybe quicker than the browser, and lacked the one feature I expect a download manager to have. You can pause/restart downloads but if it fails, and I learnt this by experience several times, there is no recovery or resume to save downloading the entire file again.

Another thing I found confusing is the website shows the compressed file size, 15.4GB for my suite, but the download manager reports the uncompressed 58GB size as it receives the file.

Browser download not a pop-up free zone

Browser download was more reliable (for me) but comes with a potential snag. The suite I was downloading is packaged as a multi-part zip file and for the first attempt I only got part 1, just 4GB of the 15GB I was expecting.

It seems hard to believe given the ubiquity of pop-up blockers that the browser download relies on pop-ups but it does (thank you @ScottMoyse!). I wondered if it was another Windows 8 thing but after disabling the pop-up blocker IE10 downloaded the components with none of the failures I experienced from the download manager.

So after a couple of hours I finally got the package I needed and it was time to install. That is another saga I’ll save for a future post as I have a GP2 race to watch!

The new Autodesk.com and 2014 products revealed

Autodesk have unveiled a new look Autodesk.com and announced their 2014 product updates. The new look Autodesk, hinted at earlier this month, comes with updates to existing products, new applications, revised industry specific Design Suites and Autodesk 360 Cloud Services.

Check out the announcement below and details at http://www.autodesk.com/ 

I’ve had a peak a some of the 2014 line-up and will be posting about the release product when they are available.

Aussie/NZ CAD reseller mergers - A2K Technologies

A hefty chunk of the Aussie/NZ CAD ‘reseller’ space has changed with this announcement:

AEC Systems, Karelcad, and ADA CADPartners merge business operations - A2K Technologies - www.a2ktechnologies.com.au

AEC Systems, KarelCAD, and ADA CADPartners today announced they have merged their individual business operations.  The new company, A2K Technologies, will commence trading on the 1st February, 2013… [more]

CAD notes productivity contest – Win AutoCAD training & more

Edwin has a contest running on his CAD Notes blog. Be in to win AutoCAD Training Guides, Productivity add-on software and more.

CAD notes giveaway: Win these prizes and be more productive! | CAD Notes

We always want to increase CAD notes readers productivity. That’s our articles focus. And we recommend products to achieve that. This time, you have opportunity to win these for free! We have best books and training videos. We have add-ons and software too. All you need to to choose your prize and tell us why we should pick you as the winner!

(Note; Entries close Sunday, 30 September 2012. We will announce the winner within a week after contest ends)

AutoCAD 2013/AutoCAD LT 2013 SP1 has been reposted

AutoCAD 2013/AutoCAD LT 2013 SP1 has been reposted, with a further fix, as Service Pack 1.1

This Service Pack can be applied to AutoCAD 2013 installed as a standalone application as well as AutoCAD 2013 installed from the some Autodesk Design Suites (including Autodesk Building Design Suite 2013).

• See this post & links for details

64 Bit Stability for Revit and AutoCAD

Shopping for a laptop (not for me!) recently it was good to see 64 bit OS installed on all but entry level products. Given that level of acceptance in the consumer space I find it surprising to find some dedicated CAD workstations are still running the 32 bit flavour of Windows. I thought Windows 8 would be all 64 bit but it seems Microsoft are still going to offer an 32-bit (x86) flavour.

So, why 64 bit for CAD?

If you have any doubt 64 bits are better take a look at this post from Revit Clinic:

64 Bit Revit and Stability - revitclinic.typepad.com        
“In general, 64 bit operating systems running 64 bit Revit are about twice as stable as 32 bit operating systems running 32 bit Revit. Our Customer Error Reports (CER) and Customer Involvement Program (CIP) help confirm this.”

Not just for Revit!

I’ve seen AutoCAD happily consume gigabytes of RAM when the system has it on offer.

Our AutoCAD Architecture fitting layouts are typically 6–10MB .dwg files. Before using a 64 bit OS “out of memory” was the most frequent cause of crashes.

The machine many have had free memory but a single 32 bit process can only use about 2 GB and shaded 3D views caused AutoCAD to hit that limit.

With a 64 bit OS you frequently see ACAD.exe gobbling upwards of 6GB ram, on its own, to display these views. No wonder it struggled to fit into the 32 bit limit.

How much RAM is enough?

I have found 8-16GB Ram generally is sufficient for most AutoCAD/AutoCAD Architecture users, 16-32 for Revit. With Windows 7, and 8, 64 you can access up to 192GB RAM and you can never have too much!

