Ever felt like finding out how tools and plug-ins for AutoCAD can be programmed?
My colleagues from the ADN (Autodesk Developer Network) have created a great introductory tutorial called "My First AutoCAD Plug-In" specifically for users who know AutoCAD, but are new to programming.
Form the description:
In this guide, you will be working with the AutoCAD .NET Application Programming Interface (API) and the Visual Basic .NET programming language to create a ‘plug-in’ – a module that loads into AutoCAD to extend its functionality.
Once you have finished this tutorial, you will understand the basics of .NET programming and how they are applied to AutoCAD.
Check it out and have fun!
More Information: www.autodesk.com/developautocad
Straight link to the course: http://www.autodesk.com/myfirstautocadplugin
If you have received files from somewhere that were created in an Educational version of an AutoCAD based product, or contain content from an Educational version, these files will display a plotstamp when printed saying "PRODUCED BY AN AUTODESK EDUCATIONAL PRODUCT".
More Information can be found here:
http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=TS17886605
Any affected file will display two warning messages when it is opened in AutoCAD, as shown in more detail in this blog post on the "Up & Ready" blog.
However, in some situations you may want to be able to check multiple "suspected" files in one go, without having to open each individual file, to identify which drawing files are "clean" and which are the ones that contain content from an Educational version.
The DWG Convert tool (included in AutoCAD 2012 and in DWG Trueview)
can help you identify the affected files.
In DWG Trueview, you can find it in the Application Menu directly under the "Open" button:
In AutoCAD 2012, the tool can be found under Application Menu > Save As > DWG Convert
Or you can just type in the DWGCONVERT command:
In the DWG Convert dialog, click the "Add files" button to add all the files you want to check:
Once you have added the files, decide which Conversion Setup to use. If you are only checking for files with Educational content, this should not matter much, but just make sure to select a conversion setup that does not overwrite the original files. The "Standard" setup should do fine, since this by default will add the converted files to a new ZIP file, and prompt you to specify a location for this file.
Next, click the "Convert button" and if there are any files that include Educational content, DWG Convert will give a warning dialog that lists the files that cannot be converted:
You can leave it at that, take note of paths and names of the affected files, and click cancel - or you can click "Continue", in which case the conversion will proceed and you will be given a report at the end that also lists all the affected files and their locations:
We have had some customer reports that the videos in Autodesk Exchange were not playing. Instead of the videos, customers only saw a message saying "Flash Version 9.0 or greater is required - You have no Flash Plugin installed" - even though a higher version of Flash was already installed.
This issue is specific to Internet Explorer 9 on 64 Bit Systems and has already been reported to our development team.
One way to resolve this is to download the latest Flash Player version from the Adobe Website with the option "For other Browsers": http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/otherversions/
With this installed, the videos should run fine within the Exchange window.
A simpler alternative to work around the issue is to click the "Open in Browser" icon in the top right corner of the Autodesk Exchange window:
This will open Exchange in your browser and the videos should also run fine, without the need to install another Flash version.
When creating a new layer and changing its color, you may sometimes find that the color change is not applied as expected.
This can happen when you change the layer color while you are still in the editing mode for the layer name.
In this scenario, two pieces of information (the change of the layer name, and the change of the layer color) are sent to AutoCAD exactly at the same time.
On fast machines, this is not a problem, but on older machines that cannot compute the information as quickly, it can happen that only the first piece of the change (the change of layer name) is actually applied.
Our development team is looking into this already. In the mean time, if you run into this issue, you can work around it by making sure that you let the change of the layer name complete (just click once outside the layer name field) before changing the layer color.
When trying to add network content to Content Explorer, you may come across this message:
"Add Network Content failed - Connection denied from remote computer to Personal Autodesk Content Service"
This error indicates that the Content Service on the remote machine was installed with the "Personal Access" option instead of the "Public Access" option. The "Personal" version of the Content Service does not allow remote connections from other machines.
In order to allow other machines to connect to content on this machine, the machine you are trying to connect to needs to have the "Public" version of the Content Service installed.
In order to resolve the situation, the following steps should be performed on the remote machine (the machine you were trying to connect to):
If you click on the down arrow, you see two options under "Installation Type": "For Public Access" and "For Personal Access".
Select the option "For Public Access".
Click on "Click to close and return to product list", make sure the box next to "Autodesk Content Service" is checked, and click on "Install"
After the installation finished, open the Content Service Administration Console and verify that Access is set to "Public":
Next, click on "Add Watched Folder" to add the desired shared folders.
Now you should be able to access these folders from Content Explorer on other machines.
Most of us have used the Windows Cleanup Utility in the past to remove programs that seem to be 'stuck'. This tool would forcibly remove the program, and then a user could manually delete any folders left behind. Recently this tool was retired, but a new one has replaced it.
The new tool is called Microsoft Fix-it. Some of its capabilities are removing bad registry keys on 64 bit systems and resolving problems when a program cannot be installed. Please take a look at the link below to explore this useful new tool!
http://support.microsoft.com/mats/Program_Install_and_Uninstall
There can be different reasons for slow performance when copying and pasting objects in drawings.
The most common cause are large numbers of layer filters. One easy way to check and remove these is the FILTERS command that is described here http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=TS1056902
If you are using AutoCAD 2012, please also ensure that SP1 is installed.
If Layer filters can be ruled out, check if the drawing contains a large number of annotation scales. More information and tips how to remove those can be found here: http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=TS10031804
When you copy a viewport using the COPY command, you may notice that the Navigation Bar and Viewcube don't display in the copied viewport when you activate it, even when the viewport is not locked.
This only happens with viewports that were copied using the COPY command - viewports that were copied via the clipboard (e.g. using COPYCLIP > PASTECLIP or CTRL+C > CTRL+V) are not affected.
To get the navigation controls to display in an affected viewport, you can either temporarily change the visual style of the viewport, or run the NAVSWHEEL command inside the viewport.
In both cases the navigation controls should display the next time you activate the viewport.
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