Should You Install Windows 7 32-bit or 64-bit? - TechSpot Guides

On paper, the 64-bit architecture can address 16 exabytes of memory (2^64), or more than 4 billion times that of its precursor. Consumer editions of Windows Vista permit from 8GB to 128GB of physical memory to be accessed, depending on the version. Windows 7 bumps that up to 192GB with the Professional version and above...

AutoCAD 2013/AutoCAD LT 2013 SP1 helps combat malware

UPDATE 2012-09-12: The update has been reposted as Service Pack 1.1

UPDATE 2012-08-24:  Posted on the download page today: “Service Pack 1 for AutoCAD 2013 has been temporarily removed due to a newly discovered fatal error. The AutoCAD team is actively working on resolving this and a new service pack will be posted here [the download page] as soon as it is available”

The AutoCAD, and AutoCAD LT, 2013 Service Pack 1 is out.

Without A Net: Service Pack 1 for AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT 2013

Autodesk has released Service Pack 1 for AutoCAD 2013 and AutoCAD LT 2013. 32-bit and 64-bit versions of this update can be found at the following links:

AutoCAD 2013 Service Pack 1.1
AutoCAD LT 2013 Service Pack 1.1

This update is only for AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT and cannot be applied to vertical products that are based on AutoCAD 2013…

I haven’t tried these yet, as run AutoCAD Architecture vertical, but Without A Net details a very good reason for getting these updates deployed:

Without A Net: New Security Controls in AutoCAD 2013 SP1 Help Combat Malware

Over the last few years there has been an increasing number of malware attacks on AutoCAD. These attacks typically leverage the legacy autoloading process of the stock customization files (acad.lsp, acad.dvb, etc.) that come with AutoCAD. Modified versions of these files end up getting automatically loaded into AutoCAD and can cause data loss, corruption, and general annoyance. Here is a typical scenario…

AutoCAD Exchange (ed) for AutoCAD Facebook, but not for me

Coincidence is a strange thing. Last night I was playing around with some new TypePad Blog Themes and considering a major re-design. While that may happen it will take a while so I decided a quick “makeover” was needed. Although the design hasn’t changed I have reviewed the sidebars and cleared out some dated content.

Most of that was easy, Technorati code (remember them?), some dead links to blogs which have fallen off the web and generic search boxes I doubt anybody ever used. One item I looked at and wondered about was the AutoCAD Exchange panel (left).

It was launched with a flourish back in 2009, with blogger support via sidebar widgets, but I suspect never really became the community Autodesk had hoped for. Then today an email arrives announcing AutoCAD Exchange was moving to Facebook (per the screenshot below from AutoCAD Exchange):

That means AutoCAD Exchange is effectively dead for me as a work tool as Facebook not available on our corporate network. I suspect that is true for many and it makes the move rather hard to understand. While Facebook hosting is easier to manage for Autodesk I think it’s an awful move for the user.

Perhaps that view is tainted as my own presence on Facebook is reluctant, at best. I use it to connect with those who use it as their only social site rather than from any burning desire to be there. I mostly cross posts from Twitter Apps or TypePad as I hate the Facebook web UI and find their iPhone app slow, buggy and annoying.

So it’s goodbye AutoCAD on Exchange, I’ll see you on Twitter and YouTube but it is unlikely the Facebook page will see much action from me.

AutoCAD on Facebook — AutoCAD on Twitter — AutoCAD on YouTube

UPDATE 2012-08-01:

This is why we should never rely on facebook for doing business. reut.rs/MaG1oY

— Edwin Prakoso (@cad_notes) August 1, 2012

Edwin’s Tweet links to “Facebook sinks to record low as doubts grow” – Reuters

AutoCAD Rocks with 7lions and designer Marcello Martino. — #AU2011

Memories of Autodesk University 2011 when I saw this YouTube: AutoCAD Rocks with 7lions and eyewear designer Marcello Martino.

It was great to meet Marcello at AU, seen in Shaan Hurley’s photo right. He created the red Autodesk University Glasses using AutoCAD Design Suite.

The video shows the creation of another eyewear design, featuring AutoCAD Design Suite from concept to production, for rapper Mika “Prophet” Guillory of the group 7Lions.

AutoCAD Tool Palette Object inserts and Object Snaps

Kate Morrical clears up a quirk of AutoCAD tool pallet block inserts which is user related. In short single click the tool, then place to get osnaps every time.

LT Unlimited: Tool Palettes and Object Snaps

I ran across an interesting issue in the Autodesk Discussion Forums, and thought I’d re-post it here in case someone else had the same trouble.

The poster was confused as to why blocks inserted from a tool palette didn’t seem to obey object snaps during placement, despite the fact that they were active.

A little detective work uncovered that the methodology was to blame…

UPDATE: It seems Windows Live Writer is trying to make Kate metric